I tried the demo for Queen's Domain last year and liked it a lot—though it definitely had some friction I wasn't sure about. The full game launched on October 30, and I eagerly rushed through the parts I'd already played in the demo.
Turns out, that demo cut out right when things were about to go nuts.
Five hours in out of an estimated 30+, and Queen's Domain is easily one of my top games of the year. I am only begrudgingly writing this, because I'd rather be playing right now.
Queen's Domain starts out resembling other entries in a growing subgenre of indie King's Field-likes, paying homage to the first-person dark fantasy RPG series FromSoftware put out before its soulsward turn. In its first half hour or so, Queen's Domain distinguishes itself similarly to fellow genre standout Lunacid: Fantastic art, maybe even better music, and a mastery of nostalgic intangibles (menu, UI, sound cues, etc.) After beating the first boss, Queen's Domain rewards you with a magic airdash sword, and it's at that point that the game truly begins.
Queen of the skies
Queen's Domain is a very deliberately paced game and, like a lot of first-person RPGs, it starts out feeling like your boots will always be on the ground. Think the difference between Doom and Quake: You can mostly tell when a game will let you get some air or not.
But once I was rocking the Holy Sword, Endu? Holy shit. Queen's Domain's first area opens up like some wonderful clockwork contraption. A lot of the verticality reminds me of Destiny raids, the way hidden paths blend into the environment, and reaching them feels like you're sequence breaking.
Endu can be upgraded with special gems throughout the game, with each giving you an extra dash while airborne. I'm up to three at the time of writing, and each upgrade has felt like it radically opened up my traversal options: There are parts of the first few maps I'm pretty sure I'll only be able to reach once I'm up to four or five dashes, zooming from one end of the map to the other without touching the ground.
Endu's a standout, but it's not the only tool available: Queen's Domain seems to have an expansive arsenal, and weapons can transform as they're upgraded. You upgrade weapons just by using them, and the game has no stat allocation on level up, encouraging experimentation with the arsenal—PC Gamer hardware writer James Bentley managed to max upgrade 20 weapons across his full playthrough. You can effectively create a "build" via your choice of which weapons to hotkey (limit of three) and upgrade, a system that more resembles BioShock or the System Shock Remake rather than something like Dark Souls or Lunacid.
My favorite alongside Endu so far has been the Caestus, a type of medieval knuckle duster that's been a standby of the Souls games. Here, it's a fast-attacking blunt weapon useful against slashing-resistant skeletons. Instead of a horizontal dash like Endu, its special attack is an uppercut that launches my character into the air. Plenty of fun to use on enemies, but I've loved deploying it as an effective double jump to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas—and there's always been a surprise or meaningful reward waiting for me when I do.
Don't give up, skeleton
My coworker, PCG staff writer Morgan Park, initially bounced off the pre-Endu, demo-equivalent portion of Queen's Domain. I'm here to say stay strong, prayer warriors. It is worth getting through that first half hour. While there's something to be said about it potentially putting new players off, I think the contrast between pre-and post-Endu gameplay is so strong, it makes the air dash feel all the more powerful. You know what it's like to be stuck on the ground, and you won't take it for granted.
It's the sort of contrast metroidvanias thrive on—I always think of how dinky you feel before you get the wall jump in Hollow Knight—and Queen's Domain's brilliant level design might leave it the best first-person metroidvania anyone's made since the first Metroid Prime.
And I think Prime's a strong comparison point overall here: The cryptic atmosphere, breathtaking vistas, and genuinely unique approach to first-person movement and level design speak to that. I'm already seeing hints toward game-spanning backtracking in my future, but I've got reason to suspect Queen's Domain's backtracking will be less frustrating and obtuse than Metroid Prime's.
I already love this game, and I am about to mainline it over the next 30 hours or so of my free time—stay tuned for our full Queen's Domain review to come. Meanwhile, Queen's Domain is available on Steam for a launch price of $17, down from an MSRP of $20.
