When it comes to frenetic roguelike slashing action, there’s no question that Hades and its follow-up absolutely rule the roost, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been other titles that have helped to set a reasonably high bar for quality. Whether it’s the varied characters and challenges of Children of Morta, or the more brutal difficulty offered by Curse of the Dead Gods, the eShop pretty much has your fix covered in this space, no matter what your tastes may be. 

In the case of Realm of Ink, it does at least have its general aesthetic style in its favor. I suppose as its name would suggest, there’s just a certain artistic flair to the game’s look, though I’ll admit that the very poor and compressed quality of its intro and transition video clips somewhat ruin that impression. Still, outside of some occasional performance struggles the game’s look is probably its strongest quality, complimented by what’s usually pretty quick action that you’re still able to follow, something not all titles in the space can claim.

All that said, there are also some issues here that clearly put this on a lower tier than some of the competition. The main one for me is that the combat lacks a sense of impact, if that makes sense. You’re just whipping around, knocking out enemies, but there’s just something in the action that’s missing. Pair that with the fact that it feels like some of the build types are far easier to exploit than others, and once you work that out the variety that the game would like to promise begins to fray at the edges. If it weren’t for the strong competition at the top of the hill, perhaps this would feel a little more compelling. But the distance between this and the next tier is simply too wide a gap to ignore.