REVIEW: ‘Romancelvania’ Is Warm But Not Smoldering (XSX)

Romancelvania is a Metroidvania-style dating sim from The Deep End Games and 2124 Publishing starring Drac as they get forced into participating in a dating show by Grim and a mysterious cabal after 100 years of moping over an ex. As the player, you must recruit the sexiest monsters from across the realms to compete for your affection, all while zapped of your former power and questing to recover them.

On the surface, Romancelvania is a fun combo of two genres under one ever-popular room: sexy monsters. The conceit is tight, and housing it all within a Bachelor-like dating show gives the game a little extra oomph to justify its genre pairing. You definitely feel like you’re on a gameshow most of the time you’re playing, between the stages designed to feel like a TV set, the confessionals you use to save and fast travel, and Grim, the show’s host, constantly butting in to comment on everything. The powerups you unlock are in the form of award show-inspired awards trophies and the process of twiddling down your potential partners is based on giving them black roses, a la its main real-life inspiration.

The visual presentation is largely solid, with varied stages of your typical biomes and a nice array of hot monsters. You’ve got a big, hunky werewolf, a very busty pumpkin scarecrow, a lithe vampire, and all kinds of genies and succubi in between. None of the characters turned my interest in them off from their visuals alone. And it’s nice that you get to pick which gender presentation you want for your Drac, and that none of the romance options are blocked off one way or the other.

The only real visual issue is that a lot of the game is much too dark. You can barely see what’s going on, and it’s almost like the game anticipates this to a degree, because you have a bat that follows you around with a spotlight the whole game, yet they could have just turned up the lighting and it would have resolved the problem for the most part. The enemies are a bit repetitive after while too, since some of them repeat with slight variations world to world, but you do get a couple of unique foes here and there.

Unfortunately, I found the dating sim part of the game a bit lacking. So much of the game is just about choosing dialogue to increase your affection levels, picking sides in various fights, but never about worrying how your choices might affect outcomes negatively. You can’t make other contestants mad by focusing on somebody else or choosing their side in an argument. They barely even feel like they interact with each other, which is counter to the way that Grim seems to describe the parameters of the game upon its initiation. Based on that dialogue, I expected my choices to have more impact, but instead, they were just about pleasing as many characters as I could as fast as I could so that I could unlock the powerups associated with increasing my relationship levels with them before I might have to kick them out of the contest.

There are a lot of different options for wooing your castmates though, from dates at various locations across the large map, gift-giving, drink buying, and side questing. The voice acting is all solid too, and for the most part, the dialogue is good. There are some Drac lines that have me rolling my eyes, but the diversity of character personalities keeps the romanceables interesting.

The combat is a weakness. It’s quite clunky at best. While there are a ton of different weapons to collect and items to use, and each does have a distinct feel to using them, so much of combat winds up a contest between mashing a button fast enough to keep an enemy far enough not to wade into your hitbox, or keeping yourself far enough away not to wade into theirs. The controls are too finicky to feel like most damage I ever took was due to poor skill rather than clunky movement. It’s not entirely dissatisfying to play, it’s just not as smooth as the genre tends to invite. Various bosses feel similarly. Not exceedingly interesting, with no skill required beyond mashing attacks and trying to dodge where you can. There are enough combat and special abilities to keep things fresh or add a bit of skill into the mix, but not all that much. After the first few areas of the game were over and my abilities started increasing, my difficulty dispatching enemies became nearly null.

Romancelvania is a sharp combination of two disparate genres, but it falls short in some of its execution. Worthwhile for folks who enjoy a witty story-driven romance, especially where sexy monsters are involved, but not necessarily worth it for the average Metroidvania-goer.

Romancelvania is available now on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.