No Rest for the Wicked has just been released for early access on PC, Xbox and PS5. The developers, Moon Studios, are the ones who brought you Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They’ve taken a slightly different approach here and switched to action RPG. Will a change of genre pay off for Moon Studios?
No Rest for the Wicked features a hand-crafted world with meticulous detail as you would expect from Moon Studios. Each of the locations has its own theme with unique characters, treasures and secrets to find. It’s not just about combat and exploration, you can also purchase your own property in the town of Sacrament. Here you’ll be able to harvest ingredients, cook food and decorate your home.
Progress can be made on your own as you make your way through this dark and epic saga, or with up to three friends on the online co-op mode. Only the first part of the game is available so hopefully more content will be released soon. There have also been a few issues with the early release. The developers know about it and are working hard to remedy these issues and are in the process of fixing them.
Current known issues with the early release are lack of settings to optimize performance. The next patch will have GPU settings added in the settings menu. For better performance it’s recommended that you install No Rest for the Wicked on an SSD. There is currently no way to rebind controls. I believe this will be added soon. Language support is also being updated on an ongoing basis with some text not yet translated.
Now back to the gameplay. The level design is brilliant and is up there with some of the best Souls games. The art looks amazing and the sound and music are great. The combat feels pretty satisfying and the story so far is good, although we’ll need to wait for more content to make a definitive judgement.
The bosses in this game are hard. If you enjoy the challenge of Souls-like games then this is for you. Restocking items can get a bit tedious with materials for healing items needing to be collected. This may be rebalanced in future patches. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.
As you find loot you’ll be able to craft and upgrade your equipment. This allows for a lot of customization and figuring out how you want to play the game or beat the next boss. There are some areas that could be improved, such as inventory management, the durability system and not being able to duel wield anything other than daggers.
This is still early days for No Rest for the Wicked and I’m sure we’ll see many improvements and additions as the days go by. For now it’s an amazingly beautiful game with an interesting story and solid combat.
Tagged with: arpg games • fantasy games • moon studios. • new releases • role playing games • rpg games
Filed under: Action • Adventure • fantasy • RPG • Upcoming
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