No Rest for the Wicked - Early Access Review
You might have heard of Ori and the Blind Forest, or Ori and the Will of the Wisps by Moon Studios. The two have amazing visuals, animation and fun exploration, with the addition of an emotional and great narrative. On the back of that, Moon Studios’ latest game is No Rest for the Wicked, and though it still keeps up that fantastic visual art and style, the studio has moved to a different type of gameplay instead of a puzzle platformer.
No Rest for the Wicked sports a unique visual design where certain aspects of characters are exaggerated to enhance their silhouettes. While the overall look is unique, there are some aspects that do remind me of the early designs from World of Warcraft. The colours alone are vivid and paint a beautiful picture, but when you add in the rendering effect, which gives it that painterly impact, the end result is a stunningly beautiful game, even this early on. That same level of detail has been applied to the land itself, as it is extremely well thought out, to the point that you can tell the developers want players to explore and reward people for doing so, whether it’s through hidden chests or items hidden around corners, rooms, caves and more. Exploration is definitely built in to the core of the game and something that players should invest time in. If exploration is not for you, there is also farming, you can get materials by chopping down trees, digging up spots on the ground for clay, and mining ore and precious metals with a pickaxe, the latter locations are scattered across the map. This is so you can upgrade things about you, so your weapons, armour, equipment… but also all the way through to upgrading the town where you’re able to get more out of your vendors and merchants, such as a blacksmith, and seamstress for cloth and leather goods, just to name a couple. In addition to having the ability to upgrade weapons and equipment via vendors, you’re also able to purchase a house in the town where you can fill it with all sorts of furnishings, giving players the ability to have more storage for items.
Now where the game really kicks in is its Action RPG where you're able upgrade your character’s attributes by collecting XP from kills. Every level upgrade gives you 3 points where you’ll be able to increase a variety of stats. And as any RPG, it always comes in the likes of health, stamina, strength, dexterity, intelligence, faith, focus and equipment load. One thing to make sure you’re upgrading is the equipment load as the higher levelled armour and weapons are definitely heavier, and in order to keep up with the enemies, you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on ensuring you have the appropriate weapons. The other important one to ensure is kept upgraded is stamina and health, much like in other souls-like games. No Rest for the Wicked really does feel like a souls-like in that the gameplay movement has a strike, a block (or counter) with shield, as well as a roll. In fact, overloading your equipment load has its advantage in that it gives you a type of shoulder charge opposed to only fat rolling in souls games.
So discovering the play style that really works for you is definitely advantageous, but may take some time. This discovery is made a little more challenging as there are a series of weapons to be found and used. The variety includes two handed swords, to daggers, longswords and even magic staffs that lets you use magic to attack, funny that. In fact, a lot of the gameplay itself does feel very much like a FromSoftware game, only the invulnerability frames from rolling or dodging is a little easier. Therefore, if the likes of the Dark Souls series, Elden Ring, Bloodborne or Sekiro are up your alley, No Rest for the Wicked would scratch that same itch. In fact, the game starts you off with a tutorial level where you've got your full armour, weapons etc and guides players through various controls through to combat, then entirely strips you of it and starts you from zero, in which you’ll have to work your way up to building your character. In regards to what happens in the events and narrative, that’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself by playing the game itself, but as the game is constantly evolving now, that could even change over time as well.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that this game is really made for a platform that has the hardware capabilities to run the game smoothly, whether it be a PC, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S. For this Early Access, the game was tested out on Valve’s Steam Deck, in which it was clearly stated that the game is too early and unverified for the Steam Deck. Before we even attempted a playing the game on the Steam Deck, we double checked with the publisher to make sure it would run and were advised that it would, though it might encounter issues. Now there have been multiple updates released in the first week and change since the Early Access began, some of which have address a few issues we had. Thankfully, for the most part the game plays smoothly enough that you’ll still enjoy the experience, as the frame rate doesn’t drop too low all that frequently.
Where it specifically has issues is when there’s too much happening on screen such as a boss fight or when there are multiple enemies, that ends up with you having to roll and move around too much. One that’s noticeable is if the enemies are on the edge of the screen and when you’re rolling in sequence, the game freezes in which needs to be rebooted. This could easily be attributed to the games Early Access nature, or the lower power of the Steam Deck or a combination of both, regardless of the reason, outside of that specific example it works perfectly fine, and may drop frames from time to time, but that’s a rare occurrence.
So far, No Rest for the Wicked has been a lot of fun to play, especially for me as I am a FromSoftware fan. If you’re into action RPGs that mix in fantasy, and enjoy a little farming, this is definitely the game for you. For an Early Access game, it has been great so far, and I am looking forward to all the bug fixes for the Steam Deck verification. One major reminder though, if you’re thinking Moon Studios made another cute and fun puzzle platformer, then you're absolutely in for a surprise. Apart from the amazing visual colours palette that look similar, this game is definitely something else, and one that you’ll want to pick up.
No Rest for the Wicked is out now in Early Access on PC and once ready for a full release, will also launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. You can discover the current roadmap for the game here, and if you want to get the game, you can do so here from Steam.
