Into the Necrovale

Power creep has got me feeling Godly!

I saw the Dev say something along the lines of how he hates the traditional idea of set pieces in other games, where the devs basically make the builds for you, and I see that pretty clearly here. This game has a unique system in that theres tons of loot that you can "Meld" together. You like that helmet you just looted, but you also like the helmet you found a while ago? You can meld them together to get both effects basically being the engineer of your own gear. Eventually, when you get to the end game, you even unlock a 3rd meld. My only real complaint about this game is the "Despair" system. I suppose I get it from a lore perspective? Every time you die, you get 30 despair, and if you die at 100 despair, your character is taken to a RNG selection where you do have a little influence to ultimately select 1 piece of your equipment to discard. However, this whole system basically becomes a non-issue after the first boss, or whenever you get the equipment to make it so getting kills lowers your despair. My issue with it, is that its just a system you either have to force fix, or micromanage by putting on a bandaid for it before 100, its a system that shouldn't have existed to begin with. But, its a very minimal complaint. The gear customization is great, the combat is great, the loop is great. I love the pace of the incremental growth

This game is broken... Items with the most vague descriptions, items that don't do anything, irrelevant mechanics. Balance is all over the place. I found a simple item combination that let me blitz through 50% of the game. Later on, you either decimate the entire screen or you die instantly. Very often you decimate the screen but one mistake is certain death. I tried maxing out defense, I tried maxing out evasion, it didn't matter. Farming for items and resources is mind-numbingly boring. The game consists of areas which contain levels. A level is a series of maps you have to clear in succession. Clear enough levels and you unlock a boss level for that area. This works well. But the final area consists of extra-long levels WITH a boss at the end. You have to clear everything in succession, including the boss or it's back to the beginning. Remember, one hit most likely means death. By the way, the levels and bosses for this final area aren't unique. They're literally just the EXACT SAME maps and bosses you've already fought and beaten, it's all recycled. The last straw for me was beating one of these final levels, getting locked into a boss death cutscene. Then instantly dying after it was over. The victory obviously didn't register, back to the beginning. Only then did I realize that I barely had fun throughout this whole ordeal and that this game really isn't worth the time.

Honestly came to love this a lot more than I was expecting to. It's a competent ARPG not as deep as most but the builds are fun and varied and gearing rarely feels like a slog. At time of review I'm a little into endgame so we'll see how long it lasts but even if I stopped now I'd feel I more than got my money's worth. I did hit a snag late into the "campaign" on a later boss but a little farming and habitually saving all the unique and legendary items in my stash made switching builds easy to do with a little extra time investment to upgrade all the equipment which were brought up to parity with my other gear in about an hour

Into the Necrovale really surprised me. I expected a run of the mill roguelite, but was met with an impressively deep ARPG with roguelike mission structure. The build diversity and possibilities is staggering. I’m usually not one to mess around with build craft, but the systems at play here make every choice meaningful. There is a “meld” system at play here where you can merge two items of the same type together to combine their benefits (or downsides). It can’t be understated how incredible this system is. For weapons, this makes for some insane combos. My two favorite combinations were: 1) Taking a sword that spun around me and melding it with a spear that stunned enemies and electrified them (which made them take more damage). I then used a helmet that stunned enemies in a radius when I stunned a single enemy, an amulet that make me spin more times per attack, and other items to turn me super sayan. So in true spin to win fashion, I was a lawnmower from Hell. 2) I took the sniper-like bow, the Deadeye, which has super high base damage, and melded it with a staff that brought in the “sequence” effect of 10, which means for every attack I made, it would be followed up with 10 additional attacks in rapid sequence. I then used items to “add attacks” which turned the bow into more of a spread fire weapon, gloves that added more damage per sequence, etc. I was covering the screen with high damage heat seeking arrows by the end. This is just two examples of weapons melds. You can meld any slot type (hats, armors, boots, gloves, etc), of which there are 12 total equipment slots. Then, in the endgame, you gain the ability to meld a third item into each combination, which is just insanity and leads to even more possibility. I decided to try melding a bow that shot explosive arrows onto the bow I mentioned above. I was shooting hundreds of arrows a second all with a large explosion on each arrow. My CPU didn’t like that one too much. But my dopamine sure did. If you like ARPGs or have any desire to engage with build craft systems, this game is elite. The combat loop is simple, but it doesn’t get boring as you’re constantly iterating and growing stronger. I’m coming to this game late, so it looks like all the balancing patches and such were already completed. Even with the chaos above, everything still feels fair. Even with broken builds, I’d still get one shot as a glass cannon. The dev also seemed very engaged on threads over the last couple of years which was great to see. Also, played the entire thing on steam deck. Worked amazing aside from when I ran into the situation I mentioned above.

+Some player choice +Solid gameplay +Functional aesthetics -Extremely grindy with poor guidance; you don't really know what to do but grind after killing the first boss -> suppose you need to unlock a door instead of buffing your town? Anyways, this felt very lame. -SFXs are bit on the meh-side = Neutral-positive. 7/10. I won't be playing the game more, but perhaps you'll like it more than I did.

Only got 30 mins out of it before it refused to launch...