Nobody Saves the World

Having loved the two [b]Guacamelee[/b] games, I wanted to love this game too and sank quite a few hours into it. However, while it still deserves a thumbs up, in my experience I found that for several aspects it does right, there are a few important ones holding it back. The quest system also works in pushing the player to make the best use of each form, and of the feature to mix and match their abilities, with a huge number of possible builds for every situation. There is something to do at any given moment, and every time you think you've seen it all, there's some new area to explore or a new quest to unlock. A good number of fast travel spots avoids excessive backtracking, and exploration is constantly rewarded. Even spending some time destroying breakable objects counts, as it can help regain mana and it's rare to not get some money or health out of it. But… Quests quickly devolve into an endless checklist. Form-specific quests are sometimes fun and flow naturally into the gameplay, but many others are just chores, like "collect food while using ability X and also with passive Y equipped"; oftentimes, the best way to complete them is to retreat to early dungeons and spend time there. A system ideally meant to prevent grinding, as experience is gained only through completion of quests, does instead require quite a lot of it. The random generation of dungeons helps keep any retry and replay at least partially fresh. But… After a while, dungeons will all look alike besides the graphics. It is not helped by all bosses, except the final one, being merely huge versions of regular enemies. In short, I found the gameplay loop to be not varied enough to support the quantity of content the game offers. At some point, I simply decided to take a straight path to the last main quests and finish it. It's small compared to the rest, but what's the deal with having to claim the experience for each completed quest, forced to enter the subscreen every time, rather than the collection happening automatically? Feels like mobile game design. Also irritating is the "nag screen" every time you enter a dungeon with a form with no open quests - even in cases where all form quests are completed for the time being! Still, [b]Nobody Saves the World[/b] has a solid gameplay core, especially how it weaves the recovery of mana, a tedious mechanic in many other games, into the flow of combat by having most signature abilities allow you to recover it by just attacking. It's really fun during the early to middle hours as you unlock form after form, and it offers something for everyone, from players who just want to finish a game as soon as possible (I've seen videos of the game completed in just 6 hours), to super-completionists, to everyone in between, without forcing you to see everything. I just wish it didn't "dilute" itself so much. Hoping for [b]Blighted[/b] to avoid the same pitfalls (provided it really releases in 2026).