Necromancers are often given a pretty bad reputation in video games. Perhaps it’s because of their disposition to raise the dead to serve their bidding or their negative portrayal in mainstream media as evil and selfish beings. Maybe we wouldn’t have such suspicious perceptions if Necromancers played the hero sometimes, bravely avenging the murdered brother of a fellow warrior. “You have my Axe…” “You have my sword…” “You have your… dead brother” Maybe not… Necro Story, by Belgian developer, Rablo Games, lets us see and adventure through a (mostly) evil necromancer’s eyes as he tries to save the world. What’s it Like? Get your talking staff, Load up on mana crystals, and resurrect some dead guys as we review Necro Story on Nintendo Switch.
Necro Story weaves a tale following Jaimus, a Necromancer who has been awoken by Vivi, a white mage and nemesis who put him to sleep in the first place to help save the world. This “frenemy” dynamic spins a more light-hearted approach to dark magic with constant witty banter and bickering fleshing out the history of their complicated relationship the further the story progresses. How it plays out can be influenced a little by you, as there are multiple endings. For my review playthrough, I ended up with the bad ending, but now I know where I went wrong I will go back to find out what happens in the good ending, and this certainly adds to replayability for those who are compeletionists at heart.
Speaking of completionists, the game can be expedited, or players can hunt down every single treasure and creature by following certain signs on the path to victory. I really liked this option as I had to rush through certain areas due to time constraints, and having signs lead the way helped speed up that process. There are also nice little touches as well like making big decisions during the story, the game will say (recommended) next to the better option.
The game largely revolves around an overworld of the area you’re in, which consists of random and sometimes avoidable battles, as you embark on your quest to open up a portal to restore the human race back to Earth. There’s a bit more to it but I don’t want to move into spoiler territory by saying what it is. It has a lot of RPG elements in both character leveling and combat, but doesn’t bog you down with hard to wrangle mechanics, and keeps it simple, engaging, and fun. Combat in Necro Story is a cross between both real-time and turned-based, with each spell having individual cooldowns which you can scroll between to fire them off, while also absorbing souls and mana crystals by aiming your staff and “vacuuming” them up. Your party will consist of monsters you have captured the souls of and you arrange them almost like a simultaneous Pokemon battle. This is where a lot of the intricate depth of the gameplay mechanics comes in as the creatures have a class and specific abilities such as a tank, healer, melee, and even elements of damage which you need to take into consideration. Collecting creatures becomes a really fun aspect of the game, and being a creature of habit, I rarely swapped out what I thought was my winning combo.
Jaimus you won’t be just sitting by issuing commands, however, as you will level him up and unlock new spells from different trees of magic consisting of Affliction, Darkness, Life Stealing, Summoning, and Dark Pacts that can each be customised with skill points, leading to some interesting builds. My playthrough focussed on Jaimus being a damage-over-time Necromancer, poisoning and spreading that poison to other enemies to weaken them while my minions chipped away at their health. You can also summon other creatures or even turn into Demons should you find their hidden towers. There’s a lot to do, and many ways to do it which plays to Necro Story’s Strengths.
Graphically, Necro Story has a unique hand-drawn style that makes you feel like you’re playing an interactive storybook. The animations and expressions do a good job of bringing Jaimus and Vivi to life (no pun intended.) There are small little intricacies that I really liked about the game, like discretely highlighted paths to unlock secret areas, or summoning multiple zombies that all looked different instead of the same skin repeatedly. There’s also an enchanted staff that calls me “bruh” and is moments like these that make the game a delight to play. The game looks great in both handheld and docked, but I did experience some minor stuttering towards the late game when going into battles, as well as some areas on the overworld maps that had minor slowdown. These performance issues were negligible at best and didn’t detract from my experience with the game, but it should be noted. There has also been a post-launch update as well, so some of these issues may have been corrected. I will update this review for my second playthrough if it’s been fixed.
For my Necromancers looking into accessibility options, there aren’t any specific options to speak of. So I recommend further research into finding out if Necro Story is for you. At $22.50 AUD, there’s a lot of story, laughs, and fun included in Necro Story, and the adventure will take you about 10-15 hours to complete depending on how thorough you want to be. Necro Story is about dark magic, with a light-hearted approach. It’s full of witty banter, unique enemies (and reluctant allies,) and unique tech trees. It’s a great-sized adventure that’s well worth the price of entry, with plenty of laughs, a great battle system, and interesting game mechanics. Gotta reanimate them all!
So What’s it Like? Necro Story is like Pokemon crossed with Final Fantasy 8’s Battle System.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by Pirate PR, but this doesn’t influence my score.
