No Rest for the Wicked ... Or Moon Studios
Early Access Game Off to a Solid Start
As a fan of pretty graphics and action RPGs—and games in general—I’ve had my eye on No Rest for the Wicked since it was announced in December of last year. It was also great to see Moon Studios, well-known for the Ori games, branch out to something new.
At first glance, No Rest for the Wicked retains the studio’s signature stunning art while also offering a visually distinct experience from their previous games. While the 2D Ori games boasted art akin to a living illustration, the 3D Wicked took this to a whole new level.
It’s also much bloodier and more brutal than Ori, with plenty of blood and bits, and some delightfully grotesque enemies. The studio was also breaking into new territory, with a new focus on the Action RPG/Soulsborne genre, and I was giddy to sink my teeth into it.
Fast forward to April 18th, and No Rest for the Wicked debuted in Early Access. My initial impressions were largely positive, although Steam user reviews were mixed. The performance had a few rough edges, but the core game itself was (and still is) undeniably impressive.
As is the case with most Early Access games, updates only improved the experience, and boy, howdy, did those updates come fast. Throughout the first week, Wicked was updated almost daily, and among those updates were lots of quality-of-life things that people had requested, as well as some significant improvements to performance.
I went from having some pretty long freezes and unpleasantly low framerate on day 1 to a really smooth framerate and only the occasional stutter on day 10. Simply put, by the time the game had been out for a whole week, most big-ticked issues had seen dramatic improvement, with even more to come.
Let’s Start with How Pretty This Thing Is
Wicked’s art style is striking, to say the least. It really does look like art come to life, much like the Spider-Verse movies or TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Those movies, much like this game, eschew the “computer graphics” look for something that looks more bespoke and hand-painted.
Games like these tend to be timeless and age very well. I suspect that in ten years, Wicked will look as good as it does today, and probably run way, way better—as opposed to something that uses state-of-the-art graphics.
The art is even better thanks to the splendid attention to detail and animations; Wicked is just a joy to the eyes. It also does this cool thing where it bends the world at the edges of your screen to give you even more view distance, creating fantastic views.
Diablo and Dark Souls Made a Baby
The most apt comparison I can make is that No Rest for the Wicked feels like a really great mix of Diablo-like Action RPGs and the Souls games. I’ve even heard that early versions of Diablo IV played a lot more like a Souls game—granted, I enjoy what Diablo IV is and is evolving into with the seasonal updates, but boy is that a thought.
Nevertheless, much like any other Action RPG, Wicked is awash with lots of loot to collect, levels to gain, attribute points to invest, and exploring to do. You can also slot Runes into your weapons to unlock new abilities that you “cast” with focus, which you gain by attacking foes. Items also have different rarities, and the “cursed” items, the purple ones, have a drawback to them—sometimes minor, sometimes terrible.
Then, as you’d expect from a Souls game, Wicked’s not easy—but not quite as hard as the Souls games can be. Bosses, at least during this early part of the game, never took me more than a few attempts to kill. Regular enemies can kill you easily if you take too many hits, but because they don’t respawn when you die, you can pretty easily pick up where you left off.
They will respawn eventually, but it usually takes a while. The only real downside to dying (unless you have an item that causes you to lose experience when you die—fuck that shit) is that you lose a little durability on your items. It’s pretty easy to repair, though, and Moon Studios has already made a few passes to balancing the cost.
The point is you can get your head pounded in but run back to where you died pretty quickly to pick up where you left off. You might just need to stop in town for some repairs.
Right now, inventory is a bit of a mess. You'll collect a lot of resources, gear, and consumables, and though you can upgrade your inventory capacity pretty easily (a lot of bosses drop Plague Ichor, which you can redeem for inventory upgrades), it can still be a pain to juggle all the junk in your trunk.
Sacrament
And trunks of junk you shall have. Pretty early into the game, you’ll make it to Sacrament, the main city of Wicked as it stands now in Early Access. This city is enormous, and after you complete one of the side quests, you can actually buy a house there.
While you can do a lot with the house and fill it with all sorts of cool chairs and tables, it will probably become a chest repository where you keep the mountains of resources that you gather while you play—either stuff you take from enemies or chests or the ore and wood you harvest from trees and veins like in survival games.
These resources play a pivotal role in upgrading not only you (well, your gear) but also Sacrament itself. From one of the NPCs in the city, you can upgrade and rebuild all sorts of stuff, which actually does a pretty cool job of making you feel like you’re impacting the world.
Right now, inventory management is a huge chore, but Moon Studios has been quick to improve it little by little. Right now, if you have resources in your chests, you can add any of the same resources that are in your bags with the click of a button. Soon, vendors should be able to access your stash for upgrades (I hope this also extends to crafting stations—fingers crossed). The ability to auto-sort your bags and chests would also be greatly appreciated.
Experiencing What’s There
So, here we are, about ten days later, and I’ve sunk about 27 hours into the game, and experienced most of what’s available currently in Early Acces … which seems to be just a fraction of what will be there at launch.
For just a quick breakdown of what you’ll experience if you pick up the game now: You’ll probably finish all the story quests at about level 15, after which you’ll unlock the current end-game content, the Crucible. This dungeon will send you down random floors until you get to a boss, at about level 6 or 7.
While you can jump into here at level 15 (and probably die horribly immediately), you’ll probably want to level up a little first. Level 21 is a good target, since that’s when a new tier of items will unlock to boost your power.
Ultimately, though, the entry cost to the Crucible is quite cheap—these little red embers you find while playing—so you can jump in there whenever you want.
For what there is to do outside of the Crucible, you can wrap up any side quests you have, although you probably did most of those while doing the main questline (which, by the way, is very enjoyable, and I’m curious to see where the story goes from here).
There are also daily challenges and bounties that give you something to log into every day, and these are primarily what I’m spending my time on now. I also didn’t quite finish all the upgrades for Sacrament, so I’ve been working on that while also doing bounties.
Overall, I’m super happy with not only the core of No Rest for the Wicked, but also how quickly Moon Studios has been patching the game since launch, and I’ll definitely be returning to it off and on as it develops.
As for what’s next, the roadmap is pretty basic currently, with Update 1 teasing multiplayer and Update 2 teasing a new area. Of course, that’s just the beginning, and I figure once Update 1 comes out, I’ll be nudging friends to grab a copy so we can be Wicked together.
Early Access Wishlist
Here’s just a random assortment of ideas I’d like to see manifest in the game:
Better fast travel – It would be great if there were Diablo-esq “Waypoints,” maybe one per area, that you could use for fast travel. Then, there could be smaller checkpoints that you would respawn at if you die (the cooking fires would be great for this, hint hint), but these, of course, couldn’t be used for traveling. Right, getting around is just a little too slow.
Make Sacrament easier to traverse – The city is huge, which is great, but it can be a chore to get around. It would be great if maybe another upgrade you could research was something like “Sacrament Swiftness,” which basically increased your movement speed by like 6,999,999% while in town. Maybe less than that, but you get the point.
Fall damage – Embaringly enough, I believe most of my deaths have probably been due to fall damage. The studio has already adjusted fall damage once, but I still often find myself missing ladders or vines and just jumping, typically to my death. While a lot of this is admittedly due to my own inability to slow the fuck down, I still think falling and jumping and grabbing vines and ladders could use some adjustment.
More build options available at the start – Right now, the game begins by giving you a sword, and a shield, and while there are spells and ranged weapons you can find, I think most Early Access players will probably be pigeonholed into that role. It seems obvious, but I do hope the game gets the ability to maybe create a class at the start, and then—much like the Souls games—you can diverge from that build as you level. I’d be surprised if that’s not the plan.
That’s four big ideas, but I’m sure there are plenty of little things that they could do, and considering how quickly Moon Studios has been patching the game, I imagine that Wicked could have all this and more in a month or two.
If you actually read this far, thanks! And if you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it (words are, fun okay!) maybe give it a like, and if you want, drop a comment.