Necro Story Review (PC) – Want Your Bad Necromance
Have you ever found yourself playing Pokémon and wishing that instead of catching a cutesey Charmander you’d be capturing a prehistoric raptor? No? Just me, then. Despite typically sitting in my lonesome solitude of ridiculous fantasy, this time around, the folks at Rablo Games have delivered exactly that. Necro Story is Pokémon, only with undead creatures galore and instead of playing as a reckless teen, we’re a reanimated Necromancer.
With a mix of spellcasting and party management, can Necro Story match the cuteness of its visuals with a satisfying story and gameplay? No need to bring yourself back from the grave to find out, we can do that in the world of the living.
The Story of My Life Death
Where else to start for a Necromancer than ironically being risen from the dead themselves? After creating your cartoon-ised character of undead sorcery, you’ll be awakened by a ghostly apparition named Vivi. Humans have mysteriously disappeared from the world, demons are running amuck and who else can save the world except for your miserable, happiness-hating avatar?
Your character and Vivi will often bicker, quip and banter with each other. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s relatively slapstick and silly. Various dialogue sequences that occur across all manner of fantasy locations break the fourth wall. It works for the cuter art style and lends itself to being a child friendly title. I can’t say it’s overly compelling beyond the odd amusing reference, but there’s enough meat on this skeleton’s bones to hide its frail frame.
The choice Rablo Games have taken with the ending is certainly an interesting one, however. In some ways, I quite respect the decision. In another, I found it mildly infuriating. I won’t spoil it, simply because thematically it’s quite clever. However, in practical terms, it’s about as annoying as raising yourself from the dead only to discover your limbs are no longer attached to your body.
Treat Necro Story as a fun little Sunday cartoon and you’ll have a pleasant time with it. Just don’t expect something as in-depth as you’d typically find in RPG-style games like this.
Mage About Town
As you set out to rescue the very humanity you most likely used as part of your ethereal army, you’ll journey across a variety of fun locations. The snowcapped peaks of a mountain range, ancient Egyptian deserts and even Valhalla itself all feature. Necro Story isn’t afraid to be wacky with its approach, which leans into its more slapstick nature. I found it entertaining and I liked how it allowed the developers to keep things fresh with different enemy types to face and catch.
You control your character on the map screen, manoeuvring them about what feels like a tabletop board. Along the way, you can try to evade black spheres indicating enemy patrols, or just walk straight into them like a bull in a red-themed shop, like me. There are environmental puzzles to solve for chests harbouring equipment and exploration is rewarded with plenty of trunks of loot.
Most levels or areas you progress through will have both a mini-boss and main boss, with checkpoints and teleporters scattered throughout. Be warned though, enemy patrols refresh when you hit a save point, as does your party’s health and mana. For the most part, map navigation is enjoyable, except for a couple of areas that feel a bit too long. Again, the variety in enemy types keeps things fresh and the various locales are nicely realised, though.
Don’t Necross Me
Being the not-so-friendly Necromancer you are (you can even select just how evil you want to be in your character creator), you’ll be duly dishing out some magical beatings. Combat in Necro Story is part ATB-type action management and passive party sorting. There are five spell trees you can specialise in, from damage-over-time poison, to summoning demonic entities and taking their form. Each spell requires mana to cast and has a cooldown after use.
Most battles devolve into casting your spells as quickly and efficiently as possible to take out the most dangerous threats first. Defeating any foe releases their soul, which you then catch to power up an item that allows you to add a variety of an enemy to your party selection. This is where the Pokémon element comes in. When things are hectic it can be a little fiddly and difficult to catch all of the souls flying around on screen, pesky little orbs that they are.
However, maxing out your build and creating a party full of a variety of fantasy creatures is quietly whimsical. You’ll need a lot of caught creatures to help you face the multitude of battles you’ll need to overcome, which nicely incentivises you to keep catching them. As your party Mobs will mana-ge (not sorry) themselves, you can focus on tracking your mana and whipping out spell after spell. It’s a relatively simplistic but ultimately satisfying gameplay loop.
Most of the fun comes from the extensive skills trees, which allow for some really exciting builds. Personally, I became a poison-stacking demon from Hell. By the end, I barely had to do anything, as the enemies’ health bars would just melt in the face of my toxic onslaught.
A Spell Worth Undying For
While I thoroughly appreciated making my Necromancer about as toxic as my Dead by Daylight personality, there’s plenty of scope to create a very different sorcerer of the damned. You can invest into summoning, creating a vast army to overpower any foe. Alternatively, you can max out damage dealing destruction spells, carving through anyone silly enough to oppose you.
Every spell (including demonic summons) has an upgrade tree, increasing effect times or adding additional buffs or debuffs, for example. It’s a genuinely superb skill tree and one that’s worth experimenting with to see what other kind of overpowered wrath you can wreak. As mentioned before, it’s not wholly investing, owing to how your Mobs level up themselves and you have no input on their skills or attacks in battle, which feels a little light in terms of depth. However, this could be welcome for those who prefer a more hands-off feel.
In terms of style, the cartoon look feels fitting for the nature and humourous approach of the game. It’s not a looker by any means and there’s certainly better aesthetics out there in the indie space, but for what it is, I enjoyed the creature and location design. There’s only one fight jingle, which did start to grate on me by the end, but I wouldn’t expect a massive soundtrack from a title like this anyway. Plus, it’s at least a decent jingle!
Just Short of a Necropolis
There’s a lot to like in Necro Story, all told. I was a bit taken aback by the ending sequence and while it initially left me a bit disillusioned, there’s some solid replayability incentive caked into its decision. While creature catching elements are lighter than its inspirations, the action-RPG mechanics are good fun for a while.
It’s about 7-8 hours in length and though I did feel a couple of areas dragged on a little longer than needed, I think its runtime is pretty solid. It achieves a lot of what it sets out to do with success but comes up short against some of its contemporaries, especially if you’re more experienced in the RPG space. For a younger player or those seeking a relaxed, cute time chuckling at immature jokes and slaying some demons with spells, there’s plenty to like.
Necro Story was a nice romp through a jolly fantasy world and I’m glad I took the time to play it and see it through, even if the ending left my soul reeling from my body.
Necro Story is available October 7th on PC (review platform), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X and Nintendo Switch.
Developer: Rablo Games
Publisher: Rablo Games
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy from the publisher.
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