No Rest for the Wicked, we tried the first hours of Moon Studios’ game

Make or break: these are basically the words that the head of Moon Studios used, exactly one year ago, to describe the new, ambitious project from the team behind Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. “Either we will be able to revolutionize the action RPG genre or we will end up slowly disappearing”: a challenge that will make your wrists tremble, but which the Austrian studio has agreed to face.

After having specialized with the classic two-dimensional metroidvania formula of the two chapters of Ori, the developers have in short tried to leave their comfort zone to try their hand at something different, without however giving up a stylistic signature which has actually become the central pivot of this new adventure with medieval fantasy atmospheres.

Taking advantage of the Early Access debut on Steam, we tried the first few hours of No Rest for the Wicked.

Style and impact

The journey of No Rest for the Wicked begins with a simple editor, but already here we are faced with very particular design choices, linked to bizarre proportions of the character, which cannot be modified. The available options are therefore limited to the shape of the face and the presence of beard and hair, after which the game asks you to give a name to the kingdom before leaving.

At this point we witness an evocative introductory sequence which shows the ship we are on and acts as a tutorial for the basic actions, both those relating to exploration and interaction with the scenario and the combat system, to be learned quickly when the vessel is attacked by a group of ferocious rebels, while a powerful storm rages.

He took measures of our opponents and the combo system, which varies substantially depending on the equipped weaponwe manage to put the pirates out of action but the fury of the elements does not seem to want to leave us a chance, and so the ship is slammed with unprecedented violence against the rocks that adorn the coasts of what had always been our destination: the Sacred Island, hit by a plague that we were called to investigate.

The approach that Moon Studios has imagined for its new game is clear from these first lines: an experience dominated by visceral clasheswhich return a full-bodied sensation of impact when our shots hit the target, but at the same time alternates visually very inspired sequences on the screen, which especially during the interlude scenes act like real moving paintings

The hero’s awakening

The expedient devised by Moon Studios to reset the equipment at the beginning of the campaign makes perfect sense, and so our character wakes up half naked on a beach, among the corpses of the rest of the crew. We proceed a bit ‘to understand what is allowed to do and what not, until we understand that more often than not the elements of the scenario bend to our will to explore themwithout setting rigid boundaries.

It’s an approach that leaves you a little dumbfounded and requires time to be digested and exploited to the fullest, but for the moment it works and immediately puts traditional looting criteria into play between crates to destroy, chests to open and bodies to check in search of weapons and armor that can make us more effective and more resistant to the fury of the many enemies we will find along the way.

As mentioned previously, depending on the weapon used we will be able to have different movements, both in terms of attack combinations and some devastating special maneuvers. Weight is a factor to be taken into due consideration and it will therefore be necessary to accept compromises, choosing fast but dull blades that preserve our agility or broadswords, axes and hammers with unprecedented power but at a high price.

An entirely similar discussion can be made for armour, from the lightest to the bulkiest, to finally arrive at a upgrade system which allows you to improve the character’s statistics based on the experience points earned, touching on elements such as health, vigor, strength, dexterity, intelligence, faith, concentration and load capacity.

Soulslike?

Despite being primarily an action RPG in the style of Diablo, No Rest for the Wicked certainly has something in common with soulslikes: Fights require focus and reasoning, strong nerves, organization, and a great sense of timing and distance. He often dies by a hair’s breadth, but the system does not prove to be punitive and takes us back to the last respawn point, effectively without losing anything of what has been achieved up to that moment.

Of course, the unlocking of bridges, stairs and, in general, shortcuts that make navigation of the map more agile, especially after starting from a checkpoint, makes you think of that type of experience, but with the very important difference that in Moon’s game Studios Enemies in the area are not reset when saving a new locationnor do the bosses present a challenge that requires dozens of attempts before achieving victory.

Warrick the Tornwhich we found ourselves facing before accessing the large Sacrament hub, in fact presents itself as a huge and surprisingly fast beast, but far from unpredictable: its moves can count on a powerful reach and they hurt like hell , but they are announced quite clearly and can therefore be avoided by performing dodges at the right time.

More than anything, in this clash as in others, it is the one who holds the upper hand the vigor indicatorwhich regulates the quantity of blows that can be delivered before having to take a breather, together with some surrounding mechanics such as the use of the parry if you have a shield, the shoulder strike which can destabilize the opponent and of course the consumables, which be it food, potions or explosives.

A great experience

Looting and combat are at the heart of the No Rest for the Wicked experiencewhich however also strongly focuses on exploration and interaction with a world that already in this preliminary version of the game seems eager to make as many things available to us as possible, especially with regards to the extraction of materials using shovels, pickaxes, axes and… fishing rods.

In short, the inventory fills up quicklyand once we arrive in Sacrament, traders finally appear capable of giving meaning to the collection carried out up to that moment, supported by the inevitable blacksmiths who can buy our objects, sell us new ones and perhaps restore the durability of the tools we talked about a few lines ago.

The arrival in the city also coincides with some interesting progress in the narrative, which for the moment gives the idea of ​​wanting to go in a specific and relatively telephoned direction, but considering Moon Studios’ CV we imagine that these are perhaps false clues in view of some unexpected event. What strikes us more than anything is the idea of ​​what awaits us in terms of content.

The city we visited in the game is in fact really large and ready to dispense tasks that lead us to explore its boundaries in search of new challenges, and although we don’t know how far the current build goes, we have the clear feeling that on this level the developers are determined to do things big, filling literally the experience of content and substance.

Aesthetics and technique

At the beginning we said about the sensation of being in front of a moving painting, also expressed in Digital Foundry’s analysis: in this situation No Rest for the Wicked is undoubtedly one of the most artistically interesting productions seen in recent yearsequipped with an incredible visual potential, which at times leaves you speechless.

However, the guys at Moon Studios didn’t limit themselves to appearances, going to work on the details of a world that appears alive and dynamic in its interactionsalso and above all thanks to a physics engine that gives character to every single event, whether it is the splinters of wood from a barrel that we have just shattered or how the rain impacts the objects in the scenario.

That’s it, in short a great sight for the eyeswhat No Rest for the Wicked is able to offer, accompanied by an equally valuable audio sector: the songs on the soundtrack are truly evocative, the dialogues in English (subtitled in Italian) very well interpreted, the sound design in general solid and convincing.

We hope that from a technical point of view the project will see a strong optimization work in the coming months, given that at present the experience turns out to be rather difficult even for high-end hardware.

The first hours of No Rest for the Wicked strike with the strength and character of a project that has truly evocative moments on an artistic and stylistic level. However, Moon Studios’ personality also emerges in the gameplay, with its visceral and engaging combat, and in a structure that already in this early access version suggests the desire to create an extraordinarily rich world, with the hope perhaps that performance will be improved with the next updates.