“Uh, I died, can you resurrect me?”
“Sure, give me a sec, OK, there you go… oh damn they killed me in the meantime.”
“I will resurrect you, give me a sec.”
“…”
“OK, I can’t get to you, there’s too many of them.”
“No worries, I died properly, so I got my full health back.”
“Cool. In that case, can you resurrect me?”
Necropolis is a roguelike third person sword and shield and roll game. You and your 0-3 partners are exploring an ethereal area (for reasons), and according to the walkthroughs the goal of the game is to reach level 10.
Your avatar is equipped with a sword, a shield, and potentially a crossbow. There are two types of fighters, a large brute, and a ninja-like speedy gal. If there was any meaningful difference between the two, not counting aesthetics, by the time of writing this review, I’ve forgotten about it.
Basically you go down, level by level, fight monsters (skeletons and such), occasionally pick up slightly better shields and swords, and craft food to heal. If you die, you restart the whole thing, the only thing that carries over to the next run are the purchasable permanent stat increases. They are quite rare and have a very minimal effect, so the game is very much a roguelike experience. (Although I recently learned that roguelike technically means the game should be tile-based, but whatever, I’m going to keep using it wrong.)
The Good
The atmosphere of the game is actually something we liked, at least for a little bit. The weird geometric shapes and the color palette consisting almost entirely of tinted teal and magenta really makes you feel you are in a unique world. This is further elevated by the eerie music. Gets boring after a while though.
One other quite unique aspect that we liked was friendly fire – it makes combat interesting in a game where your gamer instincts make you constantly swing your sword in the general direction of enemies. That is generally the area where your teammate tends to be as well, so, you know, organic drama, built in by basic game engine elements.
The Bad
The game is as boring, slow, clunky, as this review. I can’t even get myself fired up to be angry about it. Or to use well-constructed and witty sentences. I’m just getting more and more tired writing this…
Like I mentioned, there are only two classes, and they are very similar. To rhyme with that, there are also only two types of levels, open space (grey shapes floating mid-air), and dungeon (grey shapes presumably floating mid-air, but this fact is concealed by the grey walls). Populating these bland levels are aptly boring enemies, and no bosses.
Loot is not satisfying to loot, enemies are not satisfying to slay, there are no stats, no depth. We were not entirely sure what codexes are supposed to do, and the fact that we could not be bothered to look them up online is telling.
We might have considered spending more time with the game, if not for the pure roguelike approach. You die, chances are, you did not make any progress, and you restart. I know it’s a popular time-wasting mechanic, but personally, I like me some saves on spots that I have clearly mastered. You have to tread through the same low-level enemies again and again and again. Compare that with Full Mojo Rampage, which is also a roguelike, also quite annoying, but the fact that there was some sort of progress when you died, however minimal it might have been, made us tolerate it long enough to beat the game. Here, there is nothing, you die, and off you go again, to kill grey skeletons in a grey landscape. Once we reached level 3 and died, we were really not motivated to carry on.
The next one is a rather rare issue with games: the humor is entirely misplaced. Pick your style, you can either be an eerie soulslike game, at least it atmosphere, but in that case tone down the silly meta humor, or be funny and crazy, but then go with a not so depressing game flow. Don’t mix the two.
I also heard someone calling this game soulslike, and I would like to argue with that unknown person of the Internet. This game is no soulslike. There is no git gud. There is only grind.
As a last nail in the coffin, the game is also buggy, I got randomly dc’d from our party and lost all my progress for about half an hour. This made me sad.
The Co-Op
The co-op mechanics are actually OK-ish in the game. You can resurrect each other, which is always a tense situation in the middle of a battle, and you have to pay attention to friendly fire. You can’t really stand next to each other and hack at the same guy, you need to be smart about dividing the battlefield.
Still, there is no class distinction, no funny combos, the two of you do exactly the same.
The Recommendation
The bad news is that no, we do not recommend Necropolis – it’s bland, boring, and pointless. The good news is that we can recommend better games for a number of aspects this one tried to do.
If you are after a co-op third-person fantasy hack and slash: War in the North will be right up your alley. It’s also LotR, which is a way better setting than the fight to kill the grey skeletons. If it’s the difficult roguelike aspect that tickled your fancy: Full Mojo Rampage is not great either, it’s still far better than Necropolis. And finally, if you are after everything that is dark and otherworldly and chilling: you can’t go wrong with Salt and Sanctuary. Can’t stress this enough. Man, that was a good game.
Info
| Release Year | 2016 |
| Genre | Hack and Slash |
| Difficulty | Extreme |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 30 - 60 minutes for a run |
Rating
| Overall | Terrible |
| Story | Terrible |
| Co-Operation | Mediocre |