No Rest for the Wicked

This game is truly exceptional with a few, very important caveats. The combat is incredibly well tuned with a heft that makes the player feel strong while offering "weapon arts" that keep things spicy. The world design shows an incredible amount of polish and heart; wherein many times I opened a shortcut and said aloud "that is so clever!". This interconnected world is highlighted by an ingenious fast travel system that links the player between the hub and their most recent checkpoint. This allows the player respite when they need it, but does not trivialize exploration like most fast travel systems. Furthermore, fog-of-war re-envelops previously cleared areas and with it comes new and varied enemies, communicating the presence of a power vacuum left in the player's wake. These systems combine together to form the spine of one of the most compelling games I have played in the last few years.

Then we get to the caveats. Say you find a halberd that you can wield, and you would like to upgrade it before trying out the new boss. You go to the smithy and you realize that you need more iron ingots to upgrade it. Luckily you have iron ore, but you need to smelt it down. Smelting down one iron ore takes five minutes of real time, and you need four total to upgrade your weapon. These little time killers kept poking up repeatedly when I was enjoying No Rest for the Wicked almost to say "No remember, this is a real RPG. Immersion is more important than fun. Fun can wait." If you want smelting to not be as much of a bore, you need to upgrade the smithy. To do so you need to spend iron, wood, and clay (the same resources needed to upgrade all other merchants, so I hope you like watching the tree chopping animation) and then wait 4 hours of real life time (why even have an in-game clock?) as the construction happens. One could argue that this adds to realism, but considering that the smithy is open the whole time and there is no visible construction, I don't really buy it.

All of this is not to say that I think friction is bad, I like friction in games. But locking inventory slots away from the player, then requiring them to carry large amounts of resources to upgrade Sacrament, then timing them out for hours to see the fruits of their labor (read as hours of grinding tree cutting, mining, and digging)? That is not friction, that is simply antifun.

I am normally not one to write a review like this, but I genuinely think that if the topics of my first and second paragraphs are expanded upon and culled entirely in the full release, respectively, No Rest for the Wicked has the chance to be a truly once in a lifetime game. I hope they get it right while it is still in the oven.

As a fan of both aRPGs (especially Diablo 1 and 2) and Souls-like games (especially Demon Souls and DS1), this game is a dream come true for me. The game draws heavily from these genres and incorporates a few ideas from farm sims and metroidvanias - drawing on their background from Ori - to create something bold and unique.
Main Influences
Diablo 1 (heavy influence): Includes RNG (loot and enemy spawns), isometric view, centralized hub, dark atmosphere, replay-ability, fixed camera etc. What I particularly love about their approach to the genre is how they've moved away from the mindless combat of current aRPGs, which typically involve running around, 'exploding the screen' with ridiculous numbers for damage, stats, currencies etc.
Dark Souls (heavy influence): Features methodical, visceral, tactical combat with rewards for well-timed dodges and parries, stamina management, sparse save points and waypoints, and tougher boss fights.
Farm sims (light influence): Allows us to collect resources outside the main hub to help build your main base, create furniture, etc.
Metroidvanias/Ori (light influence): Offers interconnected paths across a centralized map, with plenty of hidden treasures and some platforming elements (crossings and jumps).
Who might enjoy this game?
People who are not fans of the current state of aRPGs—especially end-game combat and the screen clutter typical of games like Diablo 3 and Path of Exile—appreciates the isometric view w/ fixed camera and a tactical approach to combat.
Who might not like this game?
aRPG and/or Dark Souls purists who enjoy these games for what they are and are not too open to mixed ideas. Even so, I urge you to give this unique gem a try—at least reach the main hub and unlock some of the side missions there—before you completely dismiss it.
Feedback to developers (in order of relevance)
Stay true to your vision. Feedback is crucial for all games, but be careful not to cater too much to a particular group of fans (aRPG fans might ask to speed up everything, DS purists might ask for more unforgiving combat, etc.). The most recent game to completely ruin its premise for a more tactical approach to combat was Diablo 4. The game was ruined by this feedback, and the current endgame already has the mindless gameplay of running around exploding the screen like D3 and PoE, ‘gold sink’ where you spend billions of gold to perform simple tasks like item re-rolling, builds causing trillions of damage etc—it's sad. So far, PoE 2 also has a strong vision of what they believe is the evolution of aRPGs and I truly hope you both stay true to it.
Performance is king. FPS dips are quite frequent, and I have a 3090Ti. Also, consider that not everybody has an NVIDIA card, so make sure to add both DLSS and AMD FSR tech as soon as possible.
Build diversity. I'm only level 16, but so far, Archer and Mage pure builds—even building 100% focus—are not possible and just a gimmick (spells and arrows consume focus and don't have a basic attack to their weapons, needs to be addressed ASAP in my opinion for enthusiasts of ranged builds). Feel free to correct me if pure ranged builds are possible past a certain level (or by acquiring specific unique items); even so, it should be 100% possible from level 1 onward if you want to promote build diversity from the start and win over people who hate melee combat (lots of people).
Take your time before releasing the multiplayer patch. It is one of the most complex aspects to introduce in any game, and the number of bugs will skyrocket. It is a feature that many people look forward to, and they will get super frustrated if you release it in an alpha stage.
Loot and RNG. I know loot is full RNG, but the loot from bosses/mini-bosses could see a slight increase in rarity. Having bosses / mini-bosses dropping trash loot is detrimental to the experience. Fixing this would add to the 'dopamine effect' from aRPGs. :D
Lastly, thank you for spending the last six years creating my dream game. I wish you the best of luck!

Game is good, but timers for buildings and resources management are redundant and pointless
Please, remove timers

No Rest For The Wicked is probably one of the most confused games I've played to date. Not because it's bad, but because it clearly doesn't know WHAT it wants to be. It doesn't do anything inherently bad. But it doesn't do it well, either.
Let me explain.
The developers label this game as a "precision action RPG set to reinvent the genre." Source - Scroll up to the game description.
If you ask me, I don't think this game does anything to reinvent the genre. It takes a lot from the Souls-Like genre and mixes it with a hint of Diablo. And while I haven't played enough Diablo to meaningfully compare it to NRFTW, I have played a lot of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Sekrio.
As a fan of Fromsoft games and Souls-Like as a whole, I can safely say this game does the opposite of what it intends. It doesn't reinvent the genre; it back peddles so far that it nearly falls into the stone age.
Let me state my reasons as to why I think this.
A good souls-like can be defined by. . .
-Fluid Combat
-Difficult but fair encounters that test the players knowledge of the game mechanics
-And light resource management
There are many other factors that contribute to making a good souls-like, but these three are some of NRFTW's biggest issues. Again, it doesn't do any of them badly, just. . . not good enough.
Combat - The combat in NRFTW is chunky and slow. And I personally love it! I love just how powerful each swing of the claymore feels and how my character lugs it around like a hunk of steel. Same goes for a smaller weapons--I love how strong they feel. What I DON'T love is how everyone seems to ignore the weight of their weapons. Enemies leap across the screen in a blur like their weapons are made of paper, and they have no issue preforming wildly-quick swings with hammers twice their size.
Just about every enemy moves like they just snorted a line of coke while my poor character is wading through honey. A similar thing can be said about poise--my character flinches at the slightest breeze even with a massive great sword. Meanwhile, little dudes with daggers and tunics will tank my swings like I just hit them with a pillow.
This ends up making each encounter drag on longer than necessary.
Speaking of encounters. . .
Encounters - The Encounters in NRFTW confuse me. On one hand, I think they're quite fun and pose an interesting challenge. On the other hand, I'm getting bombed by a guy off screen I can't even see. Meanwhile, someone else is leaping at me from off screen faster than my slow character can counter.
Enemies with slow wind-ups can just preform the animation off screen then zoom up to you and take half your health away without even stepping into view. Why can't we at LEAST tilt the camera to see what's coming? So many fights would be more fun if I could see what I'm up against.
My knowledge isn't being tested. My patience is.
Resource Management - This is by far the worst part of NRFTW. I can handle enemies that move twice my speed, I can handle tedious encounters, and I can handle dying to things off screen.
But you know what I can't handle?
Pointless amounts of resource management in a genre about dying repeatedly. I'm not talking about bombs or potions or mana--that type of resource management makes sense. I'm talking about my primary healing sources being tied to the crafting system. There is no estus flask to fall back on, bonfires don't regenerate health, and mana is fully depleted on death (so don't plan on using any healing spells while running back to where you died).
The worst feeling in NRFTW is when you reach an area only for the game to say "screw you! Now you gotta backtrack all the way to the last area to pick more herbs and find more crabs!" And speaking of herbs. For the love of God, don't make a key ingredient the same color as the background. At LEAST make the little gold sparkle easier to see. Better yet, make herbs a different color that doesn't blend in with every other weed on the path.
But even if you are constantly backtracking, the respawning enemies (which still appear in areas labeled as "safe" for some reason) will still hunt you down and force you to eat half your food before you even reach the bonfire. By the time you reach that new area again, you're already down to six heals.
Who in God's name looked at a souls-like and said "Yeah, let's make your character move like he's made of honey, but let's make every enemy think they're sonic the hedgehog! Oh, and let's also tie your healing items to a tedious crafting system! EVERYONE loves crafting systems shoehorned into their games!"
And the worst part of all. . . ?
This game is good. So good.
The story, the voice acting, the animations. . . all of it is WONDERFUL!
But for each step forward, NRFTW takes two steps backward. It's the same issue I had with the new Ori--a wonderful game brought down by terrible combat.
And yet, after all of this. . . I still recommend this game. I would be lying if I said I wasn't having fun. But if you buy this game expecting a fluid souls-like experience that "reinvents the genre," you've come to the wrong place.
-
Edits: I've decided to make edits to this review as I continue to replay the released portion of the game and try new builds. I want to do this in order to expand on my critiqued points and add some positives to my review.
Edit #1: I'd like to expand on the speed of combat. Before I mentioned how some enemies move at high speeds despite the size of their weapons. I've noticed just how many enemies (and bosses) use wildly quick attacks that chase your character and continue to mow you down even if you dodge correctly. Some lighter builds can get around this, but I found that medium and heavy builds will still end up taking a few hits even with a dodge. The second boss, while not hard, has a few attacks that rapidly pepper an area. Even with a perfect dodge, heavy builds simply can't avoid the following attacks unless they hug the arena wall.
Fights like these aren't hard, but the difficulty feels a tad artificial compared to other souls-likes.
Edit #2: Expanding on what I said about resource management, Another big problem with your heals being tied to a crafting system is something I call the "waiting cycle." See, your heals don't come back after death like a typical souls flask. If you eat all your stew during a fight after picking the map clean of herbs, you're basically done. Either you have to backtrack to farm mana for your a healing spell, or you have to put the controller down and wait for the herbs to reset. And even then, you're still having to backtrack.
I'm fairly good as souls games, but I could see this being an absolute nightmare for someone casually plaything through the game. You either have to do a boss hitless or rely on mushrooms for food (which are pretty much useless on their own past the first area).

No Rest for the Oven. It still needs to cook, but there is a game here (which is more than I can say about other "games").
These are some suggestions for the devs and some of my pain points from my initial playthrough. By no means do they have to change all of them in the way described below. So, off the top of my head:
- Add key rebinding as soon as possible.
- Add a "Quit to Desktop" button. Can't have a PC game without that one - They added this one in Hotfix 3
- When speaking with NPCs, reading notes or kicking ladders, make it so the character does not need to face it to interact.
- Environment readability needs to be improved. Sometimes you can't see things like flowers/shrooms because they blend with the background colors.
- Camera sometimes moves in a position where you can't see your character.
- I get that the game should be hard, but it would be nice if the monster/boss attacks were better telegraphed. (Example: you should be able to see where a bomb flying towards you will land, a chime sound when you can parry, the autotarget dot should reflect what kind of action you can do to that monster, etc) This goes a long way towards improving how the combat feels.
- Movement (especially during combat) is sluggish. Not sure if enemies input read, but if they do, it would be nice for us to have animation cancelling when doing dodges, would make it more responsive.
- Durability is useless and has no place here. It does not add to any of the mechanics, it is just a pain for the player and not fun at all.
*Edit 1: So I've played a bit before and after the Hotfix:
- Before the hotfix, I was soft-locked after beating the 1st boss at level 4. No equipment or weapons were dropping so I kept dying to the respawned enemies, that seemed to be more difficult during the day, until I had no gold to repair. It was just frustrating. Thankfully the hotfix has made it so you can get out of this death spiral and actually continue the game.
- Durability is better now, but I am still of the opinion that it doesn't add to the game. It is just a way to force us to go into town and check in with all the NPCs. Tedious.
- I don't think there is any need for timers when building improvements. Why wait 15 minutes to an hour or more for a simple upgrade?
- Inventory management and the fact that you have to unlock rows for each separate tab takes away from improving your character. It makes me prioritize the resource tab upgrade (since that fills up the fastest) instead of anything else.
- It would be nice if all upgrading equipment would take into account the items that are in the community chest, instead of making me run from and towards the community chest.
- The stamina fix has made it better to time swings and combos. Still punishing, but much more fair.
- At least one of the heavy enemies has a double bomb throw. This is next to impossible to dodge since he throws them one after the other and staggers you both times, while also setting you on fire. Would be good to have at least a bit of a delay between throws to give time to dodge.
*Edit 2: Seems like with Hotfix 3 they've really improved performance and added a camera zoom option as well.
All in all I feel it's pretty decent for an Early Access game. I've left it for now and will return when the game will be out of Early Access. The quick response to feedback makes me really hopeful that devs will make a true gem. The world building, story characters, artistic direction is top notch, and, with time, the gameplay will be on par as well.

Overall recommend,. Im having a lot of fun. But as a fellow game dev I have some feedback for developers as they finish the polish on this one:
EA Feedback
Gameplay
* Durability changes in latest patch helped so much! Not needing to evac and repair every few deaths is wonderful.
* Stamina buff likewise fantastic. I can swing more than once and hope to dodge lol
* You should be able to backstab fatties, at least if not hostile yet.
* Crouch movement too slow to catch non-stationary guards from behind. Maybe if light armored, moves at walk speed when crouched? Would fit that character type.
* Input dropping - As a dev this is hard issue to solve. There are many times where input was dropped because my character didnt do the button I pressed. When this gets you killed, it sucks.
* Bloat enemies sometimes explode on last hit instead of charging up. I know its a single hit and not two hits because I have a very slow claymore. Assume it has to do with the cold damage on the sword counting as a second hit.
* Rolling right before a clif edge will prevent jumping from that edge, even if holding run. Problem if you plan on having some ranged enemies in tight walks.
* Enemies throw projectiles with near homing accuracy. I can hit dodge as it releases from their hand and it will hit me dead on.
Weapon/Build Options
* More rune options would be awesome. The Gore Covered legendary is nigh unusable do to the slow attack, but its runes were REALLY fun to use so I used it until the sewer anyway lol (claymore is just so much better)
* Having a shared stash to hand gear to an alt in a world is awsome, but the world leveling up means theres no where for that alt to level. (I started a mage after the sewer fight and everything 1 shot my new lvl 1 character, who is now lvl6 and still gets 2-3 shot)
* Like Int has spells, I hope to see Faith based weapons have some cool miracle type stuff. Have only seen hammers with smash and kite shields with... I dont remember.
* Would be cool to have some Str/Dex runes with flair too. Ground pound/shadow step that sort of thing.
* Equipment feels heavy, but that may just be early game. My level 6 mage has to have 19 equip load (3/5 level dump) to carry a staff and cloth armor to barely light roll... which feels weird. BUT, will I need much more going into higher levels? Prob not. My level 14 Warrior has 21 equip, much heaver stuff, and still mid rolls. So it may just be an early game quirk and not an issue at all.
Misc Notes
* Would like a cheapo house for 5s that has no room, just so I can drop a chest to store the crafting items Im always full on. Im saving for the Manor, but just having the extra stash early would be very nice.
* The sewer boss fight was VERY long with my high damage character. Consider having him turn at half health if he gets topped off anyway.
* Sewer boss also felt like he had lagging hit boxes. I would dodge past the attack and get hit well after his sword passed through.
* Consider making the stamina bar stand out a bit more.
* Terrain does not block LOS for enemies you try to sneak up on (at least not destructible terrain)
* Please let us rebind dodge/run to B lmao. I have died more than once hours in trying to roll with B ;D
* Second characters need more ways to get ichor, as all story bosses cant be replayed
* allow us to limit what options appear on item selection (holding up or down to set quick-use). Nothing worse mid battle when Im sifting through furniture to find the rune potion (theres a funny meme in there though)

No Rest For The Wicked Early Access came out today, and I played for 23 and a half hours and beat everything in the game. I beat the main story, all the side quests, all the rewards, all the challenges, and after you've done all that, there's a bit of endgame, and I played some of that, too. I could have gone further in the "crucible part" of the endgame, but other than that, I beat everything the game has to offer so far, so I wanted to do a review.
After playing the game, many things went well, and there is much room for improvement. I'm a Dark Souls and Elden Ring lover. One of the most frequent questions people ask about this game is whether it's more like Dark Souls or ARPG, and to me, it feels like a combination of both genres for many different reasons; first of all, the combat is prolonged and very organized, it's not like "Last Epoch" or "Diablo 4" unless you're fighting an Uber boss. Still, even every rat in this game's simple enemy category can trouble you. For example, I fought a couple of bosses and got 99% of their health; I made a mistake, took 100 damage for it, and died instantly. If you do one thing wrong, you can be punished instantly. You're going to die a lot, but that's not going to stop you from trying. That way, you can level up more, but it will also require much effort. That's why the game always feels quite rugged. The maximum level limit in the game is currently 30. I am currently at level 30 and cannot level up any further.
I have a robust system that I always play on Max settings and I never had any problems; it was very nice. Many people who didn't have such a great system struggled and were surprised and quite upset that this was Early Access. Of course, DLSS will come. We'll hope they do more development, and then it should come to console and other things, but many people voiced that they had performance issues; some had to return the game outright because even some streamers with pretty good PCs weren't running. I didn't have that problem with anything else performance-related. I played the game with the controller, and this game is designed for controllers. When I tried it with a keyboard and mouse duo, the game felt restricted to me. For this reason, I can understand the complaints of those who use Mouse+Keyboard.
I've been waiting for this game for a long time and loved it. The environment was beautiful, the story was excellent, and I loved the voice acting; it was one of the best I've ever heard in any game. It was an incredible job. I enjoyed the detail of the bosses, and I was very impressed. I enjoyed fighting different types of enemies on various maps. I loved the little puzzles I encountered on the maps and the secrets they put everywhere; it was very cool. Overall, I also liked the items and the process of choosing and upgrading different weapons. Apart from that, I felt good when I got some health regeneration, a vital mechanic in the survival game.
Many streamers I read or watch constantly talk about the difficulty and brutality of the game and discuss it. Dear friends, yes, you will die a lot. You die a lot. In this sense, there is no problem. The biggest problem is that when you die, you lose the durability of everything. As a result, your equipment breaks. Immediately afterward, you move to a town called Sacrament. And after you go to the Sacrament, you have to go to the blacksmith on the left-hand step; okay, you go to the blacksmith, you repair your equipment, and then you go on your merry way, right? I hear a lot of people saying that stamina is one of the biggest problems; stamina is a stupid mechanic to them because they die all the time. Then you must go back to the blacksmith and spend gold. This sucks for most players, and I have no problem with that! I don't have a problem with the penalty for dying. I'm familiar with that from the Dark Souls series. I don't have a problem with paying gold, and I don't have a problem with gold being valuable. I wish the blacksmith were closer, but that's a trivial matter now.
Let's get to the point where this could be more pleasant. Your gathering tools are durable! Your shovel, your pickaxe, your fishing rod, and your woodcutter's axe. These have durability, and it's pretty unpleasant to have durability on them. For example, you have a place to go for your mining pickaxe. You have reached there. Do you want to know what happens to me every time? Please forget the deaths you have experienced. I extract two or three ore nodes, and my pickaxe breaks. When the durability reaches zero, it breaks instantly. Your pickaxe is destroyed. So, whenever I'm halfway through mining, I must keep buying new pickaxes. I have to carry an extra shovel and pickaxe with me, but in the meantime, what I'm carrying is weighing me down, slowing down, and restricting my movement. This system could be better. At the very least, the durability mechanic should be eliminated for gathering tools like pickaxes, shovels, and axes as soon as possible. At the very least, prevent my pickaxe or axe from completely disappearing when it runs out of stamina. Let me go with these items and repair them. Buying new ones is both inconvenient and expensive. Also, the rate at which these tools lose their durability is relatively high. This needs to be examined tremendously.
My biggest problem with the game is the same as what everyone else has said, and I can describe it to you. This game has the worst inventory and stash management I've ever played. I can't even begin to describe in words how bad it is. First, if you just started playing, you might not notice it. It takes a while to see it, but you will feel the impact once you start playing. Looking at each item individually and not being able to compare between items is a considerable shortcoming. The developers must overhaul the inventory management as soon as possible to make it easier.
At one point in the game, you will buy a house. I immediately purchased a house. What was the first thing I did in my house? I put as many stashes of 20 slots in it as possible. This made me very angry because the game tells you: Hey, take this shovel, cut down this tree, fishes there, okay? I'm doing the activities that you want me to do. I'm playing the game, and you need to do that because there are a lot of different crafting and building your city, as well as stuff like that. If you want to pressure me not to collect everything reasonably, you have to let me extract my ore/materials in peace. Our current inventory management system will drive people crazy when players go far enough. For this, the developers should immediately simplify and fix this system.
One of my favorite things about the game is that you mustn't block it directly when fighting an enemy. Parrying or rolling towards them is one of the best moves to make. Once you memorize the attack patterns of monsters in general, you will start to enjoy the fights more. Yes, but after continuously gaining experience and beating everything, you'll want more content. But it's important to remember that the game is still in early access. More content and mechanics will come to the game. There are already roadmaps available. The game plays itself even as it is. The locations, the color palette, and the voiceovers are perfect. I look at the works company positively. The shortcomings and problems in this game can be easily fixed. Since it is early access, there will be performance issues. However, adding technologies like DLSS and Frame Generation to the game will help solve these problems. Keyboard mouse controls can be improved. By fixing the stash and inventory area and systems, the game can come to a much better position.
I loved this game like crazy and look forward to playing it again when some updates come out. This is my brutally honest opinion of the game. This game finds a satisfying middle ground between Souls like ARPG and loot games. Still, I can't wait to see where the makers vision leads.