Nobody Saves the World: Game Review

The DrinkBox Studios team is best known for their Guacamelee games! one of the best metroidvanias of the 2010s. But the authors clearly do not want to get hung up on the adventures of the luchador, so from time to time they hit experiments. More than five years ago, they released Severed, an action game in which battles take place exclusively using the touch screen. And after Guacamelee! 2 took on the ambitious top-down action RPG Nobody Saves the World, which features almost two dozen playable characters.

Jack of all trades (and paws, and wings) master

The protagonist is the same Nobody, rendered in the name of the game. He wakes up in a tiny hut with no memory of how he got there. After a couple of minutes, Nobody learns about the disappearance of Nostramagus, the greatest wizard, and after a few moments becomes the main suspect. Fortunately, he manages to grab the wand of Nostramagus and escapes from captivity, setting off on a long journey across the big map. The main goal of the protagonist is to save the world from Adversity – an infection that can be destroyed only by fragments of a gem, guarded by monsters that have appeared out of nowhere.

By itself, Nobody fully justifies his name (or rather, his absence) – except for miserable kicks, he can do nothing. But with the help of a wand, he can turn anyone, changing forms and gaining abilities. First, he turns into a rat – thanks to its size, it can penetrate narrow corridors, and also bites painfully and poisons enemies. Then – into a warrior armed with a sword, which deals more damage with a low health reserve. Or the archer, whose charged arrows fly through opponents.

Previous game review about the game Digimon Survive you can read by click on the link.

Each form has tasks, the number of which grows as the story progresses. All of them are related to abilities: hit 50 enemies with such and such a skill, run so many meters with the help of a speeding skill, and so on. These mini-quests level up forms, unlocking not only new playable creatures, but also skills. It is impossible to say which of these is more important, since both are of interest. Forms differ in many ways: one is suitable for close combat, another leaves behind a slowing slime, the third moves quickly, the fourth swims in water. And new abilities allow you to more effectively deal with opponents, and tasks push you to try everything without exception.

At the same time, the developers managed to make almost every form interesting. When I played the game, each new character became my favorite, even if at first the attitude towards him was negative. For example, a horse – to hit the enemy, you need to turn your back to him and kick. It sounds inconvenient (it’s easier to take a regular knight), but there are pluses – the horse repels targets, and they receive additional damage if they crash into a wall or into other opponents. And over time, she learns to gallop and can run into the crowd, causing damage to all affected monsters.

Another example is the strongman. He moves slowly, and his attack looks very strange – he throws a bar in the selected direction, that is, he does not injure enemies immediately after pressing the button. But over time, the strongman becomes a very dangerous character: he accumulates strength, increasing the damage from standard attacks, and also spins and punches everyone who is nearby.

Faster, higher, stronger in Nobody Saves the World

Abilities can (and should) be upgraded to make them even more devastating. Some recover faster, others deal more damage or require less mana. The same happens with passive skills, which are also completely different for everyone. Someone restores mana by destroying objects in locations, and someone’s attacks impose statuses on targets: they poison, slow down, stun, and so on.

The most interesting thing begins a few hours later, when Nobody learns about the ability to transfer abilities between forms. Here Nobody Saves the World is fully revealed, since many useful skills are allowed to be given to anyone. The archer is able to shoot a rain of arrows – give this skill to the horse. Zombies infect targets, and after death they turn into the walking dead – with a couple of clicks, transfer this ability to the turtle. Everything works like clockwork, there are no restrictions – upgrade forms and unlock countless combinations of active and passive skills, some of which are also available in local stores.

This freedom allows you to create powerful builds – even if one character is weaker than the others, his skills can be extremely useful. For example, an egg is completely helpless until someone hatches from it. But at the first levels, it gets a skill that heals the character when the button is held down, which is sometimes very useful. And if the ability is already valuable, it can still be made even cooler. The monk has the skill “Holy Light” – when activated, all targets on the screen take damage for a few seconds. And if you add a “passive”, with which each of your attacks poisons the enemy? And if you throw another one that stuns? You can experiment endlessly.

You have a lot of time to try everything, because the game is far from short. The publisher who sent me a copy said 20 hours to complete, but I spent significantly more exploring each location in search of secrets and completing many side quests. The game is divided into regions, connected by paths where monsters meet. And these paths can lead either to a cave, or to a small settlement, or to one of several dozen dungeons. Everything is created by hand and does not change with repeated passage, except for the dungeons, which are generated anew each time.

At the same time, the conditions in them remain the same. Somewhere the enemies are stronger or, on the contrary, die with one blow. Somewhere from opponents and broken barrels food that restores health does not drop out. Plus, there are enemies in the dungeons that require you to use the attacks of the specified elements against them, otherwise they will not receive damage at all. Therefore, each location requires preliminary preparation: it is important to choose both “passives” and active skills so as not to complicate your task.

Outside the “dungeons” is also full of entertainment in Nobody Saves the World. In the towns there are guilds, whose representatives give a pack of tasks. These can be fun challenges like hitting all the targets within a set time limit, racing as a horse, or all sorts of arcade mini-games. Some characters ask you to explore the world and look for dolphins or aliens that are not shown on the map. Entertainment occurs just like that, without pre-issued quests – for example, arenas in which you are locked up and forced to fight waves of enemies. Not to mention the mana-increasing fairies, the path to which is not always obvious.

Eyes run up in Nobody Saves the World

In other words, there is a lot of content in Nobody Saves the World. However, by the second half of the game, this becomes more of a disadvantage. In particular, the process of pumping forms is a bit tiring. Yes, it’s interesting what a necromancer or a monk can do, which are among the last to unlock, but “grinding” kills with abilities for the sake of early easy tasks is no longer as exciting as it was in the beginning. Subsequently, when sophisticated quests are added to the usual quests, requiring you to transfer certain abilities and use them, the process becomes even more dreary.

A large number of quests, dungeons and other things also delights less and less. The fact is that access to story tests is blocked until you accumulate enough special currency. It is given out both for completing form tasks and for ordinary quests, and it can also be bought from a merchant. But doing the latter is pointless, since you will have to earn currency honestly anyway in order to level up the character. When I visited the story dungeons with a hero with a level below the recommended one, it was noticeably harder to complete them than when I did it with a leveled one.

Well, my last complaint is related to switching between forms. There is a character quick change button here – by holding it, you call up the selection wheel. But for some reason the game is not paused at this time. And since the arrangement of the forms in the wheel changes, it is not possible to find the right character there in a second. Plus, only eight forms fit in the wheel – if you need some other one, you have to open the menu, go to the tab with the form tree and select the desired hero there. Situations when you need to switch as soon as possible do not arise very often, but you still encounter inconveniences.

Conclusion

However, everything described in the last paragraphs does not negate the fact that Nobody Saves the World was a success – both as a fun action game with a great visual style, and as an interesting experiment. The idea of teaching some character classes the abilities of others is not new – it has been common in JRPGs since Final Fantasy Tactics. But it’s still nice to see when everything works as it should and the idea is fully implemented. I’m not sure that the game will remain in memory until the end of the year, and it falls a little short of the highest rating. At the same time, the DrinkBox team did an excellent job, and the appearance of such a game in Game Pass, and even on the day of release, is a wonderful gift.

Pros: a great idea with the ability to transfer abilities to all characters is well implemented; all forms into which the hero transforms are good in their own way; a large amount of content: side quests, dungeons, and other entertainment; eye-catching visual style; humor in the spirit of Guacamelee!

Cons: pumping new forms from scratch at some point gets boring, although it does not take too much time; in the second half of the game, you start to get tired of the abundance of content; switching between forms could be made more convenient.