I want to start this review by saying that, when this game came out in July of this year, I actually stayed well away due to all negative feedback and attention it got; despite this, however, I did keep a close eye on it to see how the developers over at Harebrained Schemes dealt with all the bad press and negative reviews, and to my honest surprise they really stepped up and decided to take the community’s suggestions and ideas on board to make this game a much better game all round – Maybe the likes of Hello Games could learn a thing or two here…
The changes they made were the inclusion of a new playable character (The Brute), a completely new outdoor environment (The Black Forest), new and improved enemies, armour, potions, scrolls, weapons, and other big improvements to the game’s AI – Given this, however, were the changes that they made to this game in alignment to what the community wanted? Personally, I would say yes. Yes they certainly did.
Necropolis acts as a rogue-like hack and slash dungeon crawler, that’s not for people easily frustrated or stressed because after a while, you will want to throw your controller across the room and admit defeat! I will not lie, I did this a more than a couple of times but always found my self coming back for more pain like the masochist I am.
Necropolis requires you to actually think about your next move and plan a strategy as you play through, unlike most hack and slash games out there, and will most certainly punish you if you run in all guns blazing – The game comes pre-packaged along with permadeath, meaning that one wrong move, and you’re straight right back at the beginning! The way that the developers have prevented the game becoming stagnant is by adding randomly generated dungeons, so no playthrough is the same. At first i found the controls to be clunky, however after a while I realised that timing is more vital; once I had mastered this, the combat felt more fluid and smooth, and made the game that much more enjoyable.
There were many things that I loved about Necropolis, but at the same time I found aspects of the game more frustrating than fair; the fact you can craft food, potions, and other goodies was a big plus, but this can cause a big issue if you think there are no ghouls around the area, and decide to make some lovely meat, only to suddenly have a pair of teeth at your ankles and jugular, when you get wiped out by a hoard of skeletons that decided to creep up on you and ruin your meal! Another feature I loved was the easy drop-in drop-out co-op built in to the game, which made the adventure much more fun and much easier at the same time – My only gripe with this were the loot system, chests, and friendly fire, as you would have to somehow figure out a system of who would get what as only one chest would spawn as you enter each new level, items would only be able to picked up by one player, and yes, players can hit other players, leading to some awkward team kills…
Overall, I found this game highly addictive and a huge improvement on what was released back in July; the artistic take on the game really drew me in, as it wasn’t too over the top, and didn’t need to be – The game play speaks for itself! I believe that Dark Souls fans who maybe want a bit more of a challenge after pumping Dark Souls III dry will love this game, as well as fans of rouge-likes and dungeon crawlers in general!
I will happily give this game an 8.5 / 10 due to the massive improvements made in this game, and the dedication Harebrained Schemes put in to fixing it and not throwing in the towel!
Check out the steam page here >> Necropolis: Brutal Edition Steam Page
Watch the trailer below.