Can a Nobody actually save the world? They can certainly try in this unique dungeon crawling adventure!
What Is It? You are Nobody, a suspiciously bland looking human with no eyes who is dropped into a bright, colorful world of magic. You quickly learn that the powerful wizard Nostramagus has gone missing at the same time an evil Calamity has taken over the land. After you secretly discover a wand in Nostramagus’s office his well-intentioned, but idiodic, apprentice Randy banishes you to the dungeon and your adventure begins.
A top-down, 2D action-adventure game, Nobody Saves the World will see you spending most of your time fighting through dungeons using the many transformations/forms you will unlock throughout the game. Initially, this means you turn into a rat to escape your dungeon prison. Each form begins with a simple attack and some goals to hit. Achieving them, which is almost always some flavor of “attack enemies with your basic attack”, will level up your form, opening up a second attack. Most forms have three unique attacks as well as one passive ability, all of them will eventually allow you to assign other forms’ attacks to one of the face buttons. If you ever wanted a rat to be able to gallop like a horse, fire arrows like a ranger, or shoot water bubbles like a mermaid, you’re in luck!
There is a large, interesting overworld which will facilitate your travels between dungeons. The overworld includes enemies and many NPCs to chat with to pick up side and main quests. Dungeons themselves are procedurally generated but will often have specific styles or rules which are always present. There is one dungeon, for example, where all damage is multiplied by 9999, others will feature certain wards which mean enemies must be hit with certain types of damage before you can drain their health.
Combat is front and center in Nobody Saves the World and the game delivers a very fun experience there. Like DrinkBox Studios’ previous games, the Guacamelee series, certain enemies will feature wards which add some strategy to the hack-and-slash affairs. If you are playing as a form which features blunt attacks but the dungeon requires light attacks to break wards, you can assign a light attack from another form to your character, but that will cost mana which depletes and is refillable by using your standard attacks. The other option is to select a character with a light attack as their primary move, these never cost mana to use.
The result is a really fun system of experimenting with different forms and pairing those with other moves. I suspect most players will land on a small number they consider their favorites, but playing through this game multiple times has shown me that just about any of 18 forms in the game can be effective if used properly. The game incentivizes you to play as all forms as leveling them up is the gateway to unlocking more forms.
Combat itself is generally extremely chaotic with hordes of enemies running at you. Some forms can spawn familiars to fight for you which can result in some truly crowded battlegrounds. Learning the different abilities and how to best leverage them is the crux of the game. If you can’t find fun in constantly swapping between forms and playing wildly different fighting styles between each, Nobody Saves the World is probably not for you.
The Best Part: The various forms and the mix-and-match aspects. There are so many fun forms. A quick glance at some of their names: Rat, Horse, Magician, Turtle, Bodybuilder, Ghost, Monk, Dragon. A truly unhinged mix of styles that make zero thematic sense but all look great in the game and offer fun, unique fighting styles. The game allows swapping with a wheel, making it almost instant, but I avoid playing the game where that is necessary. Knowing which types of wards will exist going into a dungeon, I set up a character to tackle it to avoid the need to constantly switch. I enjoy this balance as it gave me a chance to get more used to the forms. It also lets me achieve the various form-specific tasks which level up the forms (and your overall Nobody level, as well) to unlock more stuff. It is a nice loop of doing fun stuff with these forms to unlock more stuff and/or additional forms.
The Worst Part: The game will gate form progression on occasion until you do some big story thing. This is not the worst problem, but it is quite annoying when you have a map full of quests to tackle but have already maxed out your forms as much as currently possible. “Hey, you did this story thing so now each form has 5 new goals to achieve which will let them level up” is not a lot of fun. I’d rather be left to progress at my own pace.
The Verdict: Do you think you’ll have a fun time setting up your slug to be able to shoot a flurry of arrows like a ranger and turn your defeated enemies into a horde of undead to fight alongside you? If that doesn’t sound fun, then I suspect you’ll bounce off of Nobody Saves the World pretty quickly. The core gameplay mechanics are quite strong, ensuring the actual act of fighting is a good time, but the depth here is in the experimentation around mixing-and-matching the forms and their abilities.
Yes, the game is wrapped in a great looking cartoon art style with a fun, irreverent story littered with ridiculous NPCs and a substantial amount of optional content to explore. The game also offers co-op and makes for a wonderful experience clearing dungeons with friends. Sure, the game also presents a nice difficulty curve with the dungeons having preset levels to ensure there is a fun, challenging fight to be had no matter where you are in the game. All of those things are true, but if you are going to really love this game it will be because you enjoy having a Magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, galloping like a horse to trample enemies, and spraying water like a turtle.
Nobody Saves the World landed really well for me because the very strong basic gameplay was wrapped in silly, fun form abilities where the game rewards you for trying out a bunch of combinations. It is another wonderful game from DrinkBox Studios, one I have enjoyed a few times already and will certainly return to again down the line.
How to Play: PlayStation 4&5*, Xbox One/Series, Switch, PC
*console played on for this review
Leave a Reply