Necro Story Review

Necro Story is a real-time turn-based monster-collecting RPG (I couldn’t think of a shorter description) developed by Rablo Games. You play as a sort-of evil necromancer, a once powerful sorcerer who was put into a five-year sleep by Vivi, a white mage. She is now a ghost and has revived you for the sole purpose of delving into the afterlife to revive humanity after every single human is killed. No, you don’t have a choice in the matter, go out and save the world… no matter how much of a bother it is. So, what’s in store for this reluctant hero?

The story is quite lighthearted and has enough heart to really engage you all throughout. It’s also decently funny with quite a few jokes that did get me to chuckle. If anything, I’d say Necro Story is like a slightly more mature children’s picture book, with an art style that reminds of one which I read as a kid but can’t quite remember who illustrated it. Still, the characters and areas are very good-looking and are animated well.

But enough about that, let's get into this incredibly empty world with only fights, treasures to find, and the occasional shop. Yeah, despite looking pretty good, because of the story, there’s not a lot to do outside of the main quest. There are small puzzles dotted throughout the map that will grant items if you solve them, though. All of them are just finding a map indicating the path to take and doing it, so it’s very quick to do, especially when there’s a literal sign telling you where treasure chests are. Still, I would’ve liked an actual map to help me cover everything (and not the joke one Vivi gives you). As someone who tried to get all the items, I found myself getting a little lost backtracking as a lot of the areas look the same. Still, I wouldn’t say the actual world design is bad, just lacking.

But, while you’re out there, you’re bound to run into serious trouble, so let’s talk about fights. Battles play out in real-time, although don’t worry how much is going on screen. Everyone but your customisable necromancer acts on their own, although you can change when they use their moves. While your minions are doing their thing, you’ll be casting spells, sucking up the souls of dead enemies, and maybe transforming into a demon. There are over 20 spells to learn throughout the adventure, separated into five schools of magic: Affliction (poison), Darkness (damage and instant kills), Life Drain, Summoning (summon minions), and Dark Pacts (temporary transformations). Every spell has a skill tree, allowing for some serious customisation over your abilities, especially when at any time, you can spend some currency to refund all your skill points. I would’ve liked it if there was an option to refund only one skill tree instead of all of them, but it’s a minor issue.

However, they all cost mana and you don’t have an infinite supply. Worry not, as using your staff to absorb the souls of dead enemies will regain a chunk of it back. You can even poke your staff at a foe to make them drop mana crystals, although it will cause all your spells to be on cooldown.

You won’t be fighting alone. Far from it. Not only will Vivi help you, but also the remains of your dead enemies — you are a necromancer after all. Your foes are all potential friends… well, minions that you can add to your undead army. All you need to do is capture their soul after charging up your soul portal (which is done by absorbing other souls) and they’ll be ready to be transformed into dangerous killing machines. Who you have in your army, what skills they have and even how they use it, and what they’re equipped with are what will help you save the world. It’s a very active battle system that keeps you engaged with every fight. And… well, you will have to fight a lot. There isn’t much you can do outside of exploration and getting into battles. The few shops dotted around the map can have all their items bought quite easily. Also, there’s no option to run I could find so every encounter has to be played out.

Now with the right set-ups, you can just step away from your computer, maybe make yourself a cup of coffee, or poop, and return to a victory screen, but fights do start to drag on after a while. Still fun and engaging, but I would try my best to avoid encounters. That’s pretty much everything I have to say about the main gameplay, and I think overall it’s fine.

Onto performance and glitches… and there’s barely anything that needs to be said here. While I did encounter issues with some text, such as when a tutorial pop-up was in Japanese (according to Google Translate), I didn’t encounter any glitches and there weren’t anything more than small hiccups when loading the battle results screen. However, I think the biggest issue is that the game doesn’t explain some things well enough. Maybe I wasn’t reading something, but there were tons of status effects and ailments that weren’t taught. Things like burn and poison are obvious, but what the heck is “Unbalanced” supposed to mean in this context?

Necro Story is just a nice time. While it does have some issues that sort of bother me, there’s a lot of heart in this project and I found myself losing quite a bit of time. If you’re looking for a darkly humorous adventure that encourages active participation and strategy, this game is for you.