Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection Review

Remaking an older game can be a difficult tightrope to walk: you have to keep the same energy as the original while also ensuring it’s got enough to be a marked improvement. That’s the aim of Grimorio of Game’s latest title: Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection — a fully 3D remake of the original from 2020. Now, I will be clear here, I never played the original. As such, I will look at this game on its merits rather than compare it. 

So, for the most part, the game's plot is the same. You take on the role of Tama, a soldier, who is looking for the fabled Sword of the Necromancer to help resurrect Koko, her love. It’s an interesting starting point, and the game slowly builds the relationship between Koko and Tama in flashbacks as you progress. However, while the relationship develops slowly, the rest of the plot sometimes feels a bit rushed, as you get the fabled sword pretty quickly but have to build up the sword's power to bring Koko back to life. 

You build up this power by exploring the Necromancer’s tomb and clearing levels. The levels take the form of small maps, each one slightly different from the other. As Tama, you’ll need to clear the level of enemies, grab the chests and find the key to open the door at the end. There are also the odd puzzle rooms where you’ll need to activate switches and the combat-focused arena rooms. Finally, there are the boss rooms where you’ll need to fight a more powerful enemy. It’s an interesting variety, although at a point, you realise that the actual experience is often the same.

However, that is passable so long as the combat is fun, and it is. Essentially, you have two weapon options that you can replace depending on the equipment you find. When using a mouse, you can use the left and right buttons to attack with each weapon. There’s also a gadget slot, that usually takes the form of a bow or shield that you activate with the Ctrl button. Finally, there’s a dodge that’s mapped to the Shift key. The combat is fluid and the animation is reminiscent of the basic attacks from Final Fantasy VII Remake. However, if you use the basic control layout, you’ll end up trying to perform a fair bit of finger gymnastics to hit all the keys when you need to. However, the enemies' attacks are pretty slow, so you’ll never feel overwhelmed. 

While the enemy attacks are slow, there are a lot of them and it can be easy to get overwhelmed. That’s where the other mechanic of the game comes into effect, after all, it is the Sword of a Necromancer. As you kill base enemies you’ll have the chance to resurrect and summon them to fight at your side. At an initial glance, you don’t have a lot of control over what they can do, but there’s a tactics list that can get pretty detailed. For the most part, however, they’ll just attack what they can see. 

It's an interesting mechanic, and some of the puzzles require placing the summons in certain places. However, I never found myself getting invested in the monsters I had gathered and was quite happy to drop them for more powerful creatures as they appeared. They do level and get more powerful, and can unlock new abilities, but will still lose out to more powerful monsters.

Graphically, Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection is okay, if a bit rough on the edges. The character models have smaller bodies (and relatively bigger heads) making it seem a bit chibi. However, the monster designs are that mix of cute and sometimes threatening that can draw people. The videos are also either animated or composed of drawn images, and they all look pretty fantastic. I will also say that the voice acting is stellar, you can really feel Tama’s pain and emotion when she feels like talking. 

As I said, I never played the original game, so can’t compare if this is the better experience. However, as a game on its own, it manages to be a pretty entertaining time synch with some great acting. However, the lack of variety over time does start to set in after a while, making it hard to spend hours playing through the game. Meanwhile, the monster summoning, while interesting, doesn’t really add up to much in the grand scheme of things.