Sword of the Necromancer Review

Sword of the Necromancer started off as a project by Grimorio of Games looking for funding on kickstarter. Featuring an animated trailer reminiscent of games like Dragon’s Lair and a cool story, the game got funded and raised 1343% of its original goal.

You take on the role of Tama, a super strong warrior, who also happens to be a thief. After being caught trying to steal a relic from the treasure room of the Eudu temple by the priestess Koko, Tama has agreed to act as Koko’s bodyguard for her pilgrimage. Koko is innocent and incredibly naive. She has never been outside of the village so she really has no clue on what to expect and how to handle things they come across. At one point she startles a wild boar and thinks that a monster is coming after her. She has never really seen any wild animals, so it makes sense that she is afraid. Though she is disturbed that Tama had to kill the boar to stop its attack, and feels incredibly guilty that the animal had to die because of her.

The story was really good. It didn't matter how many times I got stuck I would constantly try again because I just had to find out what happened in the story with Koko and Tama. At times it feels like your typical tough, serious knight falls in love with the sweet innocent princess that they are supposed to be protecting, but the catch is Koko dies. We don’t know how at the beginning, but Tama is determined to bring her back to life using the Sword of the Necromancer. The relationship between Tama and Koko felt very organic on how it developed. They weren’t instantly in love with each other, but as the story progresses you can see it growing, so it feels very realistic. You know how the story ends, but not how it got to that point. Plus the voice acting is great and it really felt that the actresses truly became the characters they were playing. In some games I find the voices annoying when they are so over the top and fake, so I change it to a different language to bypass that, but here I loved hearing the English voices.

Sword of the Necromancer gameplay felt pretty typical for a roguelike 2D action game. Run, attack the enemy and try to get out of the way before they hit you. Once you die you will have to restart from the beginning without the weapons you found, or the levels that you had gained. Unless you go into the options section in the menu. Here, you can customise the difficulty, whether you lose your items upon death, if you keep any levels your character has grown and where you restart from. Changing these settings helps you create your own custom game which is great if you are like me and get incredibly frustrated by losing all of the stat increases that your character earned. I have played enough retro games to become accustomed to having to start over, but it’s nice to be able to not lose all of the progress you have made. 

There are multiple floors in this dungeon, each protected by a boss. To get into the room where the boss is located, you will have to find the Floor Key in a chest or by taking down the enemy that is carrying it. Think you know where the key is since you found it before? Chances are it won’t be in the same spot twice since everytime you die, the layout of the floor changes. If you are lucky, you will find a map for the floor showing you exactly where the key and Boss Room are located. But it is advantageous to explore the other rooms anyways to find more items that you can use and to level up your character. This will also give you a chance to figure out which of the smaller enemies that you have defeated that you want to bring back to life to fight alongside you. For the first few hours, I was stubborn and just wanted to carry four weapons instead of recruiting anyone. Once I did try it out, I found that having these enemies fight alongside you in a battle is really helpful, even just to have a target for the boss to go after that wasn’t me.  

As you explore the rooms in Sword of the Necromancer be sure to break any pots and boxes you find as you will gain items you can use to forge your weapons with new abilities. There are tons of options available to you as long as you have the required items. You can even decide if you want your weapon to have fire, ice or electric powers and attributes like poison, dark attacks or light. It is definitely worth trying out the different combinations to make your own custom swords and other weapons. It will at least help speed up the amount of time it takes to defeat all the smaller enemies just to get to the boss.

Even though there are multiple floors in the dungeon, the same few enemies will be found throughout like the bats and spiders that shoot balls of webbing at you that slow you down or poison you. A few of the enemies come in multiple colours, which is a bit of a change, but after a while you might get tired of seeing the same guys constantly. Especially when you are dying and starting over a lot. I wish there was a bit more variety in the baddies between the floors, but I guess if they use the same guys you will learn how to defeat them and will be able to use the same technique on each floor and not die from one you are unfamiliar with. The graphics look like they are from a retro Nintendo or Super Nintendo game, but the animated parts of the cutscenes are a nice change. Though at those parts it was more like an animated story that you are reading that you have no control or input in.

After playing Sword of the Necromancer for 11 hours I finally got to the end of the game. This is not the true ending, to get the actual ending you will have to complete the game for a second time. This reminds me of games on the original Nintendo that required you to play through two times to unlock see the real ending. For the second playthrough you, take control of Koko and see the story through her eyes and get a different perspective on all the events that occur. She will start from the base level, so to beat the floors and bosses it may take some levelling up. Especially when you are used to using Tama, who at that point can get through the enemies pretty fast. 

I had a good time playing Sword of the Necromancer and if you love roguelike games this is a game you should check out. Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of roguelike games you can really customise the game to make it more friendly. I felt the story of the game really propelled me through the more repetitive parts because I really wanted to hear what happens next.