No Rest for the Wicked feels like a bit of a missing link. In the same way that Salt and Sanctuary bridged a gap between Metroidvanias and the Souls series, No Rest exists as a stop on an imaginary evolutionary journey from Diablo-style action RPGs and the aforementioned Souls both Demonic and Dark. Taking the isometric view and randomised loot from the former, and the exploration and more measured approach to combat from the latter, No Rest attempts to craft something new from familiar ingredients.
At first, I thought it was a horrible mistake. After a brief tutorial, you’re shipwrecked on the island of Sacra and left to find your way to the nearest settlement. Almost immediately, the clash between the two disparate game styles becomes apparent, and the focal point of this dissonance is loot.
Dark Souls and Diablo have two completely opposing philosophies when it comes to loot. In the Souls games, almost every piece of gear is deliberately placed, and even randomly dropped loot comes from specific enemies. Your pool of healing items is small, but it refreshes on every death and checkpoint. There’s little guidance for building your character, but you can pick a starting loadout that is geared towards your preferred playstyle. You’ll probably be able to complete the game with that starting gear too, since it upgrades, and the combat is designed more around preference than any given sword being obviously better than another.
No Rest For The Wicked Gameplay Preview – THE FIRST 90 MINUTES!
Diablo is the exact opposite. It throws heaps of randomised loot at you with loads of stat bonuses, and until the endgame, it’s all pretty disposable as there’s always something better around the next corner, hiding in the next chest. Potions are finite, but you can have dozens of them and chain-chug them while cleaving your way through hordes of enemies. You’ll probably start off with next to no gear, but there will be skill trees to progress through that give you at least a vague idea of what you’re doing.
No Rest’s opening few hours offers the worst of both worlds. You start as a completely blank slate, as if you’d picked the obligatory Soulslike class that sees you in your underwear carrying a slightly damp stick. Staggering around the beach you wake up on, using whatever gear you stumble across, you have no real idea of what kind of build you might want to have, or what the options really are. Around this time, I spent some points to increase my strength and equip load, with an eye to going for some kind of tank or two-hander build, and managed to get all the way to the first boss before I even found a strength-scaling weapon.
.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Image credit: Moon Studios/Private Division
Dying in No Rest is a bit odd. You don’t lose any experience, but your equipment takes a durability hit. Initially this was incredibly punishing, but Moon Studios reduced both the amount of damage and the repair costs in the first patch. In a big break from the Soulslike norm, enemies don’t respawn when you die and, crucially, neither do resource gathering points. Yes, the game has a huge gathering and crafting component. It’s all familiar stuff, mining ore, picking herbs, that kind of thing. The biggest impact, at least initially, is on healing. In No Rest, you heal by eating meals, which you have to cook from at least two ingredients, including some kind of food and a special healing herb. Meals have to be prepared at fire pits, which aren’t necessarily nearby respawn points, and your supply is, at least initially, extremely limited.
As a result, your first couple of hours in No Rest will be spent in a battle of attrition against the enemies in your path, with you repeatedly flinging yourself against them and hoping that you can take one down before you die. Eventually you’ll make some progress, find some more ingredients, cook a few meals and proceed in a more dignified fashion, at least until you run out again. Resources do eventually respawn, thankfully. No Rest utilises a fog of war mechanic, with the map slowly being revealed as you explore, but then slowly greying out as you spend time outside of a given area. Return to one of these greyed-out sections, and you’ll find resources have respawned along with – given enough time – any enemies. In practice, this means that you’re doing supply runs just to get basic healing items, which may then be consumed in the process of gathering them.
