No Rest for the GPU

“Is this really a souls-like?” character rolls through barrels “Very well then”

No Rest for the Dev

Remove timers. We're playing a game not cooking brown rice.

I wish I didn't have a job

This game suffers from probably the biggest lack of QOL features I've played in 30+ years in gaming. While I love the art style, the story, and to a degree - the combat, the rest feels half-baked, obtuse, and unnecessarily punitive to the point I found myself going 'Why??' multiple times in my playthrough. Here's just a short list. - You can only fast travel back to the last fast travel point. Hope you enjoy running through the same zones, repeatedly, over and over. Oh, and everything respawns in said zones constantly. - There are no descriptions on anything, anywhere. There's something like over a hundred enchantments, none of them are explained anywhere. No tool tips, no explanation, no description, literally nothing. - Likewise, there are several dozen if not more runes (special abilities) in the game. These are never explained anywhere. Not what they do, how much they cost, damage output. Nothing. Just 'Dash Break'. Oh...ok? - Continuing in the mystery meat category, you cannot get a preview of any weapon in the game. You will be forced to blindly allocate stats starting at the beginning of the game which may or may not absolutely butcher your character. Some weapons require high allocation in one stat, some require a mix. Want to try out Great Swords? Just kidding you cant because you decided to go Dexterity. You have NO IDEA what weapons are even out there until you find them, but by then its too late. Supposedly theres a scythe in the game, would love to try it, no idea what stats it needs and I probably cant. "Just respec" you say?..... - You can't respec until you play the Crucible and farm it out. You can't farm it out until about level 15, which is over 25 hours into the game give or take and it requires currency to spend. So enjoy that grind every time you just want to TRY a weapon that you might even hate. Youll have to refarm everything just to respec back. - Ive yet to figure out the purpose of crafting armor. Ive been playing for 25 hours, I have enough resources to make one full set of the Tallbearers armor. With how enchanting works, there's about a 30% chance the gear gets cursed and becomes essentially worthless. What's the point? - Need to remove a rune? Destroys your weapon. Need to remove that gem? Sorry, not a thing. Want to simply move runes around to assign them to different hotkeys? Nope. - Heavy armor gets high armor class (physical), but the worst resist values against Fire, Shock, etc. Conversely, light armor gets low AC and high resist. ....Why? So basically the game prevents you from just being slow and tanky because if you do, youll be strong to ONE THING ONLY (physical) with the worst resistances. So why wear heavy armor? Again, contrary to every use of 'heavy armor' in every game literally ever..... - The camera angle is never where it needs to be and cant be controlled. You will routinely have to navigate narrow corners and tight spaces where you can't even see where you're going, particularly when descending. The gameworld will constantly obscure your screen, as well. Buildings, roofs, tree canopies - there's about a 50/50 shot that the game catches it and sets it transparent, or not and you're just screwed. Additionally, the camera is constantly floating around, pulling out, moving in, trying to show a panoramic, etc. Like, just leave the damn camera alone, you aren't Martin Scorsese. - Why are bows an offhand item...? I burned a plague ichor to unlock a 2nd main hand to have a bow as an alternate weapon. Instead, I go to equip it and it puts itself in the offhand slot....the off hand slot which I am using DUAL GAUNTLETS in the main hand. Explain this to me please? Worth noting nowhere on any weapon does it say 'Mainhand' or 'Offhand'. This is what I'm talking about, how did this get past QA?? This is basic stuff, I am just floored at how lacking it is. - A litany of bugs to contend with as well. Ive opened chests or cooked food and suddenly immolated into death. Ive been stuck in run mode with both hands off the M&K. Ive been stuck in the map. Ive failed to grab ladders and fallen to my death countless times. Ive lost game audio. Etc, etc, etc... - And now the last and potentially worst bit, the movement. You will die constantly and not to enemies, but to fall damage. Your character will religiously throw herself off every cliff, bridge, ledge, and outcrop possible. The movement controls in this game are the absolute worst. DO NOT even attempt to play this on M&K. "Run" is Shift, right? But unlike every other game ever made since the dawn of time, holding shift doesnt 'enable' you to run using WASD...it actually makes your character run in the direction of your mouse cursor. So you are simultaneously moving your character with WASD while also potentially trying to go a different direction while holding shift depending on where your mouse cursor is. Oh, and did I mention that attack animations are queued? Click 3 times, you will attack 3 times, even if you no longer want nor need to. Now, couple this with the fact your character doesnt just attack, they ALWAYS step towards the target and attack and you're constantly rolling/attacking into places you have no business or desire being but the system and mechanics screw you over and work against you in every way imaginable. I could go on and on with the frustrating and mind boggling decisions being made here. This is basic stuff, standard QOL that seemingly every game has yet at every turn this game actively gets in your way, confusing you and obfuscating every key decision and integral game mechanic. Its a lesson in perseverance and frustration, neither of which the standard gamer is going to have time for. If you enjoy driving blindfolded, I encourage you to give this a try. Just don't be surprised when you slam into a wall going 80. NOTE: I will amend this review after EA if these issues are addressed.

Just tried the breach patch. The devs are trying to make a souls like with the camera pulled way back. Fine aspiration, but this game is dead set on wasting your time and making you replay content. Waiting for town upgrades. Only able to teleport between the main city and the last portal you visited. Grinding wood, ore, food... etc. I swear I've chopped more trees than enemies in this game. More importantly, the combat is not well designed. Attacks in a souls game need to have a certain level of fairness and these fall short often enough to be annoying. Some enemies can combo so long you literally run out of stamina and start eating hits. Parry window is so short you might as well not even try for anything faster than the most telegraphed attack an enemy has. Block chip damage is insane on light shields (which is the only shield I have found in 8 hours) 2 handed sword is so slow the only play style is bait and punish, anything else is a trade you lose. Want to smash your head into a boss wall until you win like good old souls games? Every time you die your gear takes a durability hit. Repairing does not happen at bonfires, you have to pay with the same money you use for everything else. Okay, you'll just use heals right? There is no estus flask, the healing items you have need to be hand picked and crafted by you and are actually quite limited. Basically, if a boss destroying you it is very possible to end up with no money, broken gear, and no way to heal, forcing you to get a part time job farming resources. If you have a lot of time, enjoy hitting trees, and hate yourself, I recommend this.

I have a neurological disorder that makes certain finger movements extremely difficult. Please let us remap the controls.

I'm not too far into the game but my first impressions are negative. For one, "context sensitive" exploration is incredibly rough, having your dodge button also be your sprint button which is also your climb button barely works when there's no exploration, but when there's a focus on poking your nose in the environment and a fixed camera, not having a specific button tied to jumping or sprinting or what have you is incredibly frustrating. Then there's the combat, which feels like someone learned the wrong lessons from other stamina combat games. Lotsa enemy groups which attack in staggered patterns, and don't flinch from your attacks unless they are one of the weapon abilities (which require a resource), or via parry. This means dodging isn't nearly as useful as it is in other stamina games, since avoiding an attack doesn't open up your target as another enemy is now swinging at you as well. Parrying also doesn't feel gratifying as it doesn't really open up anything particularly good, since another enemy can just attack while you're performing it. So what that leads you to is incredibly tedious crowd management where you circle the crowd, wait for all enemies in question to sorta get stuck on eachother or initiate an attack, which leaves you open to actually attack them, and then immediately retreat. Repeat this process until you have enough energy for a special weapon attack to do actual damage or until you slowly whittle down the enemy group. Or the other option, which is just to cook a lot of healing items, and slam your face into combat and just facetank damage while you spam into enemies while they spam at you, but at that point then you're just playing an old ARPG wearing the skin of a new one. Long and short of it: the combat lacks any satisfying impact, the exploration is unrewarding and frustrating due to contextual movement controls, and the game is... technically proficient in terms of art production but the character design is seemingly intentionally hideous which is... fine I guess? Just a strange choice that isn't my bag.

No Rest for the Oven. It still needs to cook, but there is a game here (which is more than I can say about other "games"). These are some suggestions for the devs and some of my pain points from my initial playthrough. By no means do they have to change all of them in the way described below. So, off the top of my head: - Add key rebinding as soon as possible. - Add a "Quit to Desktop" button. Can't have a PC game without that one - They added this one in Hotfix 3 - When speaking with NPCs, reading notes or kicking ladders, make it so the character does not need to face it to interact. - Environment readability needs to be improved. Sometimes you can't see things like flowers/shrooms because they blend with the background colors. - Camera sometimes moves in a position where you can't see your character. - I get that the game should be hard, but it would be nice if the monster/boss attacks were better telegraphed. (Example: you should be able to see where a bomb flying towards you will land, a chime sound when you can parry, the autotarget dot should reflect what kind of action you can do to that monster, etc) This goes a long way towards improving how the combat feels. - Movement (especially during combat) is sluggish. Not sure if enemies input read, but if they do, it would be nice for us to have animation cancelling when doing dodges, would make it more responsive. - Durability is useless and has no place here. It does not add to any of the mechanics, it is just a pain for the player and not fun at all. *Edit 1: So I've played a bit before and after the Hotfix: - Before the hotfix, I was soft-locked after beating the 1st boss at level 4. No equipment or weapons were dropping so I kept dying to the respawned enemies, that seemed to be more difficult during the day, until I had no gold to repair. It was just frustrating. Thankfully the hotfix has made it so you can get out of this death spiral and actually continue the game. - Durability is better now, but I am still of the opinion that it doesn't add to the game. It is just a way to force us to go into town and check in with all the NPCs. Tedious. - I don't think there is any need for timers when building improvements. Why wait 15 minutes to an hour or more for a simple upgrade? - Inventory management and the fact that you have to unlock rows for each separate tab takes away from improving your character. It makes me prioritize the resource tab upgrade (since that fills up the fastest) instead of anything else. - It would be nice if all upgrading equipment would take into account the items that are in the community chest, instead of making me run from and towards the community chest. - The stamina fix has made it better to time swings and combos. Still punishing, but much more fair. - At least one of the heavy enemies has a double bomb throw. This is next to impossible to dodge since he throws them one after the other and staggers you both times, while also setting you on fire. Would be good to have at least a bit of a delay between throws to give time to dodge. *Edit 2: Seems like with Hotfix 3 they've really improved performance and added a camera zoom option as well. All in all I feel it's pretty decent for an Early Access game. I've left it for now and will return when the game will be out of Early Access. The quick response to feedback makes me really hopeful that devs will make a true gem. The world building, story characters, artistic direction is top notch, and, with time, the gameplay will be on par as well.

Update Edit: Developer responded but I'm still banned from the Discussion forums and they only seem to want to save face due to the attention they are getting. Read into the Studio Head's fragrant disregard for the community, read into the lack of solid vision for this game, the constant back and forth on mechanics. Don't trust what they say, look for actions. I can't see any I trust as why speak up here yet keep me banned on the Discussion boards? They are not sorry for their behavior, they are sorry they got called out on it. Original Review: Very sketchy devolpment/devolpers and a huge red flag as you have to sign a EULA that has a huge section on paying for subscriptions. Very concerning considering the game has a ton of crafting time gates and repair on weapons like many mobile games. Be wary as if you ask about the EULA or Subscriptions on the forum you get banned for "Trolling".... Here is the section below: 4.2 Subscriptions. Some aspects of the Services may be offered on a subscription basis with automatic, recurring payments at the start of each billing period (“Subscription”). We reserve the right to modify the terms on which such features are offered for purchase at any time on thirty (30) days’ notice. Please note some Subscriptions are offered subject to additional terms and conditions, which may modify the terms below. (1) Purchase. Subscriptions can be purchased from a Digital Storefront. To use a Subscription, you must: hold a valid entitlement to the product or service related to the Subscription; have a valid account with the Digital Storefront including a current, valid, and accepted method of payment registered to that account; and have an internet connection. The Digital Storefront will bill the applicable Subscription fee (and any applicable taxes) (“Fee”) to your chosen method of payment on each Subscription renewal date. After purchase, your Subscription(s) will activate, and you will receive access to the benefits associated with the Subscription listed at the time of your enrollment. (2) Automatic Renewal & Cancelation. Your Subscription will automatically renew at the end of each billing period. The Digital Storefront will charge your payment method for the then-current Fee unless you cancel your Subscription through the applicable Digital Storefront before your current billing period ends. You may cancel a Subscription at any time, which will prevent auto-renewal and terminate the Subscription at the end of your current billing period. If you cancel, you will continue to receive benefits until the Subscription terminates at the end of your then-current billing period. Please see the Storefront Terms for applicable refund policies, if any. (3) Changes to Subscriptions. The terms of any Subscription and the benefits included in such Subscription may change from time to time. Benefits changes may include altering or removing previously claimed benefits. Moon Studios may also retire a Subscription at any time on no less than thirty (30) days’ notice. Any such changes will be updated on the Digital Storefront’s Subscription product page, and you may receive email notice from Moon Studios and/or the Digital Storefront about any such changes before they occur. Please read any notification of changes carefully. If you do not cancel your Subscription after receiving notice of a change to the terms of the Subscription – including the amount of the Fee – or the benefits included in the Subscription, then you will be deemed to have accepted those changes. Changes will go into effect upon auto-renewal of your Subscription or the date on which you otherwise explicitly accept any such changes, if earlier.

Game has such archaic gameplay decisions in 2024 are unacceptable. Holding A to run. meanwhile i never would want to walk. so now im forced to constantly just hold A. SOOO DUMB! The stamina system is so bad, why even have it? Its way too hard to tell what to interact with in such a highly dense and high detail world. I didnt know where to go etc. The game has no explanations on things. I spent the first 10 min just fisting everything instead of using my sword. Isometric viewpoint was a mistake. No mage class. So disappointing.

I supported this game from the moment it released, and now I'm done with it. The gameplay has always been mediocre and overly difficult, but given the face that it's early access I've been patient enough to let it mature. And with the recent updates and the upcoming "Breach Refined" update it does look like it's going in the correct direction and will one day be a good game. With that said, I also hold the community forum accountable as well as the game itself which brings us to the thumbs down portion of my review. A couple months ago, when The Breach released, I was on the forum and answering a question from another player and someone with forum moderator powers not only reached into my post and edited it to say something negative to the other player that I didn't write, they got me permabanned from the No Rest for the Wicked forum but also banned from all other discussion forums on Steam, system wide. I appealed directly to Steam and had the system wide ban removed, but so far I'm still banned from this community. So, to sum up: a moderator on this game's forum actually edited MY POST to make me look bad and got me kicked. I can't even look at this game without getting sick to my stomach. If that's the kind of people they have working (or volunteering) for them, I honestly hope this game crashes and burns. One of the worst community experiences I've ever had on a gaming forum. Unreservedly thumbs down

Pretty good on the SteamDeck OLED , 30fps give or take

I don't want to live on a planet where a game like No Rest For The Wicked gets mixed reviews.

Edit: About 'The Breach' - hotfix 2

With the latest hotfixes, the game honestly feels like it’s on the right track. The devs have been quick, responsive, and clearly care about improving things. Not everything has to be perfect for a game to be worth recommending. A positive review isn’t blind praise; it’s a way to support a good game while helping it grow. I get that some people already left negative reviews and won’t change them, but if you're someone who's still deciding: don't let a few harsh takes influence you too much. Try it yourself — and if it’s not your thing, refund it. But don’t miss out on a great game just because some frustrations got blown out of proportion.

No Rest For GPU

I want to love this game, because visually and conceptually it's excellent. I enjoy souls-like difficult games, had no issues platinum'ing Sekiro and the like. This should be right up my alley. However there are a handful of irritating design choices in this game that make it joylessly difficult, at least in the early game. Clearly it wants me to grind for materials, and yet my inventory is capped? I have no idea what is worth keeping. All healing items have to be restocked by collecting materials that run out? Very tedious. Every enemy hits like a tank and has twice the reach I do and seemingly three times the stamina. Might be a me problem in how I'm trying to play, but the weapons and gear it's given me hasn't left me many options. The single button parkour for traversal is a little odd, has lead to accidental deaths a few times. "Bonfires" don't heal? Doesn't (seem to) behave like a souls game in that regard. Also, lack of easier fast travel is gonna kill me. Seems to take forever to get anywhere - maybe I'm slow because the only gear it's given me is insanely heavy. Also, the speed at which that first boss ganks you is a bit extreme, especially since it seems to enjoy immediately smashing you up against the invisible wall that appears on the door you enter. Awkward. I'd love to give it a revisit after early access.

No Rest for the Wicked? More like No Rest for the GPU! Game is fun AF though, it's like the hand crafted top-down ARPG with souls-like combat we didn't know we needed. Pro Tip for Keyboard Users: You can move toward the cursor on the screen by pressing left shift (while not using WASD). Great for tight rope walking across thin beams!

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Some Satisfying Moments:

• Shoulder charging an enemy off a bridge to their death.
• Vertically slamming my 2h sword into a downed enemy.
• Backstabbing an unaware enemy with a 2h sword.
• Cooking at a campfire.
• The atmospherics and lighting are quite good.
• Can talk to random people in town to get a sense of game lore.
• Was able to rebuild some stairs for easier navigation in town.
• Started upgrading buildings in town for better items.
• Took a common 2h claymore and upgraded it then enchanted it to an Epic with better stats.

A gorgeous game with an interesting story and a well-developed world that is absolutely ruined by being hilariously overtuned and needlessly difficult. I'll revisit No Rest For The Wicked again closer to 1.0 when the devs realize how stupidly hard this game is and inevitably fix it. Keep in mind, this is coming from a Souls LOVER who's played these kinds of games from PS3, 360, PS4, XB1 and PS5, all the way up to PC, multiple times over including Sekiro, Bloodborne, all the knock-offs like Code Vein, community mods and everything else. I don't mind a challenge when the challenge feels fair and makes sense, but this game is hard for all the WRONG reasons. And before anyone asks: • Super spongy trash mobs still 80% you in one hit, so every encounter feels artificially drawn out and tedious • Durability loss on death punishes learning enemy move sets (why are we bringing back archaic, failed systems like this?) • Finite meals/potions punishes learning enemy move sets (why are we departing from refillable estus, a system that has worked well for years?) • Way too grindy to replace mats to make more food and repair gear after repeated deaths while learning enemy move sets • Absolutely unforgiving parry windows, and I mean brutal, plus the parry itself still sucks even when you land it (because spongy enemies) • Back stabs are nearly impossible to land and most enemies flat out can't be back stabbed and it's also garbage (because spongy enemies) • Shields aren't 100% block so far, so you're constantly taking damage unless you roll dodge everything (which leaves you with 0 stamina to parry or attack) • Enemies stun lock you very easily • Fighting 2 or more enemies is basically a GG, nearly impossible to win and the aggro range extends past what's visible on screen, so mobs just come running from off-screen constantly to catch you off guard • Sneaking is laughably terrible • You are essentially 'heavy' at all times unless you wear trash armor (I sacrificed other stats to dump 10 points into weight, which is a lot btw, and I still barely fit into the 'normal' range with starter gear, so now my stats are trash and I've gained nothing for it) • Stamina is severely lacking, you're always out of it, even if you understand Souls-like stamina management • Can't easily swap between the 15+ unique meals or potions in your inventory in the heat of combat, plus heals have a LONG cool down for some reason • 'Bonfires' don't restore health or healing items • Inventory is always full and getting it all back to your 'stash' or a vendor is very tedious (plus the stash is way too small) • The amount of backtracking you have to do in this game is absurd so far, which is exacerbated by the hideous and borderline useless map they give us • Fall damage is comically strong • Control scheme gets you killed constantly (you have to tap A to dodge, but you also have to hold it to climb, but holding it also makes you dash, which leads to you accidentally running or rolling off of tight edges way too often, which means you die to the comically strong fall damage, which means your gear takes damage, which means you have to repair it, which means you have to farm again... you see where this is going.) The list goes on and on and on and I haven't even touched on the terrible performance or optimization that everyone else has mentioned. Those are absolutely valid criticisms. You can't have a game suffering from volatile frame rate changes with an air tight combat system like this. It gets you killed. Constantly. And again, before anyone asks, I have great hardware. Liquid cooled 13th gen i9, 64GB of RAM, M.2 drive and a 3080 ti GPU. My game froze completely while trying to edit my character's face. It froze again when talking to the first NPC in the game. It froze again during combat. It constantly drops frames, especially in the main town. Essential parts of the UI are still missing. I've fallen through the map multiple times already. They need to fix all of this and the overall difficulty/balance. The devs have their work cut out for them right now. And I know it's early access (with an emphasis on EARLY), so I'll update this review again after it's had some time to sit in the corner and think about its mistakes. I really want to like this game, but they're making it very hard to. Please devs, stop reinventing the wheel as a triangle. Potential buyers, if you're on the fence, I'd say give it more time to cook. A lot more time.

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Edit 1: The first hotfix just dropped, which addresses some of the initial issues in my review, but not everything. Definitely a great sign of things to come though and I can tell this game will age well. I'll keep updating this review as more patches are implemented, but it's still a no for me right now. Today, they: • Reduced Durability Damage Taken • Reduced Repair Costs • Increased Drop Rate on Repair Powders • Reduced Stamina Costs • Reduced Fall Damage Curve and more... see the full patch notes for more details.

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Edit 2: Today was another good step in the right direction. They worked on some performance issues with a tiny dash of durability balance. I will keep updating this review as they improve the game and when I feel like it's in a good place, I will gladly change my review to a thumbsup. This is the entire point of early access. I wish the hateful people in the comments would keep that in mind. Today, they: • Improved overall rendering performance • Additional optimizations in Balanced and Performance Quality Modes • Improved overall performance of Visual Effects and Fog • Improved performance on the Ship Prologue • Additional smaller performance improvements and more... see the full patch notes for more details.

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Edit 3: Today's patch was mostly bug fixes (and lots of them), but they also squeezed in a good bit of performance fixes and a squirt of balance. I love the speed at which the devs are making adjustments to this game, I must admit. At this rate, the game will be leaps and bounds ahead of where it's at right now in just a few months. Very excited to try this game again a bit down the road. Maybe once they add the next chapter or something. Performance Improvements: • Improved area streaming, making the game feel smoother while traversing across different areas • Dynamic Resolution Scaling is now less aggressive, maintaining higher image quality • Improved culling for off-screen physics objects and characters • Fixed culling for bird animations, improving their performance in levels (there’s a lot of them!) • Additional Shader Optimizations for performance mode • Fixed a leak which increased memory and CPU usage the longer the game was played • Optimized rain and other GPU particles • Opening Cinematics and Ship Prologue Optimizations • Memory optimizations for character customization textures • Additional general CPU performance improvements and lots more... as always, see the full patch notes for more details.

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Edit 4: Another patch today with a dash of performance fixing (memory leak) and some tiny balance tuning. This will probably be my last edit until any significant changes are made to the game. I'll revisit it after major content releases, but for now it's getting uninstalled because it's just too hard in an unfun way and the performance is still atrocious. See you guys down the road.

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Edit 5: While I appreciate the developer's response, if they think I'm going to willingly post a critical negative review inside of their echo chamber, they are crazy. I am not subjecting myself to further attacks or harassment, especially at ground zero. The trolls here on Steam are off-putting enough as it is. I have no interest in creating another external account to receive more hate. If my feedback is as valuable as you claim, feel free to copy/paste it somewhere for your team to use.

Even newer update. 25th April, 2024, 15+ hours. TLDR: Game is in a good place gameplay wise, needs fine tuning. Lots of performance problems, slowly getting better. Wait for 1.0 if you want complete experience. Play EA if no self control and want to support developers. I'd still give the game a neutral rating only due to performance issues in some areas. Once these get ironed out I will most likely change this to recommended. The developers of this game are pretty damn awesome and there has been a lot of updates to fix many of the gameplay issues without completely removing anything. Still a lot of fine tuning to be done but the actual gameplay is pretty good. Combat is fantastic. There is still a fair amount of performance problems which is expected, some areas are better, some are worse. This will always be an ongoing battle. Somethings worth noting that have gotten better: Durability is mostly a non issue. Whilst it is still there, you return to town pretty frequently that you'll almost never run into an item breaking unless you're running -durability on your gear. Repair consumables also drop fairly frequently. This system feels kind of pointless now but its whatever. Basically a non issue now. Gathering also has been fixed. Faster animation, more durability. Only breaks if you are doing a hefty gathering run. Not really an issue once you get repair consumables. Below is my original negative review(s) purely for context. One at 4 hours day 1, one at 10 hours day 2. Everything below will be removed when performance gets better and I can recommend the game. ------------------------------------------------- TLDR: Game is almost worth recommending, needs a bit more time to cook. Technical issues, crashes, needs some QOL, etc. Update to this after giving it a fair chance(9-10 hours): I wish I could give this game a neutral rating for the time being. Whilst i don't think it warrants a negative review anymore, it still needs a bit of time in development for me to recommend it. This is mostly due to random crashes and technical issues in some areas. This game gets a lot better the more you play it. Once a lot of the systems start to kick in and you can get better equipment to resolve some of the issues I originally listed below, the game is a lot of fun. There are items to repair during the field without needing to go back to town, better equipment to gather faster, all the issues I was having before start to ease up bit by bit. Gathering gear breaking is still rather annoying, would like to see some random stats(if there is I haven't seen them yet) on them like any other piece. Increased speed, durability, etc. There are some other issues such as the storage in town not being accessible when using upgrade vendors. Random crashes and bugs are expected, weird frame drops in some areas but only when engaging an enemy. Over-all most of my issues listed below are due to the slowness of the early game. Once the pace picks up and you get access to more options such as consumables, the game really gets going and is hopefully worth recommending as the game develops. --------------------------------- Original Negative review below after 3-4hours. 19th april 2024; launch of game in EA. --------------------------------- TLDR: Wait till further development/release if you have any self control, you're not missing out on anything by waiting. Durability kind of sucks. This paid demo is a good contender for one of the worst durability implementations in a video game. Almost beating out Dark Souls 2 on its initial release before it was patched/DLC. (The paid demo part is a joke. If you are offended by this, don't be. I am aware what Early Access is and have nothing against devs using it to help develop their game. A lot of amazing games have come from Early Access) The durability system kind of sucks and its really the only part of the game I found poorly implemented as it just stops you from getting back to the good stuff(the entire rest of the game) Whenever you die, your equipment start to break and the only way to repair it is to go back to a vendor. If your gear breaks after too many attempts on a boss, you now have to either have backup gear for the combat style you're running or go find a vendor that can repair your stuff. When doing any parkour sections, taking off your gear is often the best way to manage durability loss. The gathering equipment breaks whilst you're trying to gather/mine, etc and if you don't have a backup in your very limited size inventory you're shit out of luck. The gathering animation is also a little bit too long at around 5 seconds per gather. This can all easily result in a death spiral where you can't afford to repair your equipment as it gets more expensive. No one is asking for an easy mode, the game difficulty over-all is pretty on point. Durability in video games isn't even a bad system, however in this game I don't think it is implemented well. It is entirely possible as the player gets further into the game most of these issues fade away, but its yet to be seen. The rest of the game is a lot of fun, from combat, to visuals, atmosphere, music and enemy design. All fantastic. Conclusion: The game is over-all pretty good but I can't recommend the game in its current state. One of the core mechanics kind of sucks to play with. There are some performance issues and crashes even on fairly high-end rigs. It has a fair way to go and even though I am giving this a negative review, I have a lot of faith in this dev team based on their previous titles and look forward to its release somewhere in the future. If I find the game more enjoyable in the future my mind is more than open to being changed into a positive review.

Had a little fun in the tutorial area, but I'm going to give it some time off now. This is a gem in the making so I'm not going to refund it, just wait for stuff to get fixed and update my review accordingly. Here is what I like and didn't like about the game.

The Good:

1. The game is beautiful. I love the art style and the painted look of the game. It's highly stylized, but dark. Reminds me of the art direction of Dishonored. The look is consistent and professional. The game looks like it costs more than it does. 2. Moving and hitting stuff is satisfying and feels right. I'm not taking this for granted. I've refunded games after 5 minutes of gameplay in the past for general unpolished clunkiness. This isn't it. 3. This is a unique game. You never played something like this before, so don't buy this if you expect Diablo mixed with Dark Souls. Yes, it combines mechanics from similar games, but the end result is completely different. It won't shower you with loot. The itemization is meticulous and purposeful. There is some randomization, but only in the correct places. Combat utilizes space differently than Souls games, because of the camera angle. This game prides itself on doing things differently. I appreciate that. 4. It's rich in customization. Items are random, therefore, you need to make decisions on the fly. You can look up a build online, but if you find a really cool item for something else, that won't help you much. It encourages learning the game and staying in the moment, instead of going straight to some wiki. I love that. 5. A cinematic experience. I'm very much intrigued by the story and the characters right from the start. Everything is voice acted and the characters have personalities. I really hope the game gets to a stable state so I wont have to watch everything online.

The Bad:

1. Resource collecting?. Some mechanics have no place in this game to the point I wonder how they even got there. Maybe I haven't advanced in the game enough for them to become interesting, but resource collecting just isn't fun. This isn't Minecraft or Rust. I would much rather collect stuff by doing the main thing (fighting) and not waste time hacking a tree or smashing some rocks. 2. Penalties. I'm okay with death penalties, as long as they're fitting. Durability loss on death makes sense in Diablo, not in a game where you die 50 times to a boss to learn it's attack patterns. It's been mentioned a lot, but I can't stress this enough. It's not about how much of it you lose. It's about why you lose it in the first place. It doesn't add anything, just bothersome. 3. The active item wheel / cross from Dark Souls doesn't work here, the game is too fast for that. I would rather have one of those item wheels that pause the game (or not pause it) and allow me to pick any item on the fly. The way it is implemented now is very cumbersome because there are many items to pick from and a lot of them are highly situational moment to moment. So committing to one or two at a time eliminates the strategy of using the right item at the right time. Like I said, this is a unique game, so a new control system is required. 4. It tries too hard to be a platformer when the game isn't designed around that idea. You can't actively jump in this game and you use the same buttom to leap from a ledge, climb, dodge, sprint... That's all fine by me, until the game punishes me for falling off stuff. Then it becomes a problem. Makes you feel like the game tries to catch too much instead of sticking to what makes it good.

The Ugly:

1. Performance Issues. The game has no place being this heavy, especially with its non-realistic art style. Optimization is very much needed here. Some things took so long to render I didn't even get to see them fully rendered. There were frame drops and freezes while I was on "Performance" graphics mode. 2. It needs better tutorials. The UI is cluttered with numbers and symbols without any prior explanation. Any in-game tutorial would be welcome, even a help page or something I can read. Same for any new keyword or window page available. One thing I really like is games that "hide" certain elements from the UI at the start and the reveal them when they become relevant. 3. Telegraphing is not very good. In this game, you see the action from very far away, so extra indication for attacks would be very welcome. I love that the game expects me to see some guy pulling out a grenade from his pocket from within a group of 4 enemies, but in reality, I'm not going to see that and I have no idea where it's going to land. --- Like I said, I hope the game gets better so I can rewrite this review. I think it has a lot of potential, but I don't want to spoil my experience with an unfinished product.

No click to move. Just came off a flicker strike build and no i'm moving slower than a snail with the funky controls. No thanks.

Unfortunately, this game is not for me I am afraid. I wish there was a third option when leaving reviews, but I would recommend it to anyone that likes games in this genre. This game is really pretty, visually appealing, highly stylized and looks very polished, sounds polished as well. The world looks great. This art style lends itself to the game and its story really well and it shows. My gripes with this game is that while emulating the souls-like combat formula, I think it sorely misses the mark, at least for me. Now, I've only played DS3 which isn't much, but one thing that always pops up in my mind when think of this combat system is - rhythm. The combat has rhythm from the very beginning and keeps that rhythm until the end. No Rest For the Wicked, to me at least, doesn't have that crucial rhythm that makes souls-like games tick. While Dark Souls employs 3rd person cam, No rest for the wicked is asymmetrical. With that it comes with a myriad of issues; really hard time tracking your stamina as you're rolling around, or just attacking, getting attacked or keeping eyes on your poise meter. I am not sure why they decided to center this particular element of the HUD in the center in a small circle around your character, and not in a static place on the screen as you would in any other game in the genre. Exploration in this game while initially fun and interesting, becomes quite bothersome after you've gone around the same area 10+ times. For some reason, someone made the choice to turn the exploration into an active part of material gathering and grinding in this game. It's especially clear after you reach the town and the entire first area 'resets' with new mobs, and, you guessed it, every single chest in that area has been reset as well. This becomes incredibly annoying since you're not going to find anything different, and the sense of wonder, and discovery is quickly lost as you understand that the game wants you to keep opening the same chests over and over to get materials that you can use to upgrade, or use them for something else. Which leads me to my next pain point - the pacing and overall progression of this game is all over the place. The game just inundates you with loot at the beginning. Not good loot, just loot, akin to Destiny 2. Oh, and you have limited inventory slots. And if you happen to explore around the first area a lot, you would need to delete items to make space :). Nifty. You can't salvage any of the equipment for materials mind you, you can just sell them, which allows you to gather quite a lot of money early on if you explore, and re-explore every nook and cranny. Which makes it completely wack cuz you get a shit ton of money early on, but you can't really upgrade your gear all that much cuz every item past +1 and +2 requires a lot more materials that you need to refine, and some that you don't have access to yet. Refining materials can only happen if you upgrade each individual shop in the town. But upgrading the structures has a literal time gate on it. So if you just want to upgrade your blacksmith, refine some shit, upgrade and get on with exploring/ fighting - tough luck, idiot, you have to wait an hour. Pair this time gate with areas that don't refresh upon your death, and enemies that spawn after a timer, unsure how long, and you end up just walking around aimlessly in areas hoping to find something new, more loot, or materials. Material gathering while engaging gets annoying really fast. Having to repeatedly spam the button at the right time to maybe get extra, or rarer materials feels gratifying at first, but when you end up running around empty areas cuz you got nothing to do, and you just decide to chop a tree it feels quite bad tbh. At the end I feel that while these systems are hand picked from various games, the implementation, at least at this stage, is not very good.

Finally — a next-gen ARPG that doesn’t waste your time or your hardware. No Rest for the Wicked nails everything it sets out to do. The combat is weighty and deliberate, the world is layered and atmospheric, and the progression system feels meaningful without the usual grind-for-the-sake-of-it bloat. But what really sets it apart? Performance. I’m running this on a RTX 5070 Ti + i9-12900K + 32GB DDR5. At 4K Ultra with DLSS on Quality, I’m getting a stable 120fps in dense areas without frame generation. No stuttering, no VRAM spikes, no texture pop-in. Just clean, sharp, consistent gameplay. It’s rare to see a game this visually rich run this smoothly on launch — and it’s appreciated. The new Breach expansion dropped today and didn’t tank performance either. More enemies, more chaos, still smooth. This is how games should be made in 2025. Optimized, polished, deep, and respectful of your time and rig. Easily one of the best games ive played ever and im a 35yo arpg/rpg/mmo vet. I will be surprised if this dosnt win GOTY on full release (when it does eventually).