No Rest for the Wicked preview — Too wicked right now

No Rest for the Wicked is the newest title from the developers of the Ori series, and sets out to reinvent the genre of punishing isometric action role playing games. The game is only out in Early Access via Steam on PC, with a projected 1.0 launch on consoles later as well. As it currently stands, the game has roughly 15-20 hours of content and is a single player only experience, with the developers adding multiplayer in the first major update. The game is set in the year 841 where you assume the role of a holy warrior known as Cerim who must journey to the island of Isola Sacra to investigate a plague known as the “Pestilence”. 

To preface this preview, I’ve played a ton of Souls-like games, including all the originals from FromSoftware themselves, along with 3rd party titles such as Lords of the Fallen and Nioh. I know what is or isn’t a good Souls-like game or not, and I’m not so sure this game is. No Rest for the Wicked tries really hard to fit itself into the aforementioned genre, going so far as to claim to be a reinvention, but I don’t think that’s the case whatsoever. There are several mechanics in the game that don’t make a lot of sense and do nothing but frustrate the player.

For starters, you don’t lose any “souls” upon death, but instead every single piece of equipment you’re wearing loses durability. You do keep your experience, which can be used to level up classic stats such as strength or dexterity. Die enough times and all your gear breaks, which then forces you to pay money to get it repaired from the blacksmith. This means that the game literally punishes you for trying to learn it through trial and error, and the more you struggle, the more you’re going to be punished. Moon Studios have addressed this feedback somewhat already by reducing the durability loss upon death but the core mechanic remains. And sadly, I think it’s here to stay.

Moving on, there’s no concept of “bonfires” or rest points here. You can locate and activate span points, but you cannot rest there to heal or replenish any potion flasks. In fact, there’s no Estus flask equivalent at all here, as all healing items must be crafted or cooked. You must first discover a recipe to a dish, farm and gather all the ingredients for said dish, then cook it at a fireplace. If you spent all your cooked dishes on a boss fight and died, well too bad because now you have no more healing items. Combined with the durability mechanic, if I struggle to fight a boss over and over again, I’m also forced to wait for mushrooms and herbs to respawn so I can cook my stew again.

No Rest for the Wicked puts an immense emphasis on gathering materials and hoarding them for crafting or cooking later on. This means you’ll not only be gathering plants and herbs, but also mining ore with a pickaxe, chopping down trees with an ax, digging up clay with a shovel, and fishing with a pole. Keep in mind all of these tools lose durability too when you use them. Even worse, you have to contend with a limited inventory. Oh my inventory is full, but you need to farm for some more mushrooms to cook, but you can’t put them in your bag? Too bad, the game says. This game also has one of the worst inventory management systems I have ever seen. Get ready to craft tons of chests in your house and sift through dozens of items before getting your desired loadout.

Now let’s talk about the meat and potatoes of combat, and what truly makes it a disappointing Souls-like title. The game has all the basics like stamina-based movement, telegraphed attacks, equipment load, and enemies that hit like a truck. Sounds pretty standard right? Well it is, for the most part, with the exception of several mechanics that make combat a frustrating mess. There are no i-frames when you dodge, so unless you’re completely out of the way of an incoming attack, you will get hit and you will get staggered. Bigger enemies, especially bosses, can actually stun-lock you if you get hit, and will land subsequent hits on you before you can recover from the first. This is not to mention the fixed angle perspective of the game that can blur your vision even further given the game’s already dark and rainy color palette.

I’m not surprised that even large, heavy charged attacks from you won’t stagger an enemy out of their attack animation but a measly light attack from them will stagger you. It’s as if the game is trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. The range and tracking on every single enemy is astonishingly large too, with plenty of attacks that don’t look like they’ll hit you, but they do anyway. Usually if you’re struggling in a Souls-like game, you can farm enemies to level up a bit more to make yourself a bit stronger. No Rest for the Wicked said nope, as enemies do not respawn when you die, so there’s no farming or grinding to do whatsoever. That being said, enemies do respawn when the Fog of War covers up a previously visited zone, but not when you’re currently in one. It’s time to beat your head until you can beat the boss.

The game needs to improve significantly in the performance department. The minimum specs require a GTX 970 whereas the recommended specs require an RTX 3070TI, with at least 16 GB of RAM. My setup consists of an RTX 3080 with 32GB of RAM and it struggles to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second. There are frequent stutters and frame rate dips down to the 40s when in combat, which is pretty shocking and disappointing to say the least. The developers have already pushed out two hot fixes that addressed some of these issues, but as a whole, No Rest for the Wicked needs a lot more work. If you have a 970 or 1070, don’t even bother buying the game.

The other biggest issue that needs addressing is the inability to rebind controls. Yes, there is controller support, but only the mappings for an Xbox controller. It would be nice to see button mappings for the DualSense controller as well. As the game currently stands, the default mouse and keyboard bindings are awkward and awful, and my fingers hurt after playing for a while. You move via the WASD keys, using the left click on your mouse to attack and the space bar to dodge. Items and other consumables are mapped to random letter keys, like F to eat food.

I expected a lot more coming from the developers of the Ori series. In its current state, I cannot recommend No Rest for the Wicked, even if you’re a Souls veteran or someone looking for an immense challenge. There is a decent amount of content, and you can even buy and deck out your own house in town, but this game tries to be hard for the sake of being hard, and throws in unnecessary mechanics to make your experience even more frustrating. That on top of the poor technical performance means that the game needs a lot more time in the oven. 

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