Reviews from

in the past


[Review as of chapter 5]
Someone had told me long back that this game was adapted from a popular french D&D like audio-show, so had my eyes on this one for a long while. Naheulbeuk is a curious case where the game looks and feels like a western RPG but is a rather linear experience with fixed characters resembling more a JRPG. Now why am I reviewing this when I'm not even close to completing it? Quite frankly I'm bored already even though I enjoyed my time with it.

This is one of those games where the quality really depends on what you expect to get out of it. Are you someone who prioritizes gameplay above all? Good, this game prioritizes that too, so lets talk about it. The tactical turned based combat is fairly well designed, the inspiration rather obviously being Divinity Original Sin 1 and Xcom. The skill trees feel a bit lacking in variety but you get a steady supply of useful abilities to keep battles from getting monotonous. Despite the linear nature of the game, there's enough of an incentive to explore and get new loot too. There are very few fluff battles apart from a couple of side quests. It's apparent that fights in the main quest are designed carefully since the game always forces the starting position of both enemies and your party, often in inconvenient places and every time I only barely made it out alive. Now for me, this neither a positive or negative since the what you gain in the dev's careful design, you lose in freedom present in something like D:OS.
What does grind my gears is the dice rolls in this game, I urge everyone to play on lower difficulty if you prefer your strategy to shine in battle instead of dice rolls. I'm not sure but suspect the game influences dice based on difficulty. The game takes an absurd pride in crit failures, going so far as to design a weird system which rewards you with some abilities the more crit failures you have. I understand the value of % chance in tactical combat, but there's a fine like between amusing moments of failure/success and moments that make you want to tear your hair out and I'm afraid this game crosses that.

But what about the story, you may ask as that's the cornerstone of RPGs in general. I would be remiss to mention that given that I haven't finished the game, judging the story would be a mistake now. Be that as it may, what I've seen didn't fill me with confidence. There's a prevalent comedic vibe to the whole writing here that saves it from mediocre drudgery but the jokes are also very hit or miss, more misses for me. Since I knew the game was French in origin I switched to that VO at first and while it's certainly better than the English VO for most of the cast, I wasn't a fan of how the wizard and the dwarf sounded so switched back. Maybe jokes land more in french? Could be I wouldn't know until I get better at the language.
That brings me to the characters, which are certainly there. Like, every character is just a parody of their class without the extra spice to make them stand out. There's 1 character in the whole party that you have choice in picking who had her own quest but it's just an excuse for comedy and combat that anything meaningful. I have been watching the Critical Role Vox Machina animated adaptation recently and while the writing isn't anything to write home about, the characters are all lovable and worth following in their adventure. That is not the case here.

Overall Naheulbeuk is an interesting game with fun combat that's worth playing in small chunks if you get that DOS itch. It's certainly a cut above most turn based games I've played. I myself will probably return someday to finish it, who knows, maybe the story improves later on.

decade old pop culture references are not the same as funny writing

which is unfortunate because I kind of wanted to enjoy a little fantasy xcom-type thing

Turn-Based Dungeon Crawler, not really interested in but has a funny artstyle and it appears that it has a very goofy silly atmosphere and world.

mid. the gameplay is functional but bland tactics. all the combat starts feeling the same. the writing is ass. overall nothing particularly interesting, and a lot of little annoying things

I covered this game as part of my coverage of the Xbox Game Pass for April 2022

A strategy RPG with humor… ugh that humor.

They only mention the name of this game once so far so I probably got this wrong. Anyway the Dungeon of hard name to pronounce is here, and it’s a rather solid Strategy RPG where players have to fight their way through encounters for the story. It’s far more story than random encounters. I think every encounter here is scripted. After the tutorial section, where you keep gaining your initial party after they were split up, the story switches to a point where a random character joins your party, replacing an established character, then you get into a fight which you win, and that character who joined leaves. Then you find another character and rinse and repeat.

The other side of the experience is there’s a lot of writing here. It’s written in a style fans of D&D might recognize from when they’re hanging around and playing D&D and telling stupid jokes or making fun of a campaign. It works with friends because it’s the in-jokes and humor you’re used to. Honestly though, the writing here doesn’t work for me. The jokes are usually weak, but it also has a large party, and almost every conversation has to go around and every character has to say something, usually trying to be funny, but again falling flat.

Pick this up if you like Strategy RPGs if you like this humor that’s fine but after a couple of hours I was finding it to be torturous and without the writing, the fights lacked a purpose. If you like jokes about D&D Tropes and pop culture references, this might work. It’s based on a French podcast but I struggled with this writing. The thing is some people love the style of the writing, so maybe it’s me.

If you want to see the video this was taken of, or more from me on the Xbox Game Pass, check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntlfep_luQw




Wasn't working right on my steam deck.

Rol super estereotipado, con un bárbaro idiota, un ladrón inútil y mil cosas por el estilo. Ellos mismos se lo toman a broma, y si entras en ella tienes un juego táctico bien equilibrado donde no será raro que un personaje muera una o dos veces por combate si no estas atento. Ellos suelen ser más y pegar más fuerte, por suerte tu eres más listo y puedes revivir un número limitado de veces.

Como malo destacar que no le he encontrado ningún uso al dinero. Una vez tienes pociones y vendas, no tiene mucho sentido comprar nada, a la que busques un poco te encuentras de todo. También hay personajes claramente más útiles que otros, pero supongo que esa es la gracia. Quitando eso, un buen juego que recomiendo.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for September 2022, this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before October 4th, 2022, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

D&D humor for good or bad.

I hate this game’s name because I’m sure I’m butchering it but Dungeon of Unnecessarily long name is based on a French D&D podcast of a similar name, though obviously in French. A group of 7 adventures go into a colorful dungeon and work their way through a series of encounters with the goal of loot, loot, and more loot. The combat here is good, and the progression of the game will keep the player engaged, with one of the party members usually being swapped out for a visiting character. There’s English voice acting that sometimes works, though I’m showing one that didn’t.

The real problem is the humor and writing here aren’t great. If you’re a fan of the podcast, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this title, and if you love D&D jokes, you’ll probably get a kick out of this, however, I struggle with this. I played this for Game Pass, but replaying it now made me realize the core issue. These are not new jokes, A custodian named Jan Hitor, a dwarf shouting “Nothing goes over my head”, Dwarves and Elves fighting, a cowardly thief… Someone likes these jokes as the game is popular, but I found them tired.

Pick this up if you like the comedy, though I recommend you watch someone play this for half an hour and then make a decision. Some people like this, but personally, I didn’t enjoy either playing for four hours or playing it again here. On the other hand, if you do like the humor the tactical gameplay is great, and there are four different difficulties so there should be the right challenge for however you want to play this game.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/KaOfaR3TjNI

Juego con un sentido del humor y personajes (y doblaje) geniales que presenta un concepto e historia interesantes.

Sin embargo con el tiempo y falta de novedades en el elenco, se diluye la novedad y magia inicial y se hace demasiado largo.

🍎/🍉

Fantastic turn-based tactical RPG albeit mostly linear. No grinding though as each encounter can only occur once. I really like the way character traits are derived from attributes. No crafting which might be a plus or a minus. Nice combos of debuffs e.g. a frightened enemy has to run away fro all of their movement but if they have slashed tendons then they lose HP for each step taken.

Awful unbalanced difficulty, writing hits like 1/10th of the time, constant retracking needed. Nuh uh, bad bad not good.

Silly little tactics rpg game with very talented artists and animators and deadbeat drooling Deadpool stans writing the jokes.