[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.
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.