I was really anticipated for this release, since i adore moon studios for their ori masterpieces and also love dark fantasy rpgs and character action games in general. since i don't care much about the diablo stereotype of arpgs, their promise about changing up the genre instantly got me hooked. i've bought no rest for the wicked the moment it got released and was genuinely satisfied from what is there already and also really surprised by the sheer amount of negative reviews and overly harsh critique for a day 1 early access release, as it turned out no rest for the wicked is a masterpiece in the making.

what i liked:


(+) immersion and atmosphere is definitely one of it's biggest strengths. everything works out so well and this one will shape into one of the best dark fantasy experiences ever made.

(+) the combat is also one of the major selling points of the game. it's rather slow and "methodical", feels heavy and impactful - which i personally like a lot. enemy attacks are well telegraphed and good to read, which is pretty impressive for an iso game with a fixed camera. probably one of the best isometric action combat systems ever created to date, even in this early version of the game.

(+) build variety is already decent. a lot of different weapons, scaling with different stats and up to 4 weapon arts per weapon, which can be extracted from other weapons to mix and match your favorite setup.

(+) interaction with your surroundings is stunning for an isometric game and feels very well naturally implemented in the best possible way.

(+) absolutely loving the lore and world building - a lot of flavor texts and backstory going on. gimme more!

(+) obviously can't say much about story as a whole, but what's already in the game, is really intriguing and well made. can't wait for more!

(+) level design is magnificent and well thought out. there's a lot of connectivity going and secrets all over the place. exploration will be rewarded.

(+) kinda liking the game-play loop in general. you'll be backtracking a lot after finishing the story for dailies and weeklies, especially at this stage since there aren't as many levels live yet, but things are always changing a bit. enemies grow not only in power level, but will be replaced with other types and variants as well to keep things fresh. hell, i've even had an occurrence where suddenly a hole in the wall which served as a passage got shut down.

(+) superb art style and graphics. the art direction is heavily stylized, grimy and generally very dark - absolutely lovely. lightning and shadows doing a lot of work as well.

(+) ost and sound design is top notch. calm, somber and enigmatic most of the time, but not shy to spice things up at the right moment. vinyl when?

(+) the voice over is genuinely great! they've got a decent cast of voice actors and every single npc in the game is fully voiced, even the more trivial ones, whom don't even serve a purpose for a quest or so. excellent.

(+) dialogue quality / writing is pretty forceful as well. even the more subsidiary npcs got some interesting bits and pieces to say, for the most part.

(+) town development - it's lovely to upgrade the merchants and see the city grow in actuality.

(+) didn't expect player housing at all and i like it. placing can be a tad bit finicky and i can't tell how in depth it will be, but it's a neat touch for sure.

(+) reasonable crafting to soothe the equipment rng.

(+) physics are so well made. it's always a pleasure to watch a tree falling down a hill or so. small things like that make the game really stand out.


what felt debatable to me:


(~) map markers definitely coming in handy for the various chests and resources, but they're way too limited to make real use of. there shouldn't be a cap for placing markers on the map, at least for the more generic ones. also there has to be an option in the future to show markers only on the map and not on the edges of the screen while playing, it just hurts the immersion and serves basically no real purpose as it is.

(~) people complained a lot about the repair costs in a game with a higher difficulty and souls combat. i can tell you, it's whatever. even if you're dying a lot, the repairs are dirt cheap and you'll have a steady income of money anyway.

(~) another complaint was about the inventory size. let me tell you as much, it's not as restrictive as people make it out to be and part of the character progression. not going to say much more, because of potential spoilers.

(~) missing qol features - it's an early access game. nothing more to say. if you can't handle missing qol, better stop playing early access games in general. you're paying for play-testing an unfinished game.

(~) performance issues - performance isn't the best. demanding on the hardware, low overall fps, some frame-drops here and there, but at the end of the day the game is more than playable as it is. haven't had a single crash so far. also same as qol features - this game just released into early access, performance instabilities are more than expected.

(~) equipment weight. it's fine, not much more to say. if you've played souls or which is using a similar approach to equipment weight, you won't have a single issue. then again if you mindlessly put on every single item (especially in the beginning) without activating a single brain cell.. well, you'll be punished harshly for doing so. fighting overweight is no joy. it's kinda funny, the first weapon you'll find after the tutorial is a heavy greatsword (at least in my case), so dipping into heavy equipment weight is much expected. either get a more lightweight weapon or don't equip an armor on every single slot until you put enough points into the appropriate equipment weight stat.


what i didn't like:


(-) obtaining the resting bonus takes 4 hours and only if you're sleeping in a tavern bad. concept is neat, takes too long to achieve tho.

(-) farming clay is kinda too rng for my taste, especially compared to other resources.

(-) at times the information in dailies is rather sparse and you have to search blindly for the last missing enemy.

(-) food and utility quick slot items reset to a default or random (i don't get the logic) item after every game restart. pretty annoying, i have to admit. should be an easy fix tho.


I'll update this review as i keep playing and as soon as updates or bigger changes coming in.

No Rest For GPU

For now it's definitely "no".
The game is great in it's core, combat is cool, exploring is fun, but there are so many things that just make no sense or very badly executed. Sometimes I feel like some things work as they do just to make me waste more time.

- Why can you fast-travel to only one last checkpoint? What does it change? Only the fact that to farm things you must walk through whole location one more time instead of teleport - farm trees - comeback. In all souls-like games you are not limited in this because WALKING IS NOT FUN.
- Why crafting and upgrading in NPCs doesn't use your resources you have in storages? Just to make you walk between chest and craft station/NPC to waste more time.
- Why your gear must lose ANY durability upon death? What does it change? Repairing costs very low so it only makes you waste more time to fast-travel to town, walk around it to find the blacksmith, press few buttons, walk back to fast-travel point and get back to actual gameplay. Even japanese guys finally got to their senses and made fast-travel in Elden Ring free at any spot of the map instead of only from bonefires. Because WALKING IS STILL NOT FUN.
- Why do I must kill difficult bosses to increase one of FOUR inventories or unlock rings slots or unlock gear slots? The chosen one of ancient Cerim race DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO USE HIS FINGERS WITHOUT DRINKING ROTTEN BLOOD. Are you seriuos? In most Souls-like games when you kill bosses you get unique weapons or spells. In No Rest for the Wicked when you kill bosses you get 5 inventory slots. This is ridiculous. If you wanted to make progression limited to boss fights this is definitely not the way.
- Why inventory is limited at all? What does it add to the game? Again, only the fact that once in 30 minutes you MUST fast-travel back to town (and to do so you MUST first walk to the checkpoint), walk around it to find any vendor, sell all the junk, walk around the town to your storages, put all other junk to your storage, walk back to checkpoint to fast-travel back to location to continue actually playing. WALKING IS NOT A GAMEPLAY, PLEASE DEVS OMG. And no, nothing will change in town what you would need to see, nothing happens there at all, it's absolutely static town like in any other diablo-like game.
- Why do I need to farm freakin trees and ore to build things in town? Why these resources are being respawned over REAL TIME? Why can't I just buy them from vendors? This is so insane time wasting which just makes you walk around locations every ACTUAL REAL day over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. YES, THIS MANY TIMES. To just cut damned trees. In diablo-killing souls-like reinventing the genre as devs say in game description. The only genre this game reinvents is Stardew Valley-like farm-sims, making it most boring in all possible ways and forcing you to fight enemies sometimes which distract you from farming damned trees. I won't lie if I say that 60% of gameplay is walking around to farm this ♥♥♥♥ trees and ores. Some of my playing sessions were 100% of grinding resources like in some MMO. But what makes it even worth, MMO core gameplay isn't that demanding, you can farm things in relaxed pace. Here you must fight respawned enemies, which get harder and harder throughout the game even in old locations, and participate in a roulette jumping mechanic for couple of pine logs.
- Jumping and all this traversal overall is disaster. 95% of deaths in game for me were in this ♥♥♥♥ cave with mushroom and last cave location. You almost can't control or see where exactly character will jump, it's very hard to find out can you actually jump that long or not because of camera perspective. Everything connected to traversal feels just like a random stuff.
- Why there's daily and weekly quests like in some mobile game? Why can't I get all of these quests at once to do ONE run around old location to complete them all? No, you must pick one - walk over whole location, kill all enemies, do the quest, walk back to checkpoint, fast-travel to town, walk around town to quest-giver, claim reward for one quest, pick another, walk back to checkpoint, fast-travel back to last checkpoint, walk around location again to find new spawned enemies, kill them, walk back to checkpoint, fast-travel back to town, walk around town to quest-giver, claim reward for this quest, pick next... This is just so painful oh my god. I can actually feel how devs hate me for playing the game and just want to waste as much of my time as they can.
- HUD needs lots of polishing. In most fights you actually can't see how much HP, stamina or focus you have, because of VFXs and animations.

Don't misunderstand me, I really liked some parts of the game. Exploring overall is good, fighting is incredible, bosses are fun (yet very easy), animations and weapon move-sets are ingenious, I really want to start over and try other builds, but I wont till full release because all this is only 10% of your gameplay. Other 90% is WALKING.