No Rest For The Wicked Early Access came out today, and I played for 23 and a half hours and beat everything in the game. I beat the main story, all the side quests, all the rewards, all the challenges, and after you've done all that, there's a bit of endgame, and I played some of that, too. I could have gone further in the "crucible part" of the endgame, but other than that, I beat everything the game has to offer so far, so I wanted to do a review.

After playing the game, many things went well, and there is much room for improvement. I'm a Dark Souls and Elden Ring lover. One of the most frequent questions people ask about this game is whether it's more like Dark Souls or ARPG, and to me, it feels like a combination of both genres for many different reasons; first of all, the combat is prolonged and very organized, it's not like "Last Epoch" or "Diablo 4" unless you're fighting an Uber boss. Still, even every rat in this game's simple enemy category can trouble you. For example, I fought a couple of bosses and got 99% of their health; I made a mistake, took 100 damage for it, and died instantly. If you do one thing wrong, you can be punished instantly. You're going to die a lot, but that's not going to stop you from trying. That way, you can level up more, but it will also require much effort. That's why the game always feels quite rugged. The maximum level limit in the game is currently 30. I am currently at level 30 and cannot level up any further.

I have a robust system that I always play on Max settings and I never had any problems; it was very nice. Many people who didn't have such a great system struggled and were surprised and quite upset that this was Early Access. Of course, DLSS will come. We'll hope they do more development, and then it should come to console and other things, but many people voiced that they had performance issues; some had to return the game outright because even some streamers with pretty good PCs weren't running. I didn't have that problem with anything else performance-related. I played the game with the controller, and this game is designed for controllers. When I tried it with a keyboard and mouse duo, the game felt restricted to me. For this reason, I can understand the complaints of those who use Mouse+Keyboard.

I've been waiting for this game for a long time and loved it. The environment was beautiful, the story was excellent, and I loved the voice acting; it was one of the best I've ever heard in any game. It was an incredible job. I enjoyed the detail of the bosses, and I was very impressed. I enjoyed fighting different types of enemies on various maps. I loved the little puzzles I encountered on the maps and the secrets they put everywhere; it was very cool. Overall, I also liked the items and the process of choosing and upgrading different weapons. Apart from that, I felt good when I got some health regeneration, a vital mechanic in the survival game.

Many streamers I read or watch constantly talk about the difficulty and brutality of the game and discuss it. Dear friends, yes, you will die a lot. You die a lot. In this sense, there is no problem. The biggest problem is that when you die, you lose the durability of everything. As a result, your equipment breaks. Immediately afterward, you move to a town called Sacrament. And after you go to the Sacrament, you have to go to the blacksmith on the left-hand step; okay, you go to the blacksmith, you repair your equipment, and then you go on your merry way, right? I hear a lot of people saying that stamina is one of the biggest problems; stamina is a stupid mechanic to them because they die all the time. Then you must go back to the blacksmith and spend gold. This sucks for most players, and I have no problem with that! I don't have a problem with the penalty for dying. I'm familiar with that from the Dark Souls series. I don't have a problem with paying gold, and I don't have a problem with gold being valuable. I wish the blacksmith were closer, but that's a trivial matter now.

Let's get to the point where this could be more pleasant. Your gathering tools are durable! Your shovel, your pickaxe, your fishing rod, and your woodcutter's axe. These have durability, and it's pretty unpleasant to have durability on them. For example, you have a place to go for your mining pickaxe. You have reached there. Do you want to know what happens to me every time? Please forget the deaths you have experienced. I extract two or three ore nodes, and my pickaxe breaks. When the durability reaches zero, it breaks instantly. Your pickaxe is destroyed. So, whenever I'm halfway through mining, I must keep buying new pickaxes. I have to carry an extra shovel and pickaxe with me, but in the meantime, what I'm carrying is weighing me down, slowing down, and restricting my movement. This system could be better. At the very least, the durability mechanic should be eliminated for gathering tools like pickaxes, shovels, and axes as soon as possible. At the very least, prevent my pickaxe or axe from completely disappearing when it runs out of stamina. Let me go with these items and repair them. Buying new ones is both inconvenient and expensive. Also, the rate at which these tools lose their durability is relatively high. This needs to be examined tremendously.

My biggest problem with the game is the same as what everyone else has said, and I can describe it to you. This game has the worst inventory and stash management I've ever played. I can't even begin to describe in words how bad it is. First, if you just started playing, you might not notice it. It takes a while to see it, but you will feel the impact once you start playing. Looking at each item individually and not being able to compare between items is a considerable shortcoming. The developers must overhaul the inventory management as soon as possible to make it easier.

At one point in the game, you will buy a house. I immediately purchased a house. What was the first thing I did in my house? I put as many stashes of 20 slots in it as possible. This made me very angry because the game tells you: Hey, take this shovel, cut down this tree, fishes there, okay? I'm doing the activities that you want me to do. I'm playing the game, and you need to do that because there are a lot of different crafting and building your city, as well as stuff like that. If you want to pressure me not to collect everything reasonably, you have to let me extract my ore/materials in peace. Our current inventory management system will drive people crazy when players go far enough. For this, the developers should immediately simplify and fix this system.

One of my favorite things about the game is that you mustn't block it directly when fighting an enemy. Parrying or rolling towards them is one of the best moves to make. Once you memorize the attack patterns of monsters in general, you will start to enjoy the fights more. Yes, but after continuously gaining experience and beating everything, you'll want more content. But it's important to remember that the game is still in early access. More content and mechanics will come to the game. There are already roadmaps available. The game plays itself even as it is. The locations, the color palette, and the voiceovers are perfect. I look at the works company positively. The shortcomings and problems in this game can be easily fixed. Since it is early access, there will be performance issues. However, adding technologies like DLSS and Frame Generation to the game will help solve these problems. Keyboard mouse controls can be improved. By fixing the stash and inventory area and systems, the game can come to a much better position.

I loved this game like crazy and look forward to playing it again when some updates come out. This is my brutally honest opinion of the game. This game finds a satisfying middle ground between Souls like ARPG and loot games. Still, I can't wait to see where the makers vision leads.

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