Necro Story Review - A Hilarious Creature-Collecting RPG With A Dark Twist
Necro Story, a comedic creature-collecting RPG where an evil necromancer saves humanity. Discover unique mechanics, witty banter, and deep strategy in this standout 2024 indie game!
Rablo Games is back with another RPG full of humor from beginning to end. While Pokémon might be the go-to comparison for creature collecting, this game takes a darker turn. Instead of capturing creatures in a ball, you capture their souls to fight alongside you. This is the second game I’ve played this month with this mechanic—the other being The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom—and I’m loving them both.
Necro Story Story
Necro Story begins when an evil necromancer is awoken from his eternal slumber by a ghost named Vivi, who becomes your companion throughout the game. She informs you that the human race is dead, and it’s up to you and her to save them from the Upperworld, which is technically the underworld/hell. With your annoyingly charming companion Vivi, your main healer, you navigate different worlds, castles, and even Valhalla as you make your way to your goal. And Vivi isn’t your only companion.
Turn-Based Real-Time
Let’s take a look at the gameplay. I already touched on the creature collecting, but it’s the way you do it that’s unique. After killing an enemy, their soul floats out, and using your mouse, you have to click on them to capture the soul and gain mana. Mana is crucial in the game, so you don’t want to miss out on them, though at times they can float away from you very quickly.
You have a mirror that comes into play as you collect these souls, and once it’s filled and turns blue, you take the soul of the creature you want to collect and throw it at the mirror. Now, this raptor, evil angel, or even an ice dragon can become part of your crew. The ice dragon only temporarily joining is one of the funniest parts of the game. The necromancer is lazy and doesn’t want to climb a huge mountain, so he fights the ice dragon just to collect it and use it to get to the top. It’s a comedic break that brings you to the second half of the game.
You also collect items that upgrade your stats like healing, magic, strength, and more, which you equip to Vivi and your creatures. They can hold up to two items at a time. As you level up, you unlock new necromancy spells that can poison enemies, summon skeletons and zombies, and many more. The upgrades and in-depth skill tree give you the tools to create your own style of gameplay. I favored the poison spells that damage poisoned enemies and spread poison to others.
After the first main area, you get to a demon, your typical big boss, and after defeating them, you can sign a Dark Pact that adds them as one of your necromancy spells. Think summoning Ifrit from Final Fantasy, except these demons are chatty.
Before each battle, you have the option to change around your team, items, spells, or skills. It’s a nice touch to be ready for each battle, giving you a heads-up before jumping in blind—a feature more RPGs need.
You will enjoy new ways to defeat enemies, collect souls, and ultimately catch them all! Most of the boss battles are straightforward and indicate when you can’t attack them, and it only becomes more difficult over time. You will need to do some occasional grinding to level up yourself and your team. By the endgame, everyone on my team was between levels 30-35.
One of the items you collect is a staff that is alive and can talk to you. It roasts you for having a crush on Vivi and even speaks about how he has everything she needs in a man. The staff begs you to equip it and jumps in and out of the story to help you out on occasion.
Now that we've explored the core gameplay, let's dive into the game's unique visual style.
Tones and Colors
The whole game has an oil pastel look that is very beautiful. It isn’t something loud or in-your-face graphically, but the style feels inviting, and each character’s design is animated nicely, especially the dramatics of Vivi, who is always shocked by the necromancer’s hatred toward her. This theme fits well throughout the design of the skill tree, items you collect, enemy designs, including the overworld. What is a great-looking game without a beautiful soundtrack?
Necro Lullabies
The soundtrack is a delight. When I first started the game, I actually lingered on the main menu just to take in the music. If this is what they had in store, I knew I was in good hands. The different biomes you explore have a new style of music that fits their themes, like the dinosaur-themed area and the aforementioned Valhalla. They don’t have the soundtrack on streaming so watch my review above for a snippet of the intro song!
Life or Death
The demo for the game truly set it up well, and I cannot stress enough the importance of a well-thought-out demo. The comedic timing and banter between the main characters is petty and hilarious throughout. At one point, you fight a boss, and they ask you riddles about the number of people on the team at Rablo Games, how many years it took to develop the game, and even check if you’ve been paying attention by asking the characters’ names or spells you use. It caught me off guard, so a handy notebook helped out because I died three times before I got all the questions right. This type of humor is my style, and they break the 4th wall often with great results.
Necro Story raises the creature-collecting genre from the dead with a unique spin on a deep skill tree, a fun game-within-a-game battlefield collecting souls, and a comedic RPG I was begging for even after my 10-hour playthrough. Luckily, I have a chance to try out their previous title Healer’s Quest, which is a hilarious take on being the most underappreciated character in all of gaming—the healer.
Necro Story is one of my must-play games of the year, and I highly recommend it.
🎮Necro Story | Steam
🎮Healer’s Quest | Steam
🗓️Release Date | Out Now!
Thank you for reading this review! If you are looking for more indie games to play then why not head to the main Review section here:
Neat review with a video to pair with it. While I doesn't look like my cup of tea, it looks charming. I really like that art style.
This def looks up my alley, good review!