PLAYTIME: 22 Hours REVIEWED ON: PS5
In recent years, Balatro, and the two Hades games, all received Game of the Year nominations and made the Roguelite genre more commonplace (and profitable) than ever. Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse, seeks to continue this trend by combining Roguelite progression systems with base-building, and Metroidvania inspired levels. These mechanics make for an enjoyable game that brings some novelty to the genre. Sadly, it also results in a game that feels pulled in too many directions, and is never able to fully realize its intended vision. For players interested in a challenging game with base-building mechanics, Metroidvania levels, and Roguelite progression systems, there is a lot to like about Never Grave. Just be prepared for some hurdles along the way.
Never Grave begins with a sentient hat falling into a dark, beautifully illustrated cave. The hat can initially only crawl, jump, and attack for meager damage. It soon stumbles across the corpse of an adorable witch, whom it reanimates and brings back to life. The Witch is nameless and devoid of personality, but she does come equipped with a sword and a plethora of spells to help in exploring our nameless setting. After quickly dying to an enormous monster, the players are introduced to two HUB worlds, “The Village,” and “The Church.” These are inhabited by an array of NPC’s who give some helpful gameplay tips along with a touch of mild exposition. The village has been destroyed because of a calamity, the world is out of sorts, and it’s up to you to rebuild it and discover the cause.
From here, Never Grave introduces players to its core gameplay loop. Enter a level in the church, explore as long as you can, collect various buffs and abilities to fight monsters along the way, then die. Afterwards, return to the village and build various facilities to make resources for meta-progression (long term upgrades which make your character stronger.) The base-building in the Village, along with the levels in the Church are both somewhat fleshed out, offering a compelling loop in the early hours of the game. Levels are visually gorgeous with numerous different enemies to vanquish, responsive combat, and a handful of spells/monster transformations to unlock. The village is initially small but grows through the creation of farms, gardens, and alchemy cauldrons that offer advantages to the Witch.
Initially, this loop is exciting, but it quickly overstays its welcome. The main issue with it is that it becomes stale because runs do not give enough resources to allow for meaningful progression. The levels are difficult, and despite different locations of resources they are functionally the same every run. After the 3rd or 4th attempt at each level (if thoroughly exploring) there is nothing new to be found and the main purpose is to farm resources for upgrades in the village. However, the village upgrades often come with high prices and unavailable resources, so if your village is not constantly being optimized it’s very hard to progress through levels. The base-building mechanics are comprehensive and great for people who like life sim games, but they provide diminishing returns, resulting in a single upgrade often taking multiple runs to complete. There is also no feature which allows you to see where undiscovered resources can be found, which can result in frustration as you die on a level for the nth time without finding what you need. Great Roguelite games make progression simple and effective with each run resulting in incremental gain; Never Grave makes this process a bit of a headache and much more repetitive than in its contemporaries.
It isn’t all bad, however, as despite the difficult progression systems, Never Grave‘s levels & combat systems are fun and unique. The Witch is nimble and adept at navigating the various platforming sections present in each level. The Hat is also capable of possessing a few different enemy types which all add their own wrinkles to combat. Generally, these are less mobile than the Witch but come equipped with their own health bars, and unique special moves in combat. The second monster, for example, is a hulking, dinosaur-knight which can generate shields for itself and brawl against larger enemies in a way the other forms cannot. Switching between these various monsters and the Witch is relatively seamless and allows for diverse strategies in combat. At the same time, the grimoires and blessings found throughout runs (think Hades boons) offer noticeable advantages that often really help with the high difficulty level. The same is true for spells which can completely change how different enemies are approached. While it won’t blow anybody away with its build-crafting, it’s nice that Never Grave still offers some player choice in addition to its satisfying combat.
While it won’t ever be considered a great of its genre, Never Grave is a fun game with a handful of unique ideas it brings to the table. Its combat, beautiful design, and smooth mobility are all commendable in spite of its woeful meta-progression, repetitive loop, and an absence of memorable characters. It has a lot of ideas going for it and hopefully with some post-release patches it can address some of these difficulties. While it might not be for everyone, Never Grave is an interesting title that has a lot to offer.
SCORE: 68/100
*Note: I didn’t get the chance to try out co-op at the time of this review.
“Never Grave” Tips:
1. Use the terrain to your advantage. Attacks can often get through walls and can cover you from enemies.
2. Break everything and always attack walls that look suspicious as there might be something hidden behind.
3. Take note of the resources required for upgrades before you start a run, so you know what to look out for. 4. Try and find all of the teleports in a level at least once to make sure you don’t miss any secrets. 5. Figure out the perks of each monster transformation and use them at advantageous times such as when the Witch is low or you are fighting an enemy the transformation is strong against. The first transformation (Skeleton-dog thing) for example, is excellent against the first boss and any airborne enemies.
JoeGames 