No Rest for the Wicked

Eyegasm graphics, the game looks gorgeous. The gameplay is fun and satisfying. I’m still waiting for the full release before giving my final review, but until then, if you need a game to occupy you for 50 hours or more, it’s an easy pick. You can try dozens of builds, and even after 70 hours of playtime, I still can’t decide which playstyle I truly want.

Couldn't recommend this game more, one thing I'll mention to people thinking of buying the game is that progress will be lost/reset once the full game comes out.

Flipped a coin and landed on "yes", hence it's thumbs up from me. The review is from early access, supposedly the next update is going to bring the full release of the game, along with job/class system and weapon rebalance. We'll see how it goes. ANYWAY, welcome to my quick review of Identity Crisis: The Game. Why 'Identity Crisis' I hear you ask? Because this game is trying to be everything at once. You have isometric view somewhat similar to Path of Exile, Diablo, or Last Epoch, and systems like affixes/mods and gems for your items - kind of in between what you see in the games I just mentioned. However, you also have Elden Ring style combat (far more forgiving tho, and actually playable on the keyboard), gear durability FOR WHATEVER REASON, daily and weekly quests - even in singleplayer! - like it's some kind of MMORPG, absurd amounts of resource gathering like it's some kind of Stardew Valley, and town building system where you have to farm and refine said resources in order to donate them to the city and restore/upgrade establishments of various NPCs. Uou can also own a house (or a whole bunch of them) and use furniture to decorate each one of them to your liking. We're only missing crops management and tower/city defense mechanics... oh, right, don't forget to cook your meals so you can heal properly! Don't get me wrong, No Rest For The Wicked does *most* of this stuff well enough to not be a pain in the rear end. Even cutting down 60 trees for a weekly isn't as bad as it may sound at first, but it's not a 10 minute ordeal either. It's just *wicked* to me how many different mechanics has been shoved into this one game simply because they can be added and not because they are needed. It may work for some, might not work for the others; I'm fine with most of the things I just mentioned as I like diversity, but I think that daily and weekly quest system in a game like that is simply ridiculous and trying to keep up with them for a while made me not want to play the game in the first place because of how much backtracking it involved. Now, when it comes to combat... I have mixed feelings about it. I really enjoy being able to rely on spells as my main source of damage in a game featuring a souls-like combat system, but getting the weapon type you're interested in during the first few hours of playtime can be anywhere from trivial to nigh impossible, heavily depending on your luck to loot and vendor inventory (which only resets ONCE A DAY... IRL DAY!). While it might not sound like a big deal it can quickly become one when you realize that each weapon has a different moveset (even within the same category), different innate ability, different attribute scaling (hoooo boiii don't even get me started on the stat scaling, bloooody hell that system is so random I can't even fathom how it came to be in the first place), and just different levels of playability in general. If you happen to stumble upon something that works well for you, you're going to have a great time and you can even keep using that one weapon for the next 30 hours if you just keep upgrading it along the way. If you don't find something that works well for you, then... well, welcome to the souls neighborhood I suppose? Another thing I don't understand is the approach to respecialization of attributes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand if one wants to respec their character they have to find a quest featuring the Cerim Crucible, beat a handful of chambers in order to unlock a respec totem and then spend a special type of currency (in a 1 to 10 ratio) in order to actually reallocate your attributes? That basically means if you screw up hard enough you can get softlocked from progressing through the game and can end up being forced to restart xD It's definitely more of an edge case scenario, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. To end on a positive note, I actually don't mind how the camera work is being handled. It can catch you a bit off guard at times and resemble something closer to an adventure game like the Trine series, but overall I haven't really had any moments of pure frustration caused by the camera itself, so kudos for that part. P.S. the 1.0 update can potentially fix half of the problems I have with this game so keep your eyes peeled because it's not a bad game, it's just niche and needs some time before it evolved to its final form.