- Game: DrinkBox Studios's Nobody Saves the World.
- Release Month: January.
- Quick Look: N/A.
- Started: 03/01.
- Completed: 10/01.
Nobody Saves the World is the latest from Canadian studio DrinkBox, who seems to be one of those restless studios that always wants to try new things. While they have made a couple sequels—Guacamelee 2 and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack—their more recent games have been hopping from one genre to the next, and I found myself really enjoying the last time they delved into an RPG (or RPG-adjacent) game with 2016's first-person dungeon-crawler Severed. Nobody Saves the World is more their take on a Diablo action-RPG, albeit one without much in the way of loot, and takes some inspiration from the Job system of Final Fantasy by giving you a whole host of "forms" to jump into, each with their own stat distribution, unique active and passive skills, and development path. These forms run from human like the Guard, Rogue, or Ranger classes to animals like a Turtle, a Rat, or a Horse to fantasy monsters like a Zombie, a Dragon, or a Ghost. There's also the Egg if you just, I dunno, felt like being an egg for a while. The game's also tapping into Guacamelee's comedic energy somewhat with a world of ridiculous characters trying to fight off (or passively snark on) an eldritch "Calamity" that is slowly taking over the world with its fungal spores.
The game does the standard Zelda thing of presenting an overworld, a contiguous landmass with various barriers to eventually overcome by hook or by crook (or, translated, by finding the right ability or passing a specific moment in the story), and then a set of dungeons with randomized layouts dotted throughout that overworld. The dungeons are split into two groups: the standard dungeons, which you aren't necessarily required to beat for reasons I'll get into in just a moment, and the Legacy Dungeons which are story-mandated. To unlock the Legacy Dungeons you have to first collect enough stars, awarded for completing quests. This is why the other dungeons are optional: you can complete those for stars, or you could choose instead to focus on completing NPC quests found throughout the world or the unique quests related to each of the game's forms to earn stars that way. Form quests also increase the level of that form, unlocking new abilities for it to use and allowing you to upgrade the abilities it already has further. As such, you always have a lot on your plate, which creates this almost ADHD sort of energy to the game where you might be pursuing a dozen different goals at once as you make your way out into the world and are constantly flitting between progressing any one of them. I've always preferred this type of open-world RPG where it doesn't quite feel like I'm being railroaded—even if you are invariably being corralled to those Legacy Dungeons—and are provided so many options that it's almost dizzying. Most of the form quests also relate to how they best function in combat: it might involve defeating enemies with a specific ability, or applying a specific debuff or status effect, or taking advantage of some other trait of that form. Best of all, with the exception of its default ability and passive, each form is fully customizable: you can give any form any other form's ability, provided it isn't their default attack. This allows for a great deal of versatility, and the game is quick to emphasize the strength of this feature through its quest and dungeon systems.
To present an example: one dungeon, Big Gnarly, has a condition that means every hit does 9999 times the normal damage. That applies to yourself as well as enemies and since there's always a lot of them they're going to find it pretty easy to score the one hit they need to kill you. However, you've probably acquired by this point the Egg form that has a normally useless passive that stops you from being hurt by more than 1/3 (1/5 when upgraded) of your maximum health with any attack. With this, you no longer get taken down with a single hit and have a bit more breathing room. Then you couple that with the Zombie form's passive that heals a small amount (like 5%) with every hit: since all hits in this dungeon are doing ludicrous damage, even 5% is enough to max out your health with each attack. With both those passives equipped, a once formidable challenge becomes very much not. The game expects you to understand and keep track of the tools at your disposal and shake things up to suit every scenario it can throw at you: not only does this apply to gimmicky dungeons like the above, but also specific side-quests and form-based missions that might otherwise seem unattainable. This is really where the game's multifaceted form system shines brightest, even if some of these tasks can be a little too conditional for their own good (finding enemies with the right elemental ward to dissolve, for instance, or a large enough crowd for some of the "hit this many enemies with one attack" requests).
Truth be told the game does get repetitive fairly quickly, and with no loot system there's not much beyond the quest system to keep you motivated to replay dungeons or even enter some of the more obnoxious ones (like the one that won't drop any healing items). Dying in a dungeon kicks you out forcing you to start it over (though at least if you manage to reach the boss at the end you can teleport directly to it); this really started to disincentivize me to enter the dungeons in the first place since I could always get those stars elsewhere. Drops are strictly limited to health, upgrade points, and money, the latter of which can be used to buy stat upgrades and new passives at the ubiquitous vendor—they're stationed in every town and outside every dungeon, so they're hard to miss—and there's also a group of MP-increasing fairies across the overworld in awkward spots, and that's really all there is to find. This robs the game of a loot RPG's most compelling feature, that of acquiring ever-stronger gear and adjusting your tactics or skillset to account for any new passives they might confer, and likewise there's no skill trees besides the wholly linear series of advancements for every form as they level up. However, I'd argue that chasing after all these form quests is an enticing enough carrot on a stick on its own due to how they'll frequently have you jumping through hoops and playing in a way you might never have conceived of, which in turn greatly increases your appreciation of and efficiency with these individual forms and their distinctive utility. I found myself looking forward to trying out a form I'd just unlocked, getting past those first few levels to see their repertoires fill out, and jump into the menu to reconfigure their active and passive skills to chase some bizarre new objective the game just proffered.
Originally, I thought the game making it so that Legacy Dungeons, often pretty long, would not give you any progress towards form quests whatsoever was a real boneheaded move. After completing the playthrough I've since come to appreciate that this rule inspires you to take all the forms and combination of skills that have worked best for you so far and use that knowledge to power through a pure combat experience; that is, you're not having to play in a weird way for the sake of some quest but taking everything you've learned to create an all-powerful character that can stomp its way through any challenge. Classes like the Magician or the Necromancer become very powerful due to how they're geared towards summoning minions that can do most of the killing for you, and then you can deck them out with passives that might increase the strength of those followers or cause them to explode when they're close to dying to make them even more deadly en masse. Once you've upgraded a form enough times that you have access to a full wheel of active ability slots—four, one for each face button—you're free to create some really powerful builds, especially as you continue to unlock more forms with more abilities to pass onto others. It's an ingenious approach to a Job system that, while the game itself could get a bit repetitive after a while (and not having any objectives to chase for those Legacy Dungeons did make them kind of dull), I have to admire the game's focus on how it trains its players to consider every option at their disposal; a talent that will no doubt pay dividends in other games of its type if you aren't already conditioned to maximize your resourcefulness in RPGs (which might also make it a good entry-level action-RPG for a younger crowd; the silly and sometimes gross humor lends itself well to that audience as well). I suppose strictly speaking I admired the game more than I actually enjoyed playing it sometimes, but I think it's still worth heralding as one of the year's most inventive and smartly put-together games.
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