If there is any spot that I wished was done better, it would probably be the story itself. Most of the upgrades can be earned in a single dungeon run so it doesn’t feel like the game is disrespecting my time on the grind, and that rewarding gameplay puts this game way over a lot of other dungeon crawler RPGs o the same ilk. Other RPGs tend to leave skill trees with so many superficial additional powers you will probably never utilize, but in Nobody the game wisely asks you to be as creative as possible. That I can then I can mix that skill with another forms skill scratches an itch I didn’t know I had and it leads to so many satisfying combinations and even hilarious ones if they don’t work right. The side tasks given for each form may seem mundane on paper but traversing a dungeon as a horse and attempting to beat it using only kicks leads to unlocking newer skills in that tree. I believe the most satisfying thing that comes out of this game is the gameplay loop itself.
I only encountered this about three or four times in my total playthrough, so I don’t think it’s worth losing points over but it is definitely worth pointing out. This does sometimes lead to difficulty spikes, as a few times some dungeons would load with a mob of enemies ready to skewer, maim and roast you and the whole mob of enemies each have different weaknesses now which require you to be incredibly fast on the switch weapon wheel and sometimes led to some cheap deaths. If you fail a dungeon, or even leave and re-enter one, these parameters change each time which keeps the combat fresh and unique. Some enemies will even have specific vulnerabilities and immunities to attacks, so you’ll be on your toes mixing and matching forms or damage outputs depending on what you encounter in the dungeon. The dungeons found within the game are all procedurally generated down to the enemies. I mostly stuck to the base rat’s abilities and merged them with different things as I saw fit, but I’m pretty sure there is a definitive, “metagame,” of powerful combinations to breeze through the game’s many dungeons. Being able to try anything and any combination I could think of and see what works and doesn’t was immensely satisfying for me as a gamer. That’s the beauty of the system for me though. Some stuff works well, and some stuff doesn’t work at all. Want to combine the rat’s poison bite with the Ranger’s arrows? Want to be a Ranger but have the strength-based skills of the body builder? The choices are yours to experiment with and try out.
Not keen on stopping there, Drinkbox ups the ante even further when you get to mix and match skills across the different forms. Eventually you’ll get to be a horse, a mermaid, a dragon and my personal favorite, the bodybuilder complete with gigantic pectoral muscles and a speedo thong to emphasize my glorious glutes. The more you use the new skills (and you will because they are almost all useful) the more powerful your form becomes. The more you bite enemies, the more skills you get to unlock as your rat form.
Instead of you fighting an army of rats, your first firm IS the rat and your only attack a simple rat bite. Your first form is a nod and twist to the typical dungeon crawler trope of an adventurer starting their quest. Where the game goes off into the deep end of the humor is in the forms you get to unlock as you play. You have shape-shifting powers granted to you by a magical wand and while the villagers argue who is in charge now, you set off on your quest to find the village hero and…save the world, naturally. You’re essentially some strange empty-eyed homunculus type creature who falls butt backwards into a hero job when the kingdom’s main superhero wizard goes missing. In Nobody Saves the World, you’re a literal nobody. I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me explain just what Nobody is first before we get into how the game streamlines its play to make the standard dungeon crawler RPG grind seem less grindy.
Dungeon crawlers are a genre often associated with loads of grinding, but Nobody does it better with keyed in specific trait based leveling that works in the player’s benefit. From its novel premise to its tongue in cheek references and jokes, Nobody Saves the World delighted me in my entire 15+ hour playthrough. It goes without saying I had an absolute blast playing this game. Giving us one of their zaniest games yet, Nobody Saves the World is Drinxbox’s latest and most ambitious game to date and if it is any indicator to how 2022 will be in gaming, we’re in for some definite treats this year. If your expectation is that there will be some off the wall and weird stuff thrown at you, then your expectations would be met and then some. Nobody Saves the World comes to us from Drinkbox Studios, makers of the amazing Guacamelee games as well as the oft overlooked PS Vita game, Severed.
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