Necromantic is a bullet hell Survivors-Like that was recently released into Early Access and has already captured my attention. Standing out for its unique setting, the game is jam-packed with personality, interesting ideas, and potential, though it definitely has a ways to go before it leaves Early Access.
Necromantic sees you playing as the students of Valorborn Academy, a witchy prep school for adventures located high in the mountains of a haunted land called Kathedril. Here, students prepare for a life of fantasy heroism through rigid courses in magic, history, and martial arts, with a great deal of the coursework taking place in the undead-packed fields of Katherdril. Hands-on experience, after all, is intrinsically valuable to any education.
That is, at least, the story I’ve managed to cobble together from the game’s store page, contextual clues, and a few little blurbs here and there while playing.
See, Necromantic’s greatest strength is also its biggest weakness in its current Early Access build. Its fantastic Dark Academia slash Fantasy setting is incredibly interesting but, unfortunately, critically underutilized in the game’s current state.
At the time of writing, Necromantic contains no story, cutscenes, or character interactions (that I can find) outside of a few speech bubbles from select NPCs in the game’s academy hub world.
For the bullet hell Vampire Survivors-like title. this usually isn’t a problem. All a game like Necromantic really needs to do well is the gameplay, and for other titles in the genre, being able to drop into a level quickly and start playing right away is perfectly viable. Necromantic certainly does the gameplay well, but with its incredibly interesting setting, you end up disappointed by the lack of storytelling depth available.
Necromantic’s “Story” mode currently consists of you playing through levels with a progressively harder series of challenges, each one having a short two-sentence blurb about what you’re doing and why it’s important for your coursework. There are also no real character interactions that I’ve been able to find, despite the game’s store page claiming that you can trade the books you collect to characters to increase affinity. With a name like “Necromantic,” I also expected a dating-sim element to the game, and I certainly at least want to become friends with the characters presented and have any means of learning more about them.
Now, it could be that these interactions are locked behind later sections of the game, but in my roughly ten hours of playing for this review, I haven’t been able to progress far enough to unlock these features, if they’re there.
My next big gripe with Necromantic is that it just seems to take forever to progress. The story missions you are given can feel difficult to finish or require a great deal of time investment, which is unfortunate, considering new characters and levels are locked behind them. Be prepared to spend a LOT of time on the game’s first level, with the introductory character, before processing into new unlocks.
Beyond that, the game’s gameplay is solid, though it could use a few tweaks.
The powers you collect during a match are fun, albeit many of them are locked behind story mode progression, which can cause you to get stuck with the starter stuff for a while. While the effects on each ability are cool to look at, and they’re all interestingly designed, some abilities assuredly feel stronger than others; I rarely found myself taking anything else when the Fire Shard weapon was around to unlock.
I especially enjoy the game’s boss encounters, which make use of both interesting mechanics and themes. A particular favorite of mine is this giant troll/ogre, which takes up half the screen and can kill some trash mobs with its attacks.
Something I’d like to see added to the game is the ability to gain new assignments (quests) during your current run. At the moment, you’ll find yourself finishing all three of your assignments during a run, at which point you begin to wonder what the purpose of continuing is. Sure, you earn more points to unlock upgrades the longer you stay alive, but since the only way to progress in the “story” is to finish said assignments, I often found myself just choosing death once they were finished and starting another run with new objectives.
As far as bugs go, I did experience a few glitches with the game’s maps, both to my bane and benefit.
There are certain sections on each map, usually narrow passageways just along the map’s borders, that enemies cannot pathfind their way across. I think this may have been a development choice to ensure that a player is never completely cornered by hordes should they keep moving. This can also be used to cheese the game quite a bit because there are areas on these maps where you can just stand in place and never be touched by mobs, and so long as you keep dodging arrows, you can theoretically survive indefinitely.
I also experienced a single instance of me following through the floor. It was on the second available map, near the river that splits the segments of the map in two. A little dock area sits on the riverbank, and while walking across, my character fell through the floor to a section underneath. It was there that I found myself stuck and quickly killed by ranged attacks and the troll bosses’ area of effect (aoe) damage.
Also, semi-frequently collectible objects would disappear while on screen, as would mobs when bigger, meaner ones spawned in.
As it currently stands, Necromantic is a solid bullet-hell title with some great gameplay and a super interesting setting. Some powers could be tweaked, some pathfinding glitches fixed, and above all else, a big focus on expanding the story and characters of the setting needs to happen before the game is ready to leave Early Access. Still, I feel like Necromantic is a promising title with a great future in story.
Pros:
- An incredible setting and interesting-looking characters
- Solid Bullet Hell gameplay
Cons:
- Not enough story or character interaction at the moment
- Some pathfinding/map glitches that need correction
- Balancing issues with powers, with some significantly stronger feelings than others
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