Our 50 best games of the year countdown isn’t in any order, we’re just going through fifty of the finest the year has given us. Find out more here.
Necropolis is a roguelike game that draws a lot of parallels with the Dark Souls series.
The combat is very similar, as is the “fair but challenging” style difficulty. The reason I jumped at adding Necropolis to the Best Games of 2016 list is because the roguelike elements make it fun to play over and over again. I’ve never made it past level seven in Necropolis and I’ve never minded that as a fact. The difficulty of the game ramps up for sure in later levels, but it’s never so hard that I feel like I got cheated; I always only feel like I could have handled it better. Performed the combat better, lured some enemies into traps to be more efficient, or saved some potions and food. The fault was always mine and that’s how a game should feel.
Maybe it sounds odd that a game only requires that it doesn’t bug out horribly or treat the players as idiots to make a “best of” list, but that’s unfortunately the state of games in this generation. Too often is something overhyped or rushed into production, and too often does it result in a subpar experience. Necropolis is not that game. It has solid mechanics, solid gameplay, and with a fun multiplayer to boot. So while it achieves the “good game” basics it is also way more than a Dark Souls clone and definitely earns its place as a Best of 2016 Game.
Players are tasked to navigate the titular Necropolis as the sentient dungeon AI called “The Brazen Head” both shepherds and mocks the player into reaching new levels and inching ever closer to the Amulet of Siuol, the macguffin of the Necropolis.
The player will have to acquire and manage food and healing items, as well as finding a means of identifying items with a magical property before putting them to use. In an act of desperation an unknown potion could be the poison that kills you, or the vial of superhuman strength you need to make it through the level. You’re never confronted with an obvious “fork in the road” style decision, but you are forced to make decisions constantly that can have long term effects in a very natural way. Dropping a scroll of identification to make room for more food can haunt you later after you’ve eaten the food and found a couple potions with unknown effects. If you had the identification scroll, you’d know if the potions are detrimental or life saving.
As interesting and fun as Necropolis is, it’s far from perfect. There are some input delay bugs which can be the difference in life or death in combat. If you need to drink a potion to save your life and you’re bugged, the character will still drink the potion, but they’ll do it somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds after you issued the command. The game also seems to be incomplete as the promise of a third player class has been made (and the concept art released) but the Arcanist has still never made an appearance. At the moment, there’s no word of when the Arcanist will show up, or if it is still pegged to be released. People were expecting it less than a month after the Brute got released in September but the only official word from Harebrained Schemes is “if the game does well, we’ll release more content”. At this point though, I’d be happy if they just managed to fix the input delay issue.
So maybe, just maybe, I’m a big fan of roguelikes and the Dark Souls style combat. And maybe, just maybe I’m exploiting my position to praise Necropolis and put it in a best of list in the hopes that Harebrained Schemes will see it and add some more for one of my favorite games. Maybe, just maybe you feel the same way and want to see Necropolis filled out a bit more so you’ll share this article everywhere and try to get their attention. Only you can prevent game stagnancy.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
