Necropolis Reviews
A stylish roguelike both made and hampered by its own pacing.
Necropolis pulls many ideas together to ultimately deliver a satisfactory, short dungeon-diving experience that’s best enjoyed with friends. Some of its ideas conflict with each other (such as permadeath and teammate revival), its procedural generation doesn’t offer much in the way of replayability, and its intentional vagueness can be frustrating, but it’s good for at least a few monster-smashing runs before it gets old thanks to enjoyable combat mechanics, cheeky humor, and the promise of mystery.
Ghoulish creature design and fun combat are weakened by long boring stretches, clueless AI, and snickering obscurity.
An interesting attempt to cross Dark Souls with a roguelike, but it’s not a very well mixed cocktail and the ingredients really needed to be chosen with more care.
Roguelike hack-and-slasher Necropolis offers intense combat and a quirky setting, along with repetition, confusion, and permadeath difficulty.
Necropolis fails to capture the magic of its influences
At one point, I drank a “mysterious potion” that informed me that my character felt “repellent.” I can think of no better word to describe Necropolis.
Can you play Necropolis by yourself? Only if you're really dedicated to the idea of running the same series of floors over and over with the intention of making progress. Without company, the initial dungeons begin to blend together a bit, and restarting isn't so much a pain from a pure skill-based roguelike standpoint, but a crisis of variety.
A game that tries too hard to be what it's not. A roguelike game trying to be a soulslike. Losing its identity, the result is simply a missed shot, nor good or bad enough to be worth remembering.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It’s a clumsy, dull, shallow, lacklustre trudge through cold soup. And fails at the most important aspect of any game in the genre: making me want to have another go.
There were a few elements that I really enjoyed, but it wasn’t a game I personally wanted to keep playing because of the lack of satisfaction. The dialogue was hilarious, though, and the combat still very engaging, but it’s definitely an acquired taste.
The premise of Necropolis sounds fun, and it certainly starts off that way, but once things start to get repetitive the game slows down to a familiar grind.
After the relentless grimdark of FROM Software's stellar Souls and Bloodborne offerings, Necropolis feels like a breath of fresh (fetid, really) air. Hellbent on not taking itself too seriously and offering solid roguelike, dungeon crawler mechanics underpinned by a finely tuned combat system, Necropolis is not a game you want to be sleeping on.
Necropolis is a solid foundation with a really weird, questionably designed house built on top. If you're willing to take the time and try to spruce the place up, you may find it was worthwhile, but beware that it may require more work than you're willing to put in.
Is there anything I liked about my time with this game? Hardly.
Necropolis is an interesting dungeon crawler that sadly fails to live up to its full potential due to a severe lack of content and sense of progression. The game isn't exactly bad, as there are some interesting ideas, but it features so little incentive to play again that most will end up abandoning it after a few runs. Co-op is just not enough to salvage the whole experience. With such glaring issues, Necropolis is definitely not worth its full price tag for the moment being.
The PS4 version of Necropolis is spoilt by the lazy conversion of the PC edition, with a weak combat system and a bad optimization.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Necropolis is saved by a strong sense of challenge, and by the resource management system, the only mechanism that meets happily with procedural design of the production.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Necropolis is a decent stab at creating a Souls roguelike. If it had that all-important "just one more go" feeling nailed, what we would have here would be something truly special. Unfortunately, it’s merely the cold shadow of a much warmer bonfire.