Alexx Aplin
Alexx AplinI love Drinkbox Studios and their games. The Guacamelee games are so irreverent and have a unique aesthetic. This hasn’t changed with Nobody Saves the World. In fact, I would dare say that this is easily Drinkbox Studios’ best game yet.
Many games put you in the role of the chosen hero, destined to protect the world. Nobody Saves the World doesn’t do that. Instead, you play as Nobody, a featureless being who acquires a magic wand that allows them to take on various forms. It is using these forms that will help you to defeat the Calamity, a being that intends to destroy the world.
The forms are the entire basis of how you fight and progress through the game. Each form has different abilities and unique capabilities. Think Final Fantasy IV’s Job system on steroids. For instance, the rat form can poison enemies and fit in small spaces. In that vein, it almost plays like a shapeshifting Metroidvania and dungeon-crawler hybrid.
By doing various things to fill “form quests” for your forms, you can level up the forms, which allow you to get new forms and increase your abilities. You can also collect upgrade tokens from chests and occasionally from enemies, in order to level up your attacks and passive abilities. As you level up from doing quests and completing dungeons, you can also mix and match abilities from your various forms to create powerful combinations.
Nobody Saves the World can be played in single and two-player co-op, giving you even more options and ways to progress. The characters are interesting, the dialogue is hilarious, and the combat is challenging. In fact, I would say that one of the more engaging, interesting parts of Nobody Saves the World is that you should constantly be adjusting your form depending on the situation.
It isn’t without issues though. There are periods of time when the difficulty feels a bit steep. That’s nothing a little grinding can’t fix, but it does get frustrating. Healing is often done through either certain abilities or through collecting food from breakable objects, so sometimes healing in combat is tough as well.
Another major complaint I had is that you can’t customize the form wheel that lets you change forms on the fly. The wheel only holds the last 8 forms you used, so if you want a different one you have to use the menu. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but sometimes it gets annoying having to go in and out of the menu to get the wheel just right.
Overall though, I absolutely love Nobody Saves the World. It is a very distinctive sort of game, with the kind of gameplay that both tests your problem solving and feels very easy to understand. It is also very hard to put down once you get started, and I think couch co-op is a great option for friends, family, and even couples who might want to take on the Calamity together.
A Nintendo Switch review copy of Nobody Saves the World was provided by Drinkbox Studios for this review.
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Nobody Saves the World
$24.99 USD
Pros
- Great Dialogue and Story
- Fun Adaptable Form Mechanics
- Lots of Playstyles
- Co-op is Perfect for This Sort of Game
- Lots of Quirky Side Content
Cons
- No Way to Change Form Wheel Manually
- Occasional Difficulty Spike
