2023 seems to be shaping up to be a year where I am consistently surprised by the Indie gaming scene. Sometimes, attempts to bring popular international properties into the gaming space don’t go well, such as the Asterix and Obelix games. However, with Noob – The Factionless, a popular web series is now an engaging Turn-Based RPG.

Noob – The Factionless is a single-player RPG based on the French web series known as Noob, which tells the story of four gamers’ quest to reach the highest level of the fictional MMO known as Horizon. Their goal is to reach level 100 (and possibly Legendary status) before the release of the Horizon 5.0 Expansion, which will open the game up to the eSports scene.

Each character in the group has their own reasons for wanting to achieve this goal, but you join them in their quest to build a strong guild and become gaming legends in their own right. Additionally, you’ll explore the “real” world and get a glimpse at the lives of each of your party members and friends. Noob – The Factionless isn’t a flawless RPG, but it does have a lot going for it.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first. Noob – The Factionless’ combat is engaging. Each character has multiple class specializations, so you can build your party the way you want. For example, Log is a spellcasting character who can specialize in each of the four elements. The fire element is mostly offensive, the water element is a healing specialization, the earth element is defensive, and the air element is general support.

After each time you level up, you gain a skill point to put in your skill tree. You can also acquire gear that changes how your character looks in battle and changes their stats. Every ten levels you’ll have to undergo a trial to unlock the next level bracket. It changes things up a bit but the storyline is pretty engaging so it doesn’t seem too out of place, especially since the game is based around an MMO.

You can also utilize various things like cooking and crafting, as well as enjoy simple mini-games like fishing. The environments are decently designed and drawn, though they are sparse. This leads to one of the bigger issues in Noob – The Factionless though. Sometimes it isn’t easy to know exactly where you should go next.

For example, in the real world, the characters suggested I go to a place they called “AFK” so they could play Horizon together. However, there weren’t any directions about where in the town (which has several sections), this internet café was located. When I found it after 30 minutes of wandering, it wasn’t even named AFK. This could have been a translation error, or it could have been a simple lack of direction on their part.

In fact, vague directions are almost the name of the game with Noob – The Factionless, both in Horizon and out of it. Personally, I found that this made the sections in the real world drag since there wasn’t much “gameplay” involved in the time I played beyond going around talking to people and looking at cutscenes.

The combat and the exploration in the world of Horizon were much more fun, but there were still vague directions at times. Most of the time I was able to follow the in-game dialogue to figure it out, but sometimes there was a bit of wandering involved. Another (more minor) problem Noob – The Factionless suffered from was a problem with sparse environments.

Aside from a few chests and one or two enemies on each map, environments were sparse, at least in the early game. This made side quests a little longer because I’d have to reload areas to respawn enemies. The world map also had some harsh framerate problems, though I never experienced crashing or anything. I’m not sure if this was specifically a Nintendo Switch issue though, or if it is an issue across the board.

From the last few paragraphs, it may not seem like Noob – The Factionless is worth your time. However, if you’re a fan of classic Turn-Based RPGs, then it is worth checking out. The story is interesting, the visual style is colorful and appealing, and the characters are fun and entertaining. It might not be the best RPG you play all year, but if you’re looking for something different, I think it’ll scratch that itch nicely.

Some people might find the lack of being able to save anywhere to be annoying. They also might be turned off by the framerate problems. I can’t speak to whether the framerate issues persist on PC though, since all the Steam discussion board posts are in French. Either way though, the issues weren’t enough of a problem to keep me from enjoying it.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Noob – The Factionless was provided by Microids for this review.

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Noob - The Factionless

$29.99 USD

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Cute Visual Style
• Engaging Combat
• Fun Story
• Interesting Premise

Cons

• Framerate Issues on World Map
• Sparse Environments
• Vague Directions for Quests