No Rest for the Wicked is out now in early access, and it’s already reached an impressive Steam player count – but the early reception from players has left the new RPG with a ‘mixed’ Steam review score, with primary complaints around performance issues and a lack of key binding options despite the general consensus on the game itself seeming positive. Developer Moon Studios, creators of the excellent Ori games, has built a unique soulslike ARPG blending the loot and perspective of Diablo with the methodical combat of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but it admits that the early access launch still leaves room for improvement.
Moon Studios describes No Rest for the Wicked as “A real passion project for us all here at Moon that we’ve been dreaming about for years,” saying, “it’s truly humbling to see so many of you playing and loving it.” However, while many reviews praise its striking artstyle and atmosphere, along with the fundamentals of its combat, there are still many reviews with the ‘not recommended’ tag, leaving the RPG game with just a 59% Steam review score so far.
Many of the primary gripes are addressed by Moon Studios directly in a response post shared to Steam. “There is plenty you will see improve as we continuously look to optimize and improve the game with your feedback,” the team writes. Top of the list are the performance issues, something many of us here at PCGamesN have also been encountering. “We’re aiming to get some immediate GPU settings in the next patch,” Moon Studios says, “but knowing what hardware specs you have would helps us narrow everything down so please share via the forum feedback page.” It also “highly recommends” installing the game to an SSD if possible.
Other issues the team says it is looking to address are the inability to pause the game when playing in single-player, and the fact there are currently no key binding options, a feature that is typically considered a standard for most PC games. More aspect ratios are set to be supported over time, and the controller UI currently only displays Xbox buttons, something Moon Studios is also looking at. It also notes that PlayStation controllers will only work when Steam Input is enabled through Steam itself.
Finally, Moon Studios notes that if you get stuck in-game or fall through the world due to a bug, you can use the ‘continue from last whisper’ option in the realms menu to get back to action. There, you’ll also find a backups menu that can be used to rewind to an earlier save, which the developer says can be used if you experience unexpected progression loss.
Despite the early troubles, the No Rest for the Wicked player count has already peaked at an impressive 33,983 concurrent players – just shy of the 34,807 high that Moon Studios’ previous game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, managed across its full life span. That’s an impressive number, especially given the early-access nature of the game, and it’s only behind Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2 on the global top sellers list, although the launch problems might cause some to hold off on playing more until changes roll out.
Hopefully these issues are quickly rectified, then – there’s a lot of promise here, and I’m really glad to see more distinct approaches to established genres such as this, but baseline problems such as performance woes and awkward controls that can’t be adapted to your liking make it difficult to get a good grasp on the actual meat of the game.
For the time being, we’ve got more of the best soulslike games to explore if you’re looking for some rich worlds filled with challenging encounters, along with the best games like Diablo if the allure of loot calls to you.
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