Necropolis: Review

When I first started playing Necropolis I had trouble with the default controls. The keyboard controls were all over the place instead of being centralised to a general area like the majority of games. I decided that I would remap the controls to make it easier, however I was met with the inability to remap the keys. To combat this, I just ended up using a controller. During gameplay I also had troubles with the camera, as it would often snap to the terrain which made for awkward angles when trying to take on groups of enemies.

Whilst in a single player game, pausing does not stop the world around you which would insinuate that it is designed to be primarily an online four player cooperative experience. This feature however does add suspense and a real sense of urgency when you're messing around in your inventory.
The graphical art style is pleasing with the use of straight lines and pointy edges, with the characters having sharp points on their body's extremities which makes good use of the technique called Phong shading.  If your sense of direction isn't up to scratch, the game may present as a real challenge due to the environments all being of the same or similar shade, which makes it extremely easy to get turned around in combat and end up going the wrong way. The game itself can be a rather difficult one as there is no limit to the amount of enemies that can attack you at any one time. Due to this I found myself spending quite a lot of time cowering in a corner with my shield raised.

I found it quite easy to spend a lot of time on this title as I found the crafting system highly enjoyable even though the supplied information on weapons, potions and food was minimal and I had to work out what each item does individually. The combat was also very enjoyable as I have not played a title quite like this and although it still has a lot of bugs that I would think need to be fixed before a perfect score is achieved, I would not hesitate to spend a weekend playing with somebody cooperatively.

Positives:

• Graphics
• Combat
• LOOT
• Co-operative gameplay 
• Crafting mechanics

Negatives:

• No limit on attacking enemies
• Lack of key rebinding
• Camera snapping to terrain
• Lots of bugs for a release grade product

SCORE: 7 out of 10

Platforms: PC, MAC, PS4, Xbox One

Genre: Action, Adventure, Dungeon

Initial Release: 12th July 2016

Developer: Harebrained Schemes

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment