Necesse

I've completed the entire game and beaten the true final boss. This might be the most confused recommend I've ever made. [h1]The short of it[/h1] Necesse is in an interesting place because it's a mix between Terraria and Rimworld. That's a bit of a misnomer because Terraria is much more linear and honestly better fleshed out. So a more apt description would be that this is a mix between Starbound and Rimworld. I do recommend the game, it's fun and addicting and worth playing for many hours, but it's just in a weird place, and it's not going to engage most people through the end as is evidenced by this "defeat final boss" achievement that says only 2.5% of players have. I guess it's just a weird game in general, but it's worth it to play, and the devs seem like good people who care about their players. That's it, that's the review. I'll elaborate on the details if you're curious though: [h1]The Long(?ayo) of it[/h1] It's clear that the creator of this game is an incredibly talented programmer and is able to create highly technical things. That does not in and of itself translate into what one would consider a well-realized creative asset however. The look of the game is perfectly fine - seeing how it used to look, it may have deterred me from playing entirely, but the soundtrack is another story. The music in this game might be some of the worst noise pollution I've ever heard in a modern game. And I am very sorry to say that because I understand it's a lot of work to create music, but I cannot overstate how terrible this game's soundtrack is. There's decent moments, there's even fine moments, but for the most part it is very difficult to try to immerse yourself in the game when your ears are being assaulted. It's a shame. I've seen complaints about boss difficulty. I enjoy difficult games, and I've played through Terraria's Calamity mod. This is less difficult than Calamity and I wouldn't call it a bullet hell, but it's clear that if you don't build towards movement and ranged attacks, you're probably not going to have a good time. There are a few fights (like the twin dragons) where the 90% shield is just better on you than trying to outrun their rush spam, but in most instances you're kinda locked into movement speed, and of course pairing with that is ranged damage since the bosses do tend to have weird spam patterns sometimes. I believe that defeating the final boss without a ranged weapon and without sprinting can be legitimately considered a challenge run, and should not be attempted unless you want to deal with pain. On the topic of game design that doesn't encourage build diversity, the progression of the game is very non-linear. You start the game exploring the world. Lots of biomes, you can build carts, find towns, even pirate settlements. And then you go underground and there's the same biomes but underground to explore. And then even deeper than that all over again. And then.........oops that's it. The second half of the game is going to be walking up to an altar, stuffing a tablet into it, entering an instanced area, clearing it, and going back home. I hope you built a nice base because you're going to be spending half the game there. There is no reason to explore the world at all after you've reached Tier 1 equipment, and it feels like the entire world itself shrinks down to a point. If you love grinding or are an MMO fan (yippee) then this is going to be a slice of heaven for you. Furthering into the non-linear game design, once you get into tiered equipment you're going to find that it is very slow going, and the system isn't entirely intuitive. Because everything can be upgraded to Tier 10, you will discover that there's all sorts of equipment to craft and weapons to acquire that aren't clearly defined in their "which is better suited" since there's a bunch of X build gear, and a bunch of Y build gear, and all can be pushed to Tier 10. You gotta figure that out yourself. Initially this doesn't matter since it's so slow going; however, once you hit tier 5 equipment, the progression is incredibly rapid. At this point, you've picked up certain perks on the altar tech tree that massively accelerates your progression by bombing you with the upgrade materials you were starving for before. And before you know it you're Tier 10. Alchemy shards required to upgrade your max HP are excessive when you play multiplayer. That's just factual because we never had close to enough to supply 3 people. Oh well. You don't need it anyway, but still. I'll give some credit: The final incursion concept and execution was actually really cool. If you've built a nice settlement, you're going to really like it. The final boss having 95 phases was a bit of an annoyance but the rewards made it well worth the trouble. Instead of dying on the "we must balance" hill, the devs actually give you a proper god reward for defeating the true final boss since it's not like it can affect progression anymore. Most bosses have a critical design weakness that you can exploit. I don't believe this was intentional, but it's clear that the devs did their best to deliver the highest quality, most realized project that they could, and I can't down them for that. [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] The game has soul. The devs clearly care and are attempting to deliver the best quality they can. They are actively updating the game, they are listening to their community. It's a good time sink, and it's fun. It's worth it in the end to get it and play it. Just be patient and overlook some of the pointy corners. It's not the end of the world. And have fun man. We play games to have fun.

This game surprised me. It's basically Terraria's exploration and boss fights, Rimworld's colony management, and Minecraft's freeform building and a lot more ideas from other games mashed together into something that works very well. It starts like other survival games with a thin tutorial, but it opens up fast. World exploration, digging underground, tons of unique loot, tons of bosses etc. The colony stuff is great too with recruiting settlers, setting up farms and crafting automation, mission boards. There's also a ton of workshop mods to expand the game's content and customize it to your liking. I did a full modded playthrough with a friend in multiplayer and everything worked as expected without any problems. The lategame "Incursions" feature is a replayable mapping system that takes ideas from modern Hack n Slash games like Path of Exile and Last Epoch, it's rewarding and adds a lot of extra game time to the end. The developer roadmap also looks like they'll keep working on the game into 2026+. Overall, I think Necesse is a lot of fun and a hidden gem that deserves more attention.

Constant VRAM memory leaks causing my game to crash. Edit: Figured out what was causing the crashes, or at least what i changed to stop it. I turned off HDR on my monitor and the VRAM spikes went away and i was able to play without crashes or VRAM spikes

I will compare this game to terraria: 1. Combat is better. Just flat out. 2. Gear is far better and more interesting in this game. Armor sets can have cool active abilities and weapons are more weird and varied. You can even upgrade your armor and weapons eventually making anything viable. Something Terraria desperately needs, but this game has and executed beautifully. 3. Building is better in terraria because you have a few systems in it like hammering and biome changing. Not to say it's bad in this game 4. NPCs are MUCH better in this game. You can even have them do repetitive tasks for you like farming or fishing. You can even send some out on expeditions to get some more of that hard to get item you need. You can even gear em up and bring them with you on adventures. Far superior.

Final boss is not balanced for Solo and limited trys is not fun

It's pretty good if you've played other survival games and are looking for a new one, but it's kind of lack of content if you compared it to games like Terraria as you'll get bored after playing for 20ish hours. Anyway, it was still a decent journey playing with friends.

Having finished the game, it becomes grindy at a point but it's really fun to work on settlements without having to worry about so many variables as in Rimworld, and nice to take a break from combat to just build a new dormitory or replace walls with fancy new ones with so many terrain and wall types. Mods definitely improved my enjoyment of the game, like a flat movement speed bonus and the ability to level up traits, but these are probably just missing components from the intended gameplay because skill was still necessary and death still rather a persistent threat. Crafting mods were also necessary to be able to make things that ought to be more accessible, like crafting trinkets and being able to make bombs, even with an expensive recipe (but buying bombs from miners was also great, and I think also a mod). I got stuck at a point and I'm glad I came back to it, it's been a lot of fun. Settler management is not great but they're mostly autonomous and just need an okay bedroom and regularly crafted food, not nearly as rough and high maintenance as Rimworld. But initially my impression was Minecraft/Terraria meets Stardew Valley meets Rimworld. Movement speed upgrades are essential and I have a mod to straight up increase it, fights are still hard regardless but dodging becomes possible. The progression is actually okay, and there's a good few options for how to build a character, and early on you get the ability to change up item sets, and late game there can be good reasons to use them, though gathering trinkets for each build was a pain to keep having to make the same ones, though Explorer settlers made it easier. There are some encounters and things I haven't gotten, items and enemies I cannot find, and setting up fridges maybe takes too many resources and is not efficient, granted there's currently not electricity, but hey there's a mod for that too. I'm happy, unlike Rimworld, currently I have not seen any slavery mechanics. Food spoilage feels unnecessary, and in the case of unique meals it feels bad because the uncooked food lasts much longer, any meal with good buffs spoils very quickly.

Necesse is a combination of Terraria, Stardew Valley, and Rimworld, with the approach to 'endless' that diablo takes, with what they call "Incursions" (rifts). It is balanced, the bosses are fun and well thought out, and the incursion system is engaging. The village management system is surprisingly in depth, ergo the Rimworld influence. I played this game while it was in early access, and picked it back up again a year later. They are actively working on it, and they are making substantial content additions. For its price, and considering the devs are actively working on it and being very open with what decisions they're making, I highly recommend this game. It is especially fun with a friend or two. p.s. check out the 'ghost' UI appearance, few people know about it and it looks great.

Its just not that fun.

Boring.