The difficulty of the boss encounters can vary wildly depending on your party composition and their mobility (given that your summons are useless at following moving targets). That said, I often found dropping a diverse group – typically a mix of defensive, ranged, and magic-wielders – worked well regardless of the situation, particularly against bosses. To maximise their effectiveness, you need to match the right monster summon against the right monster type. Although summons are disposable and easily replaced, they can level-up like the player, unlocking new abilities, increasing damage output and survivability. They de-summon every time you transition to a new room, which keeps them at the ready, but you will only want to summon them once engaged in combat or place them centrally and lure enemies towards them. Most automatically engage enemies at short range and then go idle.

Unfortunately, these summoned monsters don’t possess the most complex AI and can barely follow the player effectively. Weaker creatures often fill support roles, like a head-spider that snares and slows enemies, a flute-playing cherub that buffs your attacks, and a rabbit that sacrifices its own HP to heal you. Simple slimes offer slow-moving ranged attacks but they’re effective in large numbers skeletons can self-revive several times and make for great distractions mage-like summons cast a myriad of elemental orbs that inflict damage through defences that would block a physical attack larger tank-like summons draw aggro, allowing the player or other summons to pile on the damage.

Summoned monster combat in Sword of the Necromancer is hands-off and follows a simple rock-paper-scissors formula based on physical and elemental weaknesses. As you have limited slots to work with – slots also required for secondary weapons, amulets, rings, and consumables – you will soon have to decide if you’re prioritising weapon- or summons-based combat.Įven if you’re focussing on weapons and gear, a tank-type summon is always a good back-up plan. Revived creatures require one of three available inventory slots – the fourth is always the sword – and are assigned to one of the face buttons (if you’re using a gamepad, which I’d recommend). The common gameplay loop – assuming you’re not relying purely on gear-based combat – is to clear a room of monsters, consider strengths and attack patterns, then revive several monsters using the Sword of the Necromancer. When revived, they function as summonable companions, each with unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. However, the novel feature in Sword of the Necromancer is the ability to revive slain foes with the titular sword. The weapon-based combat in Sword of the Necromancer is solid, with different weapons – such as swords, axes, and halberds – requiring unique strategies that consider their reach, area-of-affect damage, and combo potential.

You need to tackled level after level, clearing rooms of enemies, finding the key for the boss encounter, and looting equipment chests for new gear.

The visual novel story-telling frequently swings between charming and salacious.Īfter an impressively animated cutscene sets the mood, you’re presented with a familiar roguelike dungeon-crawl. Tama is desperate to revive her, no matter the cost, but the “why” is something the player will only discover over the course of the journey. Tama’s charge, Koko, a young priestess who was looking to experience and understand the world before ascending to power, has fallen at some point in the past. In the Sword of the Necromancer, you take control of the brooding bodyguard Tama, who arrives in the ancient dungeon lair of the titular necromancer who, if legends can be believed, overcame death. Thankfully, several updates in the release version not only allow you to tailor the severity of the roguelike systems, but better balance gameplay for those who want to stick with the developer’s original designs. New story beats were only revealed after defeating each level boss, which made the progression system, which sent you back to the first level of the dungeon if you fell, dragged out the time between them and highlight repetitive elements. However, the detailed narrative seemed at odds with the roguelike structure. First impressions of the Sword of the Necromancer’s showed a lot of promise, with the weapon- and monster-based combat feeling satisfying to use and well-balanced.

Sword of the necromancer switch review