We could give some of this a marginal pass if there were some pretty aesthetics or interesting environments, but barring some palette changes every floor looks more or less exactly the same, with character and enemy sprites that are just about acceptable. The second boss got stuck in a wall, unable to attack us while we spammed the A button and gradually whittled down its health with absolutely no resistance. Which begs the question – why even attach a roguelike structure? It’s buggy, too. You can kill the normal enemies and bosses very easily with your sword, as long as you’re patient. Summoned monsters taking up a slot and being basically useless – even with gradually-accrued upgrades - essentially writes off any reason to engage with Sword of the Necromancer’s primary selling point. The aforementioned item limit essentially means that the item synergies and gameplay diversity that literally define this genre are conspicuously absent. We could reel off a laundry list of complaints. We’d say it’s best not to get attached to them, but you won’t really need them anyway as their A.I is rubbish and they couldn’t hit the side of a barn – a major problem given that the third boss is the side of a barn. Resurrected enemies level up as they fight, but they’re easily killed. General combat sees you slashing at your enemies ala Zelda, but upon defeat, it’s possible to reanimate their corpses in order to fight alongside you. We’ll come back to this nonsense shortly, but an explanation is in order. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) This would maybe, maybe be OK, but the central mechanic of the game – resurrected monsters that fight on your side – take up a slot each. It’s hamstrung by one major and completely insane design flaw you can only carry four items. That’s really not to undermine the no-doubt hard work and passion of the developers, but there’s just nothing whatsoever to get your teeth into in Sword of the Necromancer.
What this amounts to is a roguelike dungeon crawl with so little focus it’s almost embarrassing.