The Nameless: Slay Dragon Review (PC): A Novel RPG

What caught my attention about The Nameless: Slay Dragon, was its character design and concept. A godlike dragon terrorizes the world, forcing the people to hide in the last remaining badtion in the land. As a character driven turn-based RPG, it plays out like a storybook with quick fights, engaging exploration, and a game of Dungeons and Dragons. As I explored the world, I felt like I was flipping through the pages of a fantasy novel. At times, it can be slow and repetitive but there’s a charm to it. As for if that charm holds true though is, as they say, another story.

Dragons and Dungeons

The Nameless: Slay Dragon has all the elements you’d expect from a traditional RPG. It’s character driven with unique heroes and people to join your party. The story is full of monsters to fight and challenges to overcome and the combat is clean, fast, and challenging.

You play the character Hamm, or you can choose your own name, as he figures out who he is and his place in the world. Your main task is to defeat the god dragon but along the way you gain allies, choose a class, and level up your party. Your party all has their own class but you’re free to train them in various other classes such as rogue, ranger, soldier, and so on. Your first party member is the mysterious rogue Andy. They stick with you through the first section where you get the tutorial of mechanics and combat. Cynthia and Mew join with you later and complete your party with spellcasters.

You explore the world through a top down map and point and click to move your player icon. While it would be great to see the party moving around together or getting a scene showing them work on checks, it’s straightforward and doesn’t slow down the pace. There are points of interest dotted around the map you can investigate. Each may be linked to a short scene between characters or moments to investigate or interact with the world. These range from mining, scavenging, or sneaking past enemies, just to name a few options.

These opportunities are a core mechanic of The Nameless: Slay Dragon. Each character in your party has attributes linked to the specific check they’re working to overcome. These attributes have their own percentage chance of successfully completing a check. Gaining a success on the check increases the attributes level, leading to a greater chance you’ll be successful with more challenging checks. You also earn experience as you adventure that can be used to level up characters and their class. Attributes increase if you gain a success in a check, while experience can be spent by you to make your character more effective

Roll for Initiative

Combat sees the characters and enemies enter initiative. At the start, your speed determines if you’ll strike first. If every character in the party is successful, the party attacks first. During combat, party members can pick and choose from different attacks, spells, and items to defeat enemies.

True to RPGs, characters have resources to pull from during combat. The Nameless: Slay Dragon features WP for spells and special abilities. You’ll consume WP to use Soulforce to gain vital information from enemies. These include showing their health bar, shows their next action, and shows weaknesses. Knowing what an enemy is weak to allows you to do more damage.

Each action has you select an enemy to fight. You don’t get full battle animations. Instead, every character on screen shows as a 2D figure. This all is great and aligns with the novel style of the game. Never once is it something it isn’t. It’s an RPG with a novel theme. You don’t get cutscenes showing explosions, but rather well-written and engaging lore told through the player characters and NPCs you meet. Granted there were grammar errors but that could be due to a language barrier.

While combat flows well and is over generally quickly, after hours, it can get repetitive and you feel way overpowered at times. What makes up for this is found in your different spells and attack types and leveling up your character.

Crafting is Key

During your adventures, you’ll collect items used in crafting. You’ll use checks to find resources used in making armor, weapons, and alchemy.  It’s a unique system that grants you additional gear useful on your journey.

It can be a bit intimidating at first, but once you get the gist of it, it’s a worthwhile tool. Or you could go shopping for gear, but you may not find exactly what you’re looking for.

Sound Design

I always enjoy taking time to listen to the soundtrack of a game and The Nameless: Slay Dragon delivers on music. The soundtrack is well done and I found myself taking time standing in the map just listening to it. My one wish is for more selection when it comes to fights.

Final Verdict

The world and lore are what drew me to the game initially. A story about a tyrannical dragon god, all designed by a single developer, sold me on the concept. That and the art got my interested in The Nameless: Slay Dragon. Coupled with the engaging trailers and storybook vibe, I can say I was wowed by my experience. It’s a standout RPG that may not be full of as much on screen action, aka cutscenes, but that doesn’t take away from the charm and wonder of developer The Nameless Epic’s creation. It’s got a charm to it and it’s a worthwhile addition to any RPG fans collection.