No Rest for the Wicked early access review: The pieces of a great ARPG

No Rest for the Wicked is tedious by design. Healing items in the action RPG have a 10-second hold period after use, so you’re bound to die often. Equipment loses durability each time you die, and the cost of repairs quickly adds up. Bounty missions you take on to cover them pay like shit, but that’s the job. Over and over, the game punctures any confidence you build over the course of your adventure, increasing enemy numbers and introducing new, vicious foes often to shake familiarity. That frustration complements the story’s themes. When you consider the project’s development, however, it’s almost justified.

Once you finish creating your character, you’re greeted with a welcome message from developer Moon Studios, best known for Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel. “Over the past six years, we’ve poured our hearts and souls into creating a next-level ARPG experience,” the message reads. The big-swing effort is immediately palpable, with a prologue set on a ship that oozes charm and an art style that mimics a painting in motion. The combat is blunt and responsive. The more I played, the more I couldn’t help but wonder how a game that leaves such a charming impression can still be deemed a “work in progress.”

Released on Steam Early Access on April 18, No Rest for the Wicked takes a top-down approach to the ARPG genre. This isn’t Diablo, though, but a game closer in DNA to Dark Souls. The novelty is in how the play is structured, making use of an interconnected map that you slowly uncover and go back and forth through while completing quests. Moon Studios also weaves in crafting and gathering systems, adding a dash of the survival genre, up to the point of features like purchasing a home and building furniture for it.

You face these tasks as a Cerim, a member of an ancient sect whose sole purpose was to vanquish a plague that once haunted the realm. In the face of yet another plague, the church decides to act first and preach later with its inquisition, while you’re given side-eyes at best and racist comments at worst when you show up on the island of Isola Sacra.

There’s a welcoming crude tone that permeates almost every dialogue interaction, as well as the places you set foot in. The people of Sacrament, Isola Sacra’s main city, were abandoned by the neighboring realm where the royalty and the church reside. You can chat with any fellow travelers you meet, as well as the townsfolk of Sacrament, as the city serves as a hub area. Conversations often evoke sentiments about the decay of their home or how citizens asked for food and medicine and were sent soldiers instead. The church’s intentions are quickly challenged after its main representative shows up on screen for the first time. About your singular status as a Cerim, one of the kinder comments you hear is a sailor saying “they eat, they shit, they die, just like the rest of us” in your presence.

At the moment, the early access build only includes the first narrative chapter of the story, which basically involves a few main quests and bosses, side tasks, and an endgame gauntlet that pits you against powerful foes for equally powerful rewards. There are a few interesting swings here and there, but it’s more of a setup than anything.

The bulk of your time playing No Rest for the Wicked is spent hitting and dodging attacks. There are no classes to pick from — you can equip and use anything as long as you have the necessary stats to do so (you’re given a few points to spend each time you level up). Weapons dictate the special attacks you’ll get access to, which can include magic, and all feel quite distinctive to wield. My go-to was a hammer that I could set on fire and throw past an enemy before it swung back to me like a boomerang, and almost always inflicted a brief stagger if it hit both times.

With strong combat and exploration foundations in place, Moon Studios delivers a game akin to what Lies of P offered, and what Lords of the Fallen compromised on. But the barrage of hardships thrown on top of those systems doesn’t always come together to hit the Soulslike sweet spot. I defeated the first main boss of the game in one try. An hour later, I got stuck trying to backtrack to the starting area, as a single hit from a spear of what I thought would be a low-level foe would knock down around 80% of my health. Obtaining decent new gear takes time and effort, or tons of money you probably don’t want to spend, as you always need to have some savings to repair your current gear.

Image: Moon Studios/Private Division

Once these roadblocks began to manifest more often than I could tolerate, I stepped back to assess priorities. My healing options and gear became the focus I needed to stop relying on the hope that I would find things out in the wild and just craft them myself. But I had to gather both recipes and blueprints, however, which were pricey. This led to the fun part of No Rest for the Wicked, the current survival-like systems that translate to menial tedious tasks.

All the meal prep echoes the alchemy mechanic of the likes of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, in how different recipes give you unique buffs that can help you withstand certain ailments or have an advantage in battle. Fishing is in every RPG, and it doesn’t drag down No Rest for the Wicked, especially since it naturally feeds into the synergy with food recipes. It’s when you’re required to search for specific animals out in the wild for meat or hide that things start to become annoying. Or when you sit and wait for an eight-second animation of your character chopping down a tree, digging into the ground, and gathering mine ores with a pickax.

The biggest culprit at the heart of it all is inventory space. No Rest for the Wicked allows you to upgrade it with a rare currency that’s mostly obtained by defeating bosses, so you won’t be doing it often. Once you have it, you must choose between eight different categories, including both the standard inventory space and the slots you have for your character in case you want to equip multiple gear pieces and switch between them on the fly.

So… you’ll be running out of room often, resulting in you either discarding items or performing dozens of round trips to town. Of course, the long-term solution involves even more participation in the survival systems. Owning and decorating a house makes sense when you can make storage stashes and organize all your loot. If you’re prepared, or at all motivated for the grind required to accomplish this, that is.

Image: Moon Studios/Private Division

The release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 earlier this year sparked a conversation about friction, and what happens when a game is designed to not be easily conquered by the player. No Rest for the Wicked carries the expectations of the Soulslike genre — you know you’ll be dying often and put into unfair situations to test your might — but its singular impetus demands an extra effort in basically everything you do. You don’t conquer anything; you just get small victories.

When considering the circumstances surrounding Sacrament, which has a mechanic to rebuild many of its facilities aside from your own place, the extra effort is understandable. After all, it’s a community that’s slowly picking itself back up again, which may have struck a chord with developers. In 2022, there was an outcry over work culture at Moon, and while no action resulted internally, the development of the game has been its own bumpy ride. No Rest for the Wicked arrives to Steam Early Access after six years of development — and a bunch of immediate hotfixes. According to the roadmap, the next two big updates will add multiplayer and “The Breach,” which will continue the story. There’s no clear indication of how long the game will continue to be in early access on the Steam page either, only a list of future features.

For all my annoyances with No Rest for the Wicked, I can see the promise. I haven’t been this mesmerized by the presentation of an ARPG of its kind since Fable or Torchlight, games with distinct characters and art styles inside worlds worth fully exploring. But I can’t help but think about the sustainability of it all, especially coming from a studio with two critically acclaimed games on its back. If Moon spends six years working on a project only to immediately spend launch weekend working on patches as it begins an early access period with no end in sight, what does sustainability look like for a small studio? “Our next project is going to be a make-or-break moment for Moon,” CEO Thomas Mahler wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in 2023. The stakes feel high after playing through roughly 20 hours.

The biggest encapsulation of No Rest for the Wicked lies at the top of a mountain in the Nameless Pass. After spending a good chunk of my evening slowly taking down enemy after enemy and being shredded to pieces more times than I can count, I made it to the peak. I rushed excitedly toward the cliff hoping to find a chest. The reward was a mine ore I have no space for, sitting on the edge of a gorgeous view of the sunrise illuminating a lake. Perhaps sharing frustrations is an act of solidarity. I just hope Moon’s eventual victory is bigger than this.

No Rest for the Wicked was released in early access on April 18 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Moon Studios. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.