Nobody Saves the World - Transform All

Nobody Saves the World is Drinkbox Studios, of Guacamelee 1 & 2 fame, new game.

Transform from a featureless nobody into a SLUG, a GHOST and a DRAGON in this new take on Action RPGs from the creators of Guacamelee! Discover 15+ distinct Forms, mix-and-match their abilities, clear evolving dungeons and... SAVE THE WORLD!?

A lot of reviews are mentioning "the grind". Which I guess is the appropriate term for the leveling progression that goes into the game, having to complete mini-quests with each form to level them, and your character, up, leading to new character unlocks, and so on and so forth. But it doesn't feel like a grind at all! Just when I'm hitting that point where there's some tiredness or tedium, the game switches up the formula, whether it's forcing me to play new characters or adding new mechanics that mix up the gameplay. I've sunk almost 12 hours into this since launch and can't wait until it's early morning or lunchtime and I can get a quick 20-30 minute session in to work on character levels, world quests, or tackle a tricky dungeon.

Curious to hear other's experiences! I'm also stuck on a few quests so excited to swap ideas about how to beat some of the world tasks too!

The Slug is my favorite so far, but I'll be even more happy once I getting out some more characters.

Game starts a tad slow, leaning on its humor to keep things going along with its solid combat, but gets significantly more enjoyable to the more characters you have. Highly recommend it, especially for folks who were underwhelmed by the Guacamelee games.

garion333 wrote:

The Slug is my favorite so far, but I'll be even more happy once I getting out some more characters.

Just when I think I have a favourite I get a new character who then becomes my new favourite

I was team Rat, then Slug, then Horse, then Magician, then Zombie, then Bodybuilder.

The only ones I don't overly love right now are Mermaid and Ranger. The Mermaid in particular feels super weak and not overly distinct.

I've played about 45 min of this so far. Entertaining! I will definitely keep going to see how things shake out, though I can already tell I'd like to see some QoL stuff around gameplay (like a slowdown effect for when you want to quick-switch characters).

Hell bath no fury like a turtle scorned.

Is anyone else intimidated by how difficult the dungeons get once you gather the first two gems?

The magic, for me, hit when you can create your own loadout. I just got to the robot dungeon. Kind of surprised at the the how long to beat game times. Seems like the game should take longer based on all the stuff on the map. Fun game.

Hockosi wrote:

Is anyone else intimidated by how difficult the dungeons get once you gather the first two gems?

The difficulty definitely ramped up in the second half. Changing around forms and builds can allow you to get through some hairy situations.

I just finished the game today. While at times it can be a bit of a slog, the game overall flows very well. I didn't complete all the quests and dungeon, and my final time was about 16 hours. Finishing the game also opens New Game Plus.

Hockosi wrote:

Is anyone else intimidated by how difficult the dungeons get once you gather the first two gems?

I think in general the later forms are "better" so if you're still using the rat on later dungeons it's going to be trickier. And upgrade points and build synergies really matter. One of my favourite builds has been to stack an affect (poison usually) with the "75% extra critical damage to status affixed enemies" with "25% health return from critical attacks" (which works in most dungeons except the one which enemies can't get status effects).

The later dungeons all seem to have a "gimmick" (constant poison, knockback resistance) which I found I really had to tune my builds too. Horse and Muscleman just won't work in the "knockback resistance" dungeon because their primary damage mode is knockback. It's definitely a game that rewards matching your character form to the enemy type/groupings etc

Out on Switch now. Might have to pick this one up. Some solid reviews.

Fun game. Highly recommended.

Played through it on Gamepass. Lovely and addictive. Highly recommended!

Well it was free on PS+ monthly games so I grabbed it last week and started it tonight. Had a blast, and got through the first castle, first gem piece or whatever. Up to level 5 or 6 and as many forms unlocked. Seems pretty awesome.

Stele wrote:

Well it was free on PS+ monthly games so I grabbed it last week and started it tonight. Had a blast, and got through the first castle, first gem piece or whatever. Up to level 5 or 6 and as many forms unlocked. Seems pretty awesome.

It's a delightful little gem, this one. Played through it on Gamepass way before the expansion was announced. I might go back into it on PS4 just for the hell of it at some point.

So last night I got to customization... whoa. Mind blowing. But of course only level 10 or so and just 1 passive, 1 active. Not a lot I could do.

Tonight I got up to 16 or 17 and got the 2nd gem. Of course ran into the part about switching characters to punch through different enemy defenses. So that wrinkle is popping up everywhere now.

Uncovered a lot of the map. Unlocked bodybuilder. I'd been leaning on Ranger a lot, but now Bodybuilder has a fun AoE and slam. I used him primarily on the 2nd gem dungeon.

Got a rank up in both the knight club and the mage club. Lots of fun side quests out there. This game is delightful mostly.

I did have one stupid side quest at the start of a dungeon where you have to leave an elite boss alive and kill all the other enemies in a room. I almost beat it the first time but I got caught on geometry, trapped in a corner, and could not get out, even as horse or slime that seemed to normally charge through stuff. Then I spent like 5 more attempts, dying on the 3rd and final wave of enemies every stupid time. Eventually got it, but that was a bit annoying. Probably could have just done the rest of that area and came back but got a little stubborn. Ah well.

Only thing I'm really lost on is the store. I know buying quests is important. But I'm not sure if I should buy these other passives that show up (I did buy the one that increases money %), or if I should just be buying upgrade coins and using those on powers, or if I should be buying the stat increases? I have nowhere near enough money and not sure how to spend what little I have.

Got up to 30 or 32 now. Finished the 3rd gem and back to Olivia and got some cool story. Then new quests unlocked. I was wondering because I had 2 forms maxed at B, about halfway to A, with no quests. And the northern half of the map unlocked finally.

That 3rd gem dungeon was interesting with the exploding enemies effect. I just countered with my magician, and that passive where my minions explode on death. It was just one massive ball of exploding death while I poked around the edges and broke a few shields.

I continue to think this form is the best and then find another form that's even better. First I liked ranger, kiting enemies and piercing arrows. Then bodybuilder with the knockback seemed much better than guard. Then magician with the pet game. Then zombie with even more pet game. Then ghost, I can AoE everything while I turn immaterial, haha.

I got egg unlocked and then up to d, c, b now but still haven't used it in a fight very well. It's strange.

Mermaid was useful for swimming and then so was turtle. But ghost floats over water and lava and poison, so map traversal is covered.

I've still got the two gaps on right and left paths in the middle that require horse/magician A and slug/bodybuilder A ranks. Bodybuilder and magician are right there but horse and slug are going to need some work next session to finish quests. One of the quests for ghost now says something about a rogue passive so I'm guessing that's one of the two gaps.

Dang this thing is fun. I'm hesitant to look for builds. Finding cool synergy is fun. And the game itself uses quests like try guard knockback passive here, or poison passive with ghost (which I was already doing) to point you at combos. And exploding minions was obvious for both magician and zombie. But you can put the magician minions on anybody. Or the zombie bite..

Many more things to try later.

Got the final form today at lunch! It's pretty great but need to rank it up a bit more.

Think I finished all the optional dungeons, except impossible. Looks like just the last 2 gem piece story dungeons on the map.

Finished mage and thief guild all the way. Still just one knight guild, that second ranger test. Hard to be perfect.

Got all the passive items from store this weekend too. 33 of 35 fairies. My quest screen is back down to 1 page instead of 2. Feels like I'm getting close, could finish in the next day or two. Not sure about maxing the forms or whatever other trophies... We'll see. Still having fun though. What a game.

And finished.

Honestly I could have finished 3 days ago. Had the gem done. But I started trying the impossible dungeon and it was a blast. I went from level 62 maybe all the way to max 75 just doing that over and over. Wish I had known that was max and I might have stopped before. But still I was trying to get forms up to S rank and just kept on playing. I think I got everything to A and maybe half of them to S. Once I realized I wasn't getting XP again I looked at trophies to see what else I was missing. 1 more fairy and I found it last night.

Then I saw there was NG+ and figured if I was going to chase the S rank trophy I might as well do it while working on NG+ trophy to give me a platinum. So I beat the game. Final boss was pretty easy since I was max level and had a ton of skills maxed too. That was the other thing. I looked down sometime after many impossible dungeon runs and saw I had 60k credits. So I got all upgrades from the shop finally plus I bought a ton of skill points. Got everything to level 3 and the ones I could mostly to 4. Still some upgrades to finish and s rank to achieve. So I might speed rush NG+ and go for platinum.

And I still only got to floor 13 on impossible but there's a reward for 18. I feel confident I could if I tried. Most runs I was just farming quests to rank up forms, not really trying to get far. But getting dinosaur from floor 12 was awesome. I think it might be my favorite form.

What a great game

And Platinum. That was fun

I took one serious try at Impossible Dungeon, got to floor 13 with over 5 minutes left still. But I did not readjust my setup enough, and there was a 2x mana modifier. I found myself dying, out of mana and health, and could not recover. Felt really dumb.

No trophy for floor 18, but I might try again. Just need to take more time to think through my build.