In times full of samey dungeon crawlers, Sword of the Necromancer stands out. It's a game that puts a huge emphasis on monster possession and how you strategically use the foes you've defeated in combat to survive, not only getting stronger but also getting wiser as you learn the benefits of using enemy patterns and attacks for yourself.

It's a game that rewards you for playing your cards right while still retaining the sense of progression and making your gear and monsters stronger. And while it also retains the risk-reward mechanics of other rogue-lite contemporaries, it also gives you plenty of tools to maintain your inventory even after death to save those precious Rank 5 creatures. It's a breath of fresh air as its challenge doesn't come in the form of layouts overloaded with cheap enemies and it neither from overly punishing reset-your-progress mechanics but rather using the tools at your disposal in a smart way.

It's not like you're possessing enemies so their AI can play the game for you, on the contrary: because you can spawn/despawn any of your monsters at any time as long as you're near them, these can be seen as an extension of Tama's moveset, though because they have their own health bar you also have to consider when to retreat them so you can keep using them, and not only on the offensive but also on the defensive as some of these can block enemy projectiles, screw their patterns... or heal both you and your other monsters.

And because your monsters can get stronger or develop new kinds of attributes, with the added factor of weapon/defense loot, this leads to you figuring out tactical synergies between items/monsters in various forms. For example, I could use Tama with two weapons, a healer bunny and a close range heavyweight knight (a very straightforward melee build) but I can also use long range magicians to spawn around the enemy and shoot them while I distract them using myself as bait (it's like I'm playing Deception IV again). However, you have to be ready to adapt as the monsters you face might have attack patterns that can screw up your strategy.

Sword of the Necromancer is more tactical than your average rogue-lite "get stronger to get more powerful attacks to then get even stronger" dungeon crawler, while still being quick and straightforward to the point where the "just one more dundeon" dynamic kicks in real quick once you get used to the combat. It's a really comfy experience, and once you have the hang of the possibilites of capturing any enemy and fighting back with it, it becomes quite chill with the cutesy pixel art, celtic aesthetics and orchestrated music.

Put on top a really dramatic and passionate story with excellent voice acting (Tama's VA n a i l e d it), some really cool bosses, and you have a pretty sweet game that I recommend you check out if you dig dungeon crawler rogue-lites and at the same time want something different.

I really wanted to like this game, but overall I did not enjoy playing it.
The combat system is lackluster. A huge point for buying the game was that you could reanimate the monsters and have them fight for you. In reality they are really useless. You can't control them and their ai is just plain stupid.
Beat the game with pure melee and only using the monsters to heal. Since you can't do combo attacks it's pretty boring. The last two boss fights were nice.

The story is as cliched as it gets and too sappy.
Well it was enough to get me to finish the game at least.

Guess if you are really thirsty for some sapphic love story go for it, but there are better ones out there.

So far, it's pretty boring and slow paced. Not much variety in game play and enemies, and the unique gimmick, the Necromancy, is not very exciting or well realized. Most of the summons are pretty useless and die quickly with their poor AI. Your inventory space is too limited, only 3 slots for both equipment and monsters. (Technically 4, but your sword always takes one slot.) The Necromancy is what interested me in the game in the first place, but most of the time it seems better to have good items in those slots than monsters. The monsters can help sometimes, but they were never of much use against the bosses I fought.

The fact that you lose your levels and equipment on death just isn't very enjoyable. It doesn't give you the same feeling of progression as other Rogulite games like Rogue Legacy or Enter the Gungeon. You get a little further and a little stronger each run in a good roguelike, but you don't feel that here. You can save items you find on your run in a chest for a future run, but never permanently. You can forge items to make them better, but you will still lose them on death, and I never got enough materials to forge even one thing after multiple runs of the first couple floors. The menu gives options to turn off the roguelike elements, but at that point it's just an average dungeon crawler with nothing really going for it. The core gameplay isn't fun or fluid enough.

The soundtrack also wears on you. In a game where you are going to be repeating the same levels multiple times the music needs to be really good, and this just isn't. The sound effects are also buggy, sometimes being ridiculously loud despite having the volume low. The anime cutscenes after each floor are pretty boring and uninteresting as well. I thought the prologue did a fine enough job of delivering the story and motivation of the main character. The rest feels unnecessary.

Overall, there was some potential here but it just isn't very fun, and the unique feature that drew me in, the Necromancy, is not a particularly engaging gameplay mechanic.

(Also, limiting dashes with the Soul meter is stupid. Let me go fast.)

I have mixed feelings about the game. The story, art, and soundtrack is really really good. However, the combat is bland, boring, repetitive. It feels like a chore to play. You can summon enemies you have defeated, however the minions are absolutely useless in a boss fight, and they just stand around and do not pursue enemies, they do not react to gameplay, they do not avoid attacks. They just stand there and facetank a bunch of damage and maybe get a few hits in before they die.
You have much better luck just trying for a pure melee build and hoping you find some OP items to have more health and do more damage, which is how I ended up beating the final boss. You cannot swap out your main weapon for something else, so you will most likely just spend the entire game doing the same hits with the same weapon and not really varying in gameplay. For a game centered around the summoning of minions, the mechanic falls flat and feels pointless. Which is a waste because aside from the combat, every other aspect of the game is amazing. But you cannot have a good roguelike without good combat. The controls feel clunky and the reaction time is slow. The biggest flaw that broke the camels back however is the fact that when you "beat" the final boss for the first time, you don't actually finish the game, you have to repeat the entire game with a different, weaker character, making the game pointlessly harder just for the sake of it. Thus you end up seeing the exact same content a second time, with the only variation being the story content you get to see after beating a boss. I really wish I could give this game a loving review, but in good conscience I cannot.

TL;DR:I would totally recommend this game. You can see the love and passion the developers put in every detail of this dungeon crawler. If you liked Enter the Gungeon or Hades I would totally recommend you to give it a go. 

I might not be totally objective as I am a Kickstarter backer for this project, when I totally felt for this game (got a Switch physical edition), being said that, let's get into business:

You might think "another dungeon crawler", but nothing far from reality. Sword of the Necromancer really stands out. Among other things you feel the passion and love that has been put into developing this game. I loved how it puts a huge emphasis on monster possession and how you need to use  the foes you've defeated in combat to survive.

Sword of the Necromancer is more tactical than most rogue-like : fight, get stronger, die, repeat until you get stronger dungeon crawler, while still being quick and straightforward to the point where the "just one more dungeon" dynamic kicks in real quick once you get used to the combat. 

Finally add a really great story with excellent voice acting + some really cool bosses + excellent game design + great dungeon crawling = pretty great game that I totally recommend you check out if you are into dungeon crawler rogue-likes and want to see some fresh air to the genre.

I love the story but the gameplay is almost unbearable. I keep playing just for the story. I don't know whether to recommend for the story or not recommend for the gameplay. Guess I'll recommend if you love lesbian stories as much as I do.

I'll update this review whenever I get further into the game.

So far this Sword of the Necromancer is a really fun and unique action roguelike. The enemies telegraph their attacks really well and it is very intuitive to learn how to fight each enemy.

The summoning/raising of the dead mechanic is the really unique part. Any enemy you kill can be resurrected to use as your own. So far you are limited to 4 items per run. That includes your sword, resurrected enemies, weapons you find, potions, and passive items. This means you need to play a game of priorities with really limited slots. I haven't decided if I like that passive items and potions count towards the total of 4 items you can hold, but it definitely puts pressure on you to decide what you want to keep for the run.

The enemies are great as well. See a bunny that heals monsters? Kill it and now it heals you! How about a mushroom that summons bombs? Yup, you can have that for yourself as well. The enemies really feel like randomized items as well. They have variations (eg: a wizard can come in regular, fire, wind, dark, and etc magic types). They all rank up (if they survive long enough). And they can be stored in storage for later use depending on when you want to use them.

I have only fought 2 bosses so far and both have been great. I won't spoil them here, but they were very different from each other. And I noticed that the summons I chose to bring into each fight drastically reduced the fights in some cases. For example, with the first boss I tried going in with 3 wizards and the boss melted before I could even do anything. On the other hand, I tried doing the same boss with 3 dullahans and they all died lol.

The story is drawing me in too. Aside from the "I wanted to protect that smile" meme (think I actually laughed out loud the first time I heard that line haha). I am a sucker for cliche-ish plots. If this game does what I think it is going to do, it is going to be great narrative catharsis for me. I don't think I have read...anything that has the premise of "I want to raise a loved one back to life" and have the protagonist actually succeed. I have seen plenty of resurrection in sci-fi and fantasy. But never has it been the central goal and not lead to some horrible zombie abomination or the protagonist's demise. I think the plot of Sword of the Necromancer could go that direction...but I hope they pretty much play it straight. It is, ironically, rarely done in any fiction as far as I know and I'd like to see a writer tackle some good ol' fashion resurrection.

The graphics are pretty simplistic. If I had to gripe, I would say I am not a super big fan of the chibi aesthetic for the characters...but that is nitpicking. The other minor complaint I have is that the levels seem kinda bare. Aside from those two minor complaints...I really like the overall aesthetic of the game. The muted colors make it really easy to read what is happening on the screen and pick out/prioritize enemies. The animations are really fluid and responsive. There is not much complexity to the on screen UI letting you focus on combat.

The hand animated cut scene at the beginning of the game is beautifully made, and I hope there are more of them.

So, who is this game for? People who like The Binding of Isaac or Undermine come to mind. The dungeons and combat are very reminiscent of 2D Zelda games, and, although I don't know this for sure, it seems like the game is geared toward knowing how to exploit the game to make it easy. Overall, I would say Sword of the Necromancer is already easier than The Binding of Isaac and Undermine. But I haven't really gone far enough to say that definitively.

TLDR; it's a good game.

That game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Its honestly annoying to play.
The inventory system is extremely clunky. Summoning of dead enemies, while a really good idea, is not well executed. Your summons don't follow you around or even just wander around the room on their own. They are just standing there. Menacingly. But just standing. When they die a message pops up, which interrupts the gameplay flow. Overall moving around just takes too long.

And I want to flame the throwing axe, like damn. Every time I pick it up a message pops up telling me that I just picked up the same weapon again and it is just annoying. I know what I just did. It was intended. Thank you.

I wanted to like the game. Sadly I don't.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 12h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Has it been in a bundle: No
Is there a good guide available: I made a guide. I hope it is helpful. You can find it here [www.missitheachievementhuntress.com]
Multiplayer achievements: Yes, 1 achievement requires you to have a second controller to just start the dungeon as a multiplayer run, you don't need to complete it.
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: You need a little bit of luck with finding all the weapons and the different monsters
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, I recommend playing it with easier settings on, will explain more below.
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

This is a very enjoyable dungeon crawler rogue-lite about two girls going on a pilgrimage, which doesn't go as planned.. Tama is a former thief and is the bodyguard of high priestess Koko who wants to see the world to understand all the things see have read in books. Something terrible happens and Koko dies, but you remember a story about the necromancer who can revive people from the dead and decide to pay him a visit so he can revive Koko.

I really did enjoy this rogue-lite, what makes it special is that you have the ability to revive monsters to fight for you in the dungeon. You can't do this endlessly because you only have 4 active slots and 4 backpack slots. In those slots, you also store your weapons, potions, and trinkets, next to your summons. There is also a big chest to store those items in as well, but you don't have access to that all the time. Earlier reviews might tell you about not enough slots, and that is because during the release of this game there only was the chest and the 4 active slots, but the developer listened to the feedback players gave and added the 4 backpack slots. It is still sometimes hard to have to not pick something up or to destroy something, but that is part of the game. Another thing the developer is picking up on is that you don't get many materials, in an upcoming update you will get more materials in the main game as well as there will be an extra mode available that will help you out with finding materials.

The game starts out quite challenging, but after a few times dying you get new options in the options menu when in the altar, here you can change the difficulty as well as turning the setting on that you don't lose your experience or your items when dying, and that the dungeon not always put you back at floor 1. Because of these settings, the game is very doable, and I really love that the developer added them for those that like to keep most of their progression.

None of the achievements are missable. I would suggest always pick up a new type of weapon when you can and kill 2-3 monsters with it, for the achievement that you need to find all the different types of weapons as well as killing an enemy with every type. Those achievements might only unlock in the altar. A lot of the weapon types you can also acquire through IR codes. Those are codes you can activate in the game to get items/summons and weapons. You find them all on their discord server, but when you google on pictures for this you also find most of them. This is also quite handy for the achievement to reflect a magic attack since there is an IR code for a shield with the "mirror" ability. It is also how I got the weapon I was missing for the achievement for having all the weapons.

Another thing you mind want to keep an eye on is that you have to summon every possible monster, so when you kill a new type, always revive it and summon it. A few of the monsters require some RNG to show up, I can think of 2 on the later levels that I didn't see so much. There is also an achievement for leveling up 5 different types of summons, I did this on the first and second floor with the setting to recall your summons from everywhere and babysit them very close. When they did get low at health, I went back to the altar, and put them in the chest, and got them out again. They get full health when putting them in there. Don't worry about this achievement early on, you can't miss it.

A lovely game, which I suggest you just enjoy while playing through for the first time. Try to focus on leveling up, since that helps out a lot, and if you can get the chance to equip the item which makes that dashes don't cost souls, it is very helpful. I also put an exp bonus on that item, but that is just for optimizing how fast you get through the game.

Probably one of the worst experiences I've ever had, I was recommended this game because it's similar to moonlighter, but this is an anecdote. Weak story, weak gameplay, I finished the game without increasing the level of weapons or armor with the level 0 sword. I do not recommend it at all.