The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos (PC) Review

Don't expect to get anything from the plot at hand. Ask any of your friends who've dabbled with playing the Dungeon Master in a table-top RPG, and he or she can actually provide you with a far better, more gripping story. That's ok. The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos (that's a mouthful) doesn't care about storytelling. This is basically a parody of all things medieval fantasy, and especially of Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons (and more). Starting with the party of adventures you'll be in control of, these are nothing more than a bunch of worthless losers, with each one taking the role of one typical hero class, which also acts as their name, like 'Barbarian,' 'Thief,' 'Elf,' and so on. Sadly, these people are the first bitter taste of things to come…

For starters, none of them is funny. Like, at all. The reason for that is how lazy the execution feels. So, the Thief is a coward, the Elf is a stupid bimbo, the Barbarian is a dense oaf, the Ogre farts and burps, etc… but that's it! It's the same jokes played over and over again, with the writing of The Dungeon of Nunchucks falling somewhere between painfully cringy, and almost passable. The satirical aspect isn't that great either. The party finds an Inn inside the dungeon, and points at the stupidity of it… and? Is that supposed to great moment of parody? And then there are the many irritating, forced pop-culture references, always-miss, never-hit, fourth-wall breaks, and so on.

It's understandable that comedy is in the eye of the beholder, but you need to understand that all this comes from someone who doesn't exactly have an issue with "silly" humour - but in comedy even silliness needs good writing, and, more importantly, great delivery. In that regard, The Dungeon of Novocaine just doesn't cut it. The "funny" lives are repetitive, way too obvious, and very often, needlessly vulgar. The worst bit is how unlikable the cast is, and especially the protagonists. The problem isn't that they always fight with each other, the problem is the way they do so; like boring, arrogant bullies, instead of entertaining, useless nerds. Even worse? This is the bulk of the experience.

There's some light exploring to be done, but The Dungeon of Nyancattheme is actually an extremely linear deal, to the point that there's almost no reason to search for loot, traps, or whatever. In fact, it would be better if this would ditch exploration (what little there is) entirely, and just go from "funny" cut-scene to battle, and from battle to "funny" cut-scene. Sadly, this forces you to endure minute-long loading screens again and again, just because there needs to be an exploration bit right between the fightin' and the talkin', which usually has the player constantly switching locations, which is the reason for the numerous, immersion-breaking loading screens. The good news is that, once you get into a fight, this definitely begins to get a lot better.

The Dungeon of Nikolekidman is a pretty traditional turn-based strategy, which doesn't try to innovate, but it's also far from a simplistic affair. One could say that it's a fairly complex experience, as it throws in lots of different mechanics and rules, that might overwhelm genre greenhorns, and the tutorial doesn't help either, as it shoots information way too often in the first 10 or so minutes of the game - nothing that seasoned tacticians can't handle, of course, and once you get a grasp of how this plays, the ride suddenly becomes much more entertaining, offering a decent level of challenge, even the whole thing lacks that special something that could differentiate it from the rest of its ilk.

There's a final nail on The Dungeon of Nitrobenzine's coffin, however: it's quite unbalanced, with damage and accuracy, for instance, usually being… well, wrong, no matter the strength or agility of a character, even when said character receives all kinds of additional boosts. Even worse, though, is the RNG system (that the developer is not willing to change one bit, judging from forum discussions), which turns out to be very unfair for this type of game, as there's little joy in getting your behinds handed to you, just because a carefully executed plan was ruined by one more miss or critical failure. Sure, a dice roll here and there is fine in strategy games, yet these tend to happen way, way too often here.