The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos

The dungeon of Naheulbeuk is the videogame adaptation of a classic French "MP3 saga", the ancestor of narrative podcasts. The game is an "X-COM like" with very interesting features, inspired from the franchise's paper role-playing game, that will force you to think carefully about the placement and the orientation of your character to survive the real challenge some fights offer. You will have to get used to the idea that getting some of your characters downed is part of the game and that the RNG will sooner or later place you in difficult positions. The game is fun though, infused with humor and, except in a few instances, rather forgiving. The best example of this is the addition of a "bad luck meter" that will grant you salutary boosts to flip the bad situations in which ennemies' critical hits (or your own critical misses) will have put you. I have found the voice acting rather underwhelming considering the filiation of the game, most consumables except health potions have seemed underpowered to me (buffs rarely made up for the lost turn) and the camera can make navigating the dungeon a bit rigid. Apart from this, this is a really great indy game, especially for players that are not afraid of having to retry a boss battle once or twice.

A fun CRPG with light humor. Requires a bit of tactical combat on your side. The story isn't deep and, honestly, is not the focus of this game. Rather, it's the characters and particularly their amusing interactions. Overall, very enjoyable. Quick note: I didn't find any of the critiques by other reviewers to be meaningful (too many traps, referencing the map too often, etc).

Played it through on french with english subtitles, Some of the humor suffers from localization, especially the german one (which on the other hand becomes funny again for obvious direct or missing translations). The game loop is typical for old-school games, no bad design decisions like "level scaling". Each battle is solveable by different ways: Brute force (obviously not always workiing and not the best choice)/using environment puzzles or speicla items/basic tactics depending on opponent. Pros: - solid gamesystem - more than one approach to battles - even while using "archetypes", you can actually customize the party a lot - story twists that fit the gameworld/setting - the humor (if you like it, with lots of culture references through the whole crpg and media era from 80s to 2000s) - easter eggs and replay value (choices DO matter, if you have them) - never got boring and just fun to watch the party move and fight and talk Cons: - no disabling of bloom - optimization which forces you to disable and fiddle with a lot of settings on older machines, but i got it run smoothly - navigation needs a bit to get used to, since every keystroke makes the party stop. So you basically navigate with keyboard while keeping one key pressed and using a second for changing directions or camera. Use only one key or a third: party stops - guess the humor and chatter (if you do not like it). But chatter can be disabled or customized - german localization and translation - some puzzles are language based, so tough or unsolveable with some translations A shame the books, comics and animated of the series is so hard to find in another language but french.

The Good Nice Graphics Good sense of humor and parody A lot work on detail how the characters move etc.. very good voice acting The Bad This game has a lot of problems so I will divide my experience into different game topics Graphics: Game have constant micro stutter, now I have a very powerful up to date machine. I turned everything in the graphics from Ultra to Low, and still same micro stutter. Could be that this game have some kind of memory leak\frame rate drop problem. Its weird that game like this with no high detailed graphics would lag all the time. I googled the lag problem, a lot of people experiencing the same problem. Sound: Sometimes the sound glitches under in game story clips really annoying. Game play: Game can suddenly become brutal in difficulty, and I am playing on easiest mode. A lot of unnecessary clicking in combat in the User Interface.

Many elements of the original series are there; it is however not as fun as the first time. But cute enough and not cringe. That said, the game itself is a very good RPG for those who don't have time with complex stories of the other major games of the genre. The battle system is very fun as well, with a lot of elements that can play for or against you.