Goblin Slayer -Another Adventure- Nightmare Feast

I was a bit shocked when I got an email saying that I had received a key for this game from Keymailer, I think I put in a request a good few months ago and had pretty much forgotten about its release. -.-b

I quickly fired up my switch and downloaded it for playing it in a bit of downtime at an event since being an SRPG it seemed like the perfect thing to pick up for 30-40 minutes and do a mission and then continue on/off…

To say it starts slowly is a bit of an understatement. It took that initial 30-40 minutes to get into the first training battle.

It has admittedly been a long while since I last properly played an SRPG and initially I was out of sorts with the battles, trying to take on too many foes and getting wiped, or at least having my commander be wiped, resetting the game and having to load my last autosave.

The game isn’t what I would call brutally tough. It kind of feels true to the world in which it is set, with you having to take time to plan a bit more effectively, your unit placements and strategies.

On some maps you can lay various traps to help give you an advantage or a break from enemy advancement, however these offer only a short stay from the advancing enemies.#

This trap menu seemed to be the only part of the game left untranslated which was a little odd, but hopefully fixed easily enough in a patch.

Win your battles and the story starts off in earnest, you play as a returning guild leader who takes a hands-on approach to the task at hand by filling in for the adventurers, or lack thereof, in her home town.

You end up clumsily waking the Blood Princess from her slumber and as with all hero stories end up recruiting her, albeit unwillingly, to help adventure alongside you and help the town.

Along the way, as guild leader you can recruit, rank up and equip additional adventurers who make their way under your employ to help improve your chances of winning the arduous battles ahead.

Between story battles you are tasked with taking on missions from the guild board. Again a nice way the game stays true to the source, the overarching big evil is slow and menacing but the immediate need to help out the town is more important.

These missions serve as good experience both literally and figuratively helping you and your party grow. Though you can always play the training missions to get those extra levels needed if you find them a little tough.

I found the battles very long, I didn’t do much in the way of grinding so most of my battles amounted to luring a single enemy and picking them off. With only some characters having  an AoE attack, some of which have massive friendly fire, I found myself sticking to physical attacks a lot of time.

Doing well and clearing missions fills your coffers and when you return to the guild you’ll often find that the stores have updated allowing you to equip your team with better weapons and armour. Offering some semblance of safety as the difficulty increases.

Though guild management itself is pretty barebones otherwise. As you do level your party you can rank them up, unlocking new skills for them to use in battle. – It actually feels pretty satisfying doing this and it allows for extra challenge if you keep them at porcelain.

As you progress the story, eventually the titular Goblin Slayer arrives to kill some goblins (and other assorted non goblin monsters) alongside his party, they become tools at your disposal to help clear missions though not much more.

In a nice nod the source, you aren’t able to rank up the members of this party like you are with adventurers you recruit normally.

This gives the game its own space to breathe. It shows that the focus is on you and your story and the Goblin Slayer party is merely passing through, there to help but well on their way to doing their own important things.

It might feel a bit sad that they’re not more important in the story, but I feel it’s a nice way to give the game’s story its own importance.

The story  itself plays out much like a visual novel. With drawn scenes punctuated with characters who appear and disappear. Occasionally you’ll be treated to a full CG art scene that highlights a part of the story, but these are sparse. Which leads to the game feeling very samey, with the backgrounds looking uninteresting.

Each scene is fully voice acted by an impressive Japanese cast and its quite nice to listen to them act over the scenes.

The battle maps are nicer, but not by much, with a hd2d inspired feel to them. Character sprites are good and unique characters are easily identifiable, but don’t zoom in on the models too hard.

Overall the game is true to the material in how it expects you to play and the difficulty. It’s hard to call it fun though.

I feel SRPG veterans may find the game interesting enough to play and while not overwhelming, casual players may get bored quickly of the slow progression and tough battles.

Set aside a bit of time for each battle if you intend to play how I did. Even with the fast battle speed enabled, the fights take a long time to process. Especially when there are lots of enemies in play.

Thanks once again to Keymailer and Red Art Games for letting me take a look at the game.

Its available on the Nintendo Store (In English) and Steam (in Japanese)