Developed by The Nameless Epic and published by WhisperGames, The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a turn-based, visual novel-style RPG where the gameplay brings you back to the early days of gamebook RPGs. If you started gaming fairly recently, chances are that you are familiar with modern RPGs like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dragon’s Dogma II, Baldur’s Gate 3, or Diablo IV. However, while these RPGs are excellent and they feature immersive worlds, brilliant stories, and amazing soundtracks, the classic text-based RPGs still have their unique charm if you started playing back in the 90s. The Nameless: Slay Dragon is one such text-based RPG, but it does feature somewhat animated screens, limited animations, and minimalistic artwork. This is our review of The Nameless: Slay Dragon on PC via Steam, where we slay some dragons and explore a gorgeous world.
In The Nameless: Slay Dragon, you step into the shoes of a young man who finds his village destroyed by a dragon. Driven by anger and a need for revenge, you start your journey of traveling the world and slaying every single dragon out there. Sticking true to the RPG genre, there is no central character to this story. You have to create your very own character from limited options at the start of the game. You are given the choice of selecting your character’s background out of four unique ones. Each background dictates your starting class in the game where each class has a unique class qualification, talent, and a random bonus to a specific attribute. Not all classes come with all these bonuses, but there is plenty to explore in each class right at the start of the game. After creating your character, you can pick the difficulty of your journey and then once everything is finalized, you can begin your gamebook adventure.
Right from the start of the game, we were very impressed with the bookish gameplay and map design of the game. Instead of moving around in real-time or clicking anywhere on a map, you can only move to specific action points where after arriving, you can trigger the event. It could be a small side quest, an NPC encounter, or even a boss fight depending on the location. You can click and move anywhere on the map, but the interactions are only possible on these marked spots. While most spots remain visible to you unless you have explored them, certain points are locked if a choice-driven event takes place, and that particular spot was involved in a decision that you did not make.
The initial hour is a little slow as you start settling in the word and the dice-based DnD style success check makes every outcome a surprise but once you get the hang of how the exploration, combat, and gameplay works, it sucks you right into its amazing story. There are no audio dialogues for any of the NPCs in the game, but it features an excellent soundtrack that keeps you entertained throughout the main story of the game. During exploration, it remains chill and soothing but during combat sequences, it picks up the pace to match the atmosphere. It is also dynamic in design, so it changes based on NPC interactions, area-switching, and other important events happening in the game.
There are three key elements in the gameplay of The Nameless: Slay Dragon. The very first one is exploration, and you will explore a lot of different maps by clicking on interactable points. It is initially covered in fog and as you progress in the game, it is revealed and unlocks more interactable spots for you. Sometimes, an in-game event such as a chasing monster also removes the fog on the map to show a cool chase sequence on it. It may look dull if you are not used to text-based RPGs, but it has some cool animations here and there that keep things interesting. Exploration helps you find new gear and items for yourself, and it also helps you learn more about the world you are exploring. Apart from this, you will also find enemies and boss fights which are not part of the main story, so exploration is a core component of gameplay here. It is also not that vast and each map only offers one or two off-the-main-path routes, so it is easy to explore each location properly before moving on.
The second main component of the gameplay is combat and The Nameless: Slay Dragon features a turn-based combat system. During this, the game shifts its focus and enters a first-person perspective where the enemies are located in the front and your party cards are at the bottom. The commands appear on the left side of the screen and the right side displays vital information. During this phase, you will need to defeat the enemies to progress in the game. If you die, you will need to load a previously saved file and return to this location to fight again. You can use items, Abilities, and Soulforce attacks during these sequences. You will need enough MP for Abilities and WP for SoulForce abilities. Different items help replenish them during combat so you will need to find them in the world or purchase them from different vendors.
At the start of the combat sequence, a success check will determine who goes first. This is based on the skill level of all your party members and all members need to pass it otherwise it fails, and your opponent goes first. You can also choose to Defend yourself for a move or try to Escape but it is again determined by a dice success check. This brings us to the final aspect of the gameplay and that is character development which is yet again an important element when it comes to RPGs. As we mentioned above, you are given four options as a starting class but once you level up enough, you gain Awakening Points which allow you to upgrade to a main class line like Adventurer, Thief, Mage, and others. As you continue upgrading them, you gain access to new skills which could be active or passive and you can use them in the game as you please.
Apart from skills and class development, you can also find and equip equipment such as clothes and weapons to increase your character’s attributes. Each piece will offer different strengths and weaknesses that will allow you to further modify your gameplay. You can also gain some bonuses in certain situations by equipping Traits. Each character has unique Traits, and you can equip up to five at the same time. These are unlocked with game progression. You can also improve your abilities by infusing them with Sparks. Sparks are one of the best aspects of character improvement because they alter how you use different abilities. You acquire these by talent or class upgrades and then you can infuse sparks with abilities to unleash mysteries for your abilities making you even more powerful.
One of the most surprising elements of The Nameless: Slay Dragon is that while it may not give you the feeling of an open-world exploration like modern RPGs like The Witcher 3, it brings with it most of the gameplay mechanics that you find in these titles. These mechanics include cooking, alchemy, and smithing. You can find different ingredients in the world and use them for various recipes in these three fields. You have the freedom to perform these actions anywhere, which is a convenience. The game has a dedicated Crafting section in the pause menu and here you can combine the ingredients you find to create delicious dishes, whip up some powerful potions for use in combat, or enhance your weapons to make yourself even stronger. Naturally, a success check is performed here as well and if you pass, you can add a bonus attribute to the item you craft. As you travel the world, find more merchants, and explore additional areas, you will gain access to more recipes and ingredients that give depth to these mechanics. Exploration and tasks do come with a price which is fatigue, and you will need to rest to gain your energy back for exploration and combat.
Choices play a vital role in the game, which was evident to me right from the beginning. During our first playthrough, we completed the first section as we led the Wyvern to the main city where the guards shot it to make it disappear. However, after some progression, we quit the game and forgot to save manually because most modern RPGs have autosave now, and being accustomed to them, we assumed the same thing here as well. Rebooting the game, we figured out what happened. After completing the same section again, we managed to evade the Wyvern completely before heading to the city because we chose to remain hidden in the river instead of running towards the village. The outcome remained the same, but the method changed slightly, and it was because of a very small decision that we took differently this time around.
This was just a small example of how every little decision in the game impacts how you progress and finally the ending of the game. You can unlock different endings in the game thanks to its choice-driven progression structure. This is not prominent at the start of the game but in later sections of the story, these choices will start to lead the story in a different direction instead of just a different path towards the same end goal. It also allows you to try the game again and go in a different direction, try out the things that you missed the first time around, and explore the beautiful world of the game thoroughly. It will also be the case if you forget to save the game, and you die because you will need to load the last autosave which could be hours earlier.
The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a great RPG that offers an exceptional amount of depth, a sense of exploration, and a great soundtrack. It may appear deceiving when you first start playing it but as you continue to play it, you start loving the story with its well-written lore and the gameplay provides a lot of things to play around with as well. Combat feels good and you get a lot of freedom with your character. All of these things combine to deliver a solid RPG experience which is made better thanks to its beautiful aesthetics and art style.
Final Verdict:
If you want to jump into a solid text-based RPG that reminds you of the early 90s RPGs with great worlds to explore, big boss fights, and epic dungeons to explore, The Nameless: Slay Dragon is an excellent title for you to jump into and spend a lot of time with. It offers a beautiful world to explore that is addictive and a well-written story ensures that you are hooked to it right from the start. Character selection might not be as diverse as some other options available in this genre, but it makes up for this with a lot of gameplay mechanics to master, skills to learn, and enemies to fight. Multiple endings and choice-driven gameplay ensure you are not in for a single playthrough. Highly-recommended for RPG lovers and players looking for a game to sink a lot of hours into.
Final Score: 8.5/10
