Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection

My first hour with Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection felt like finding a handwritten letter tucked inside a secondhand game case. The premise is intimate and unhurried: Tama, a former bandit turned bodyguard, descends into a dungeon haunted by the Necromancer's spirit, building an undead army one fallen enemy at a time, all so she can accumulate enough power to bring her beloved Koko back from the dead. That emotional engine, small, personal, stubbornly romantic, is what keeps the whole thing moving even when the mechanics groan under the weight of ambition. The summoning system is where Resurrection earns its most genuine affection, and also where it frustrates the most. After defeating an enemy, you can resurrect it and slot it into a three-creature hotbar. Monsters level up, develop affinities, and unlock new moves, which gives the collection loop a satisfying texture that fans of monster-taming games will recognize immediately. The Tactics system lets you script their behavior in combat, tell them which enemies to prioritize, whether to play aggressively or hang back, even coordinate multi-creature puzzle solutions involving pressure plates and buttons. On paper, it is one of the most interesting companion-AI ideas in recent indie dungeon crawling. In practice, summons routinely get wedged in doorways, refuse to descend staircases, and occasionally ignore their own programmed orders entirely. Flying summons largely sidestep these geometry headaches, which is why most players gravitate toward them by the mid-game. The inventory limit compounds the friction: constant pruning of your monster roster to make room for new recruits becomes a chore rather than a strategic ritual. The shift from the original 2021 game's pixel art to full 3D is where opinions diverge most sharply. The anime-style illustrated cutscenes and the opening animated sequence are genuinely beautiful, and the voice acting, particularly for Tama, carries real emotional conviction. The 3D in-game environments, however, are blocky and sparse in a way that feels more like budget constraint than intentional retro charm. Some reviewers found warmth in the PS2-era visual echoes; others found the dungeon corridors numbing after a few hours. The newly added platforming sections, a consequence of the 3D transition, are workable but uneven: imprecise edge-grabbing and invisible collision points create mild irritation without ever outright blocking progress. There are also reports of crashes and bugs, particularly in late-game sections, which Grimorio of Games had not fully addressed at launch. Where Resurrection holds its ground most firmly is in the story. Koko's perspective unlocks partway through, recontextualizing events from Tama's flashbacks in ways that land quietly and well. The narrative knows it is telling a love story, states it plainly, and earns the emotional payoff through careful pacing rather than spectacle. Procedurally generated dungeon floors, a Roguelite mode, boss-rush challenges, and local split-screen co-op stretch the runtime to around 18 hours for a full completion run, which is a reasonable ask for a game of this scope. The remastered and newly composed soundtrack does quiet, capable work throughout, the kind of soundscape you notice disappearing when you close the game. This is a flawed remake from a small Barcelona studio that cares deeply about its characters and somewhat less reliably about its AI pathfinding. If Tama and Koko's story catches you, and for a certain kind of player, it absolutely will, the Tactics system and monster-collecting loop provide enough texture to make the friction worthwhile. If you need tight, polished dungeon mechanics first and emotional storytelling second, the cracks will show early.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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