So here we are with another game, the last one I wasn’t a fan of, but this next one I actually quite enjoyed. Goblin Slayer is probably one of the closest anime I’ve seen to a real Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Where the protagonists become thorough with their dungeon dives, take precautions to avoid danger, and even have creative uses for typical spells or items. On top of that, it illustrates the scary reality for those who don’t take even something as basic as Goblin on without any real preparation.

If you expect this same level of dark, edgy content from a spinoff game, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Leave those expectations at the door. “Goblin Slayer – Another Adventurer – Nightmare Feast” is the title. It pretty much indicates that this will be a different experience from what we’ve come to know from Goblin Slayer itself. While the Goblin Slayer party is indeed playable and has some scenes in the game, they are not the focus of this story.

 

 

This title is a Strategic RPG which seems to be taking a lot of inspiration from games like Final Fantasy Tactics, or Tactics Ogre. From the isometric camera angles, the grid-based movement system, and more. And in my opinion, Nightmare Feast doesn’t seem to revamp or improve on its predecessors. While that statement might not form any confidence, I’m doing my best to be honest and transparent. So we’ll go over what I think it does okay, what it does well, and what I wish it did better. From there, we can decide on who this game can best serve. Let’s not take this turn any longer than it has to be, let’s break it down.

 

 

Production (3 / 5)

 

 

As a product from the Goblin Slayer IP, it’s pretty expected that the art style they will be using will be based on that very anime. That’s exactly the case we have here. With at least the two main heroines given the same amount of attention to intricate detail. There are other characters as well, but their designs look more generic once you start comparing them to each other. Not that it’s out of how things work within Goblin Slayer, as all the characters aren’t even really named just like in the main series. Each of them is called “Guild Master” or “Cleric Bear”

or whatever else, one character being saved from this treatment is Conan, unless it’s a character class that I’ve never heard about.

Apart from the character art, the sprite work looks good enough to make most characters recognizable at a glance, even the ones that come off as auto-generated from a bunch of presets that the game has ready for the random adventurers that join the guild. The standout ones are definitely for the Goblin Slayer party, considering how much detail they managed to drive into the limited palette you have available to you when making mini sprites. It’s a bit of a shame that they don’t quite blend in very well with the backgrounds and maps created for Nightmare Feast. I do think the tilesets themselves look great, and their quality makes the sprites look less appealing.

 

 

What I do find the least attractive of the visuals would be the interface. You can relegate the idea to minimalism, but there are much better ways of pulling this off rather than making information look like a basic spreadsheet. Where the biggest offender in my opinion comes up during combat, switching between and looking through characters can be confusing when everything looks the same, there could have been at least character portraits.

Animation and effects are also quite limited, there are very simple effects for various spells and attacks. Perhaps some camera work could have made the spells and skills look more attractive and memorable. In fact, the camera being only able to operate on fixed angles hurt my experience a bit, the directional controls can be disorienting, and it can be difficult to see enemies hidden behind some sort of terrain. It’s rare, I admit, but it’s a perfect information game, having things jump at you like that because you simply didn’t see the enemy there can be annoying.

 

 

Mechanics ( 3.5 / 5)

 

 

So Nightmare Feast is an sRPG, where S means “Strategic.” Generally, games that fall in this genre are turn-based combat games where you have characters act like chess pieces on a board and play out like a tabletop. Our game in question does not deviate from that.

On your turn, you get to move all of the available characters you have and make them do one action. Once you’re done with your moves, the opposing AI can do likewise. Our Goblin Slayer game plays out much like Tactics Ogre, with up to 10 characters playable in your party at any one time. One pain point I have here is that when a character goes to 0 HP, they are out of combat until that round ends. It can be punishing but at the very least there’s no perma-death.

There are unique mechanics you get out of this title and the first one is found during your prep phase. You can place traps and barricades to pin the map more toward your favor (though, this isn’t always available). The other one would be the dice roll event that triggers during specific situations, sometimes at random. It could be you dealing critical damage, healing extra health, preventing damage or status effects, and more. And this is the part that spells out the “We’re not really about Goblin Slayer.” One of the most badass lines I’ve ever heard from that series was about never leaving anything to chance. To not allow the gods to play dice with your fate, so to speak. So while the dice theme is something present in the IP, how it’s portrayed here is contradictory to how it’s used in the series. It makes sense in the game, yes, but it also annoys me in terms of theme.

 

 

Moving on, stats obviously dictate how a character will perform, and their growth in terms of stats is preset from the class they present to you. Which you don’t seem to have a lot of control over, more on this later.

The mechanics of Goblin Slayer: Another Adventurer – Nightmare Feast are pretty standard, even how the abilities work is pretty cookie-cutter so it doesn’t play with the imagination, unfortunately. While it does present something unique in terms of preparing the map, its uses are very limited and the enemy AI knows how to navigate them. I wish there was more to these unique mechanics as their implementation was rather boring.

 

 

Content (2 / 5)

 

 

The story for this title is pretty linear, which is in-line with how the series likes to make stories out of it. They don’t have named characters which is part of the style of Goblin Slayer, where characters feel pretty generic but their interactions make them interesting enough especially with the thoughtfully they act as adventurers.

You play as the guild master, who doubles as an adventurer given that she’s quite capable with a sword and the local guild is lacking in manpower. Where your main story is figuring out what happened to her father, where you meet other friends and foes along the way. Every major event is filled with fully voiced scenes that may have overstayed their welcome, giving me maybe 20 minutes worth of voiced dialogue to sit through every time. It was clear that the writers were asked to make sure everyone had something to say in these major scenes, which may have padded the dialogue quite a bit. The fact that they don’t have any alternative method of showing you the story aside from these visual-novel-style scenes doesn’t help.

The base party you will eventually get to control consists of 5 characters plus the other 5 characters of Goblin Slayer’s party. You also get what feels like random adventurers come by your guild to be recruited every time you progress the story. And this is where I feel ambivalent about the whole idea.

 

 

If the idea is to be able to form a customized party, this becomes difficult to do since you don’t know what kind of characters you’ll get in the future. Or how each character will unlock and improve as you level them.

Character progression, or leveling, is guaranteed so long as you take them out to battle. Everyone gains experience points at the end of the battle, and only half if they were forced to retreat. The amount of experience you gain is also proportional to how much of a level difference you have against the opponents you take down. The same goes for gaining points for each character’s adventurer rank, so there’s also a risk for over-leveling characters, as new skills are also obtained by moving up on the adventurer rank. I personally find this bad, since the only way for you to gain better equipment or be able to replenish supplies is by grinding through repeatable quests, so trying to improve a character may already ruin how everyone else in your party may develop. You might as well ignore the random adventurers at that rate.

Quests also lack any variance whether it be standard, story, or grind quests. They all involve you simply killing anything that isn’t your ally. Sure, some of them require you to protect livestock or kidnapped girls or something, but the strategy implemented is all the same. Position them to a trap, and rain down hell upon whatever’s unlucky enough to walk too close.

 

 

Finally, I don’t know if there’s anything else to being a guild master aside from playing the part of a glorified party leader. You can manage people’s equipment if you officially hire them, and look through people visiting the guild, but that’s about it. There’s no sense of management of the extra characters or inactive adventurers if you’re not taking them to the battlefield. I wish there was some sort of side quest system that lets them level up on their own without having to take them with you all the time. Or maybe a way to make these randoms learn skills you want them to have. The reality of the game makes so many of the arrivals feel so random, and how they often try to keep up with your level discourages me from trying to be loyal to any of the non-story characters. And having this slash-and-burn approach to new characters sounds antithetical to being a guild master.

 

 

Features (2 / 5)

 

The game doesn’t really let you explore the world in any meaningful way, as pretty much everything works through menus. It does have a handy auto-save function in case I get too frustrated with a battle, and can allow you to backtrack through conversations if you didn’t quite follow anything. But other than that I can’t really think of anything to speak of.

It would have been nice if there was at least a CG gallery as they do feature some nice art during the story cutscenes.

It’s quite barebones and direct to the point, and I don’t automatically think it’s bad. However, how this seems to be constant across the game is worrying.

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

Somehow, playing through this title made me miss a game that did it better back in 1996, Final Fantasy Tactics. You can accuse me of having rose-tinted glasses about a game during the PS1 age, but I’m afraid to say that not only did it leave a better impression on me, but I’m certain that it does many things better. Does the Goblin Slayer game have points that I can recommend?

Noting that the game is generally able to wrap up its battles within 10 minutes, this can actually be a good game to play during your daily commute. It’s the type of game you can play while keeping on your second screen, or generally lower on the list of priorities for your thinking brain. It does hurt that there’s so much competition out there for games, and there are quite a few that would be easier to get people to play when mobile games are available and accessible, and a good chunk of them are free. But hey if you want a pocket 20-minute adventure that you can just pop in and out of whenever you feel like it, Goblin Slayer – Another Adventurer – Nightmare Feast may serve that low-commitment need of yours.

 

Goblin Slayer – Another Adventurer – Nightmare Feast ran into the dungeon unprepared, scoring a 2.5 / 5

 

 

Available on the Nintendo Switch and PC.