While RPGs are absolutely a genre known for heavily leaning on great storytelling, more often than not I’d say the majority of its titles use the story as a way to enrich the overall experience, rather than being its focus. In the case of The Necromancer's Tale, pretty well right out of the gate you’ll discover that this is a game that’s made for people who are down for some pretty diverse character development possibilities and character building that isn’t focused on aesthetics, but instead on generally well-written prose. If you’re looking to avoid being buried in text right away, you can opt to expedite the creation of your character, but I’d say that’s a mistake since it honestly got the game off to a great start in my mind, having made a variety of key decisions that gave my avatar some unique flavor, even if her stats could have been better.

The shame is that I’d say the resulting game doesn’t quite live up to the degree of potential I saw in its initial start, though I’d absolutely give credit to the developers for charting their own path. In the end, this actually ends up mostly being a mystery game, with your character trying to uncover the details behind their father’s death, even if it seems he wasn’t much of a good man by any means. The way you’ll go about your business, more often than not, is also a bit of a deviation, generally minimizing the role of something so brutish as combat, and mostly replacing it with poring over texts, engaging in dialogue with the townspeople, and trying to gain an edge through successfully dealing with periodic skill checks.

Where the problems arise is mostly rooted in fundamentals though, typically in the form of the less-than-satisfying controls. Since this is a Switch 2 title, the good news is that the mouse controls are available as an option, and this would likely be the more ideal way to play. That said, they’re still a bit clumsy, so it isn’t all good news. If you’re looking to play on the go, or would prefer to use a controller, the situation is quite a bit worse though, with the two-stick scheme not explained as the first issue, and then just their clunky implementation in general contributing the rest. You’ll likely be able to adapt well enough, and thankfully poor precision and speed won’t generally bite you other than them contributing to frustrations. It’s an interesting take that goes off in its own direction, but it also has some obvious shortcomings.