No Rest for the Wicked Early Access Preview: "A Substantial Amount of Gorgeous Grinding to Enjoy Already"

Summary Moon Studio's No Rest for the Wicked impresses with stunning visuals and engaging isometric action RPG gameplay.

The game's $39.99 price tag may deter some, but its blend of combat, art style, and dark fantasy narrative make it worth the cost.

With solid combat mechanics, extensive crafting, and unique respawning mechanics, No Rest for the Wicked is a promising Early Access title.

Moon Studio’s reveal of No Rest for the Wicked late last year made a splash with the fans. With Take-Two Interactive’s Private Division on publishing duties, the team behind the critically acclaimed, gorgeously animated Ori duology introduced its first foray into isometric action-RPGs, with an Early Access period that kicked off last week for those too impatient to wait on version 1.0 in 2025. There’s a substantial amount of gorgeous grinding to enjoy already, but window shoppers should anticipate a laundry list of hotfixes and changes to roll out as the game solidifies into its final form.

It should also be stated that No Rest for the Wicked’s retail price of $39.99 – a 10% discount is in play until May 2 – is a high cost of entry. However, those willing to breach it will find that the game’s EA period offers a tantalizing blend of careful weighty combat in the Soulsborne vein, along with a sumptuous art style and an elegantly produced dark fantasy yarn... but it’s still a game that lives and dies on the grinding wheel.

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Screen Rant first test-drove No Rest for the Wicked’s private build-in-progress last month, and we’re happy to reveal that the consumer-ready EA version has real legs to it, along with a special randomized dungeon to run after the meat of the current content is chewed through. With a trove of collecting and crafting to do and its superb combat fundamentals, No Rest for the Wicked is worth the price and in a good place to blossom, but the upcoming multiplayer update and QOL fixes should strengthen the sale.

Castaway Beginnings on the Road to Sacrament

No Rest for the Wicked's Slower Early Game and Combat Quickly Expands

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The premise and tutorial plunks players onto a pirate ship as a customizable “Cerim,” a kind of nomadic monster hunter alternatively feared, scorned, and admired by the populace. Bound for the besieged town of Sacrament, their journey is rudely interrupted by rebel pirates wreaking havoc, with the hero left washed up on the shore to fend for themselves with tattered rags and fisticuffs.

From humble sandy beginnings, they’ll punch some wildlife and quickly find a few basic weapons and gear by picking up the random detritus at hand, be it a chunk of crab meat, some filthy coins, and the first of many crafting supplies. The isometric camera wavers to and fro when moving around and to signal important vistas, but this fixed view does have the clumsy effect of making dangers to the south harder to assess than those to the north, with no available camera control whatsoever.

The first half of the preview content is on the easier side and allows newcomers to get their bearings, but the challenge ramps up at a specific point in the story, turning formerly breezy milk runs into perilous gauntlets of random threats and rewards.

Combat appears deceptively minimal, with but a single attack button to start and some parrying and dodge-rolling systems, but it’s a solid foundation that opens up to subtler duels and careful stealth and crowd control methods over time. Everything binds to a limited stamina meter, with varying windups and precise timing required for successful counters and evades. There's an impressive armory of magic staves, two-handed hammers, scimitars and more, all of which can be found, crafted, and purchased, with multiple weapon types and load restrictions to accommodate a range of player-directed loadouts.

Enemies strike fiercely with well-communicated tells and – paired with the game’s satisfyingly tactile movement and physics – make the relatively small biomes feel larger, livelier, and suitably menacing. The first half of the preview content is on the easier side and allows newcomers to get their bearings, but the challenge ramps up at a specific point in the story, turning formerly breezy milk runs into perilous gauntlets of random threats and rewards.

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These mechanics have been seen before, but No Rest for the Wicked ties them together with its own magical gameplay ideas and unique design experiments, most of which are successful. The accessible loop of kill, loot, store, craft, return is addictive, and the loot table is such that multiple forays into the same areas result in unexpected finds and new gear, even if it’s equally common to keep rolling weapons intended for different stats.

Savor the Grindy Journey

A Rainbow of Crafting Materials and Nowhere to Put Them

No Rest for the Wicked approaches the common Soulsborne mechanic of respawning enemies in a unique way that seems to match its crafting ethos. Enemies don’t refresh after death, or even when activating the game’s version of a bonfire, but over time and absence. In other words: there’s no way to just rerun one area and loop it again when finished, so players will have to venture off into other corners of the land and wait for mobs and loot to be rerolled and respawned, represented as an encroaching black fog on the map screen.

It still presents a loop, but a lengthier one. With limited fast travel options available, it’s clear that Moon Studio wants players to savor the journey as much as the destination, and it mostly works in practice. Impatient players may feel shuttled around too much when they really just need a resource found in one location that won't spawn, but the changing scenery managed to keep things feeling fresh, even after the tenth return to The Shallows.

Surprisingly, there’s little penalty for death in No Rest for the Wicked. Expect some minor durability points lost on equipment, which can then be repaired by using a consumable or visiting the blacksmith. Some special cursed gear feature other penalties for failure like lost XP or gold, and it’s technically possible to dead-end by playing extremely poorly and having to farm healing items to account for it, but the balance of these tensions currently seems quite fair.

The Start of A Beautiful Dark Fantasy Epic

No Rest for the Wicked Is A Visually Impressive New Peak for Moon Studio

Ori and the Blind Forest’s animated presentation first wowed players back in 2015, and No Rest for the Wicked arguably outdoes it, weaving the moody steampunk darkness of the Dishonored series with bold comic book stylings seemingly inspired by Arthur Adams, Joe Madureira, and Humberto Ramos. It’s attention-grabbing from its first frames and only gets bigger and better further in, with masterful direction and distinctive facial expressions that make every cutscene a joy to behold. It’s a rare style in gaming, performed here with an even rarer level of quality.

There’s a sickly dark strangeness as well, an eldritch horror thread which manifests in the game’s increasingly disturbing bestiary. Sound design is superb in headphones, infusing atmosphere into the nasty dungeons and somber forests full of screaming and muttering things to kill, and the outstanding VA work will inspire players to speak with every NPC at arm’s reach.

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Arriving in Sacrament represents the first major milestone, with the town becoming the Cerim’s home base, housing a variety of merchants whose stalls can be upgraded with crafting resources. It’s a large and comforting oasis with plenty of nooks to explore, fetch quests to cash in, strangers to interact with, and more interactions which unlock and evolve over time.

The Inventory is a Shambles

Alternate Subtitle for No Rest for the Wicked: "Your Bag Is Full"

Players should be made aware that No Rest for the Wicked’s crafting objectives are time-consuming grind fests, full stop. There’s always a daily/weekly series of bounties and challenges to mop up, weapons to forge and upgrade, a swath of recipes to cook (which are, incidentally, the primary method of healing), and gear to craft, enchant, infuse with gems and runes. Some of these aspects commonly match more readily with an MMO or Diablo-like clickathon, but the combat here feels so novel and engaging as to reduce the weariness of replaying areas.

It's therefore unfortunate that the inventory management systems are abhorrent in their current state. The early game heavily restricts item collection, and being forced to constantly trash inventory clutter without proper storage feels awkward, confusing, and demoralizing. Advanced methods of potentially limitless storage are eventually made available for purchase; once the hoarding starts in earnest, this probably exacerbates the item management woes even further, but at least all the loot can be kept.

Will the challenging combat become dismissively easy once friends can kite groups of enemies between them?

Figuring out what to craft will mean striving for a specific type of self-made class, but the lack of concrete expectations at the start makes borked builds all but assured to new players. No Rest for the Wicked uses a character/realm system most similar to games like Valheim, so it’s possible to just reroll a fresh Cerim and start completely anew (or, alternately, send them to the previous realm to be eviscerated by late-game mobs on the beach). At least the random weapon drops can be functionally shared between different characters or players.

This is at least the idea in theory; No Rest for the Wicked will not feature its touted multiplayer functionality until its first significant update sometime in the (hopefully near) future. Will the challenging combat become dismissively easy once friends can kite groups of enemies between them? Will these players have to fight over individual loot drops, making random pubs with online strangers a risky gamble at best?

Final Thoughts on the Early Access Preview

A Pricey Point of Entry, But An Engrossing Adventure Already

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One thing is certain, which is that No Rest for the Wicked is a visually stunning and feature-rich Early Access plunge at the outset. Outside of its many grindy hours – we spent at least 30 to reach the end of the authored content – the unlockable bonus dungeon provides greater risks and rewards to match. It’s the equivalent of “endgame content” for an Early Access title, but still feels like a suitable treat for the trouble. Along with the daily bounties and challenges, it may inspire folks to load the game up regularly and taste-test the RNG of the day.

The game’s most obvious pain points seem destined for fixes soon – inventory management, some clipping issues and bugs, and a few performance chugs here and there beg for prompt optimization – but it’s the stranger idiosyncrasies here that are more exciting to consider. And, even without the online integration, the excellent storytelling and splendid visuals should still prove an effective lure for fans of singleplayer games.

Once it seemed like No Rest for the Wicked’s Early Access narrative was completed, there was a notable sadness at the interrupted journey. Regardless, there were so many more items to collect and merchants to upgrade, which kept us plunging back in for more. All in all, No Rest for the Wicked is a premium-priced premium experience that has plenty of room to grow, and Soulsborne fans and grinding enthusiasts alike should feel catered to already.