Nobody Saves The World Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Canadian Developer Drinkbox Studios is on something of a streak with great games, having released the excellent Guacamelee!, it's fantastic sequel and the brilliant first person dungeon-crawler, Severed. Now the studio is back with its latest adventure, Nobody Saves The World, and it's another cracker.

A top-down dungeon crawler that retains the zany art style of Guacamelee, Nobody Saves The World sees you assume the role of Nobody who, with the help of a magic wand, can shapeshift into 15 different forms in order to wage war against a great calamity that's sweeping across the land as you go in search of missing magician, Nostramagus.

What starts out with some pretty simple dungeon-crawling action, quickly escalates into an excellent mish-mash of ideas, with your various forms enabling you to attack enemies, absorb health and mix and match powers as you see fit. The first form you'll assume is a humble rat, capable of poisoning enemies and consuming their health as you gnaw away at their energy bars. You'll then unlock the ability to become a slug whose slimy trails slow down foes and leaves them open to blasts of your tear attacks. You'll also become a knight with sword slash and stomp attacks, a rogue equipped with poisonous arrows, a dragon, robot, ghost and more besides. While the action here isn't particularly in-depth from a mechanical point of view, it does strike a lovely balance between dishing out damage and the need to use your powers in order to absorb energy and keep pushing forward.

Where this game really comes into its own, though, is when it eventually enables you to swap out skills between all of your available classes, enabling your rat to shoot arrows, for example, or have your slug's attacks imbued with poison. Enemies also become shielded to particular damage types as you progress, requiring that you attack them in a certain way in order to break down their defences and begin to whittle down their health bars.

The dungeons here are tough too, jammed full of hundreds of enemies and topped off by some satisfyingly tough boss battles that see you need to switch up your various forms and consider damage types if you're to emerge victorious. It's non-stop dungeon-crawling that's got that sweet Guacamelee art style and a nice line in silly humour to it, with a world full of oddball characters and quests to engage in. Yes, it does get a little repetitive from time to time, with the vast majority of the dungeons here flowing in much the same manner, but it's hard to be too annoyed when the core action is so much addictive fun.

With online co-op, which we unfortunately didn't get a chance to spend time with, New Game+, an excellent soundtrack by Jim Guthrie and dungeons that ramp up the difficulty nicely as you progress, Nobody Saves The World is just a really good time for fans of this genre; a clever, well made and slick adventure that'll put your skills to the test and keep you coming back for more due to the endless flexibility it provides in its swappable skill sets. This is another excellent effort from Drinkbox Studios and a sweet new addition to the Xbox Game Pass lineup that RPG fans should check out ASAP.