Necesse

A brilliant fusion of Terraria and Rimworld that nails the balance between action and management, but overpowered villager systems undermine the exploration loop.

Introduction

After 28 hours of co-op play with Necesse, I'm impressed by what this game accomplishes. It takes Terraria's progression and combat loop and blends it with Rimworld-style colony management, but without going so far that the management becomes a chore. It's a smart balance that creates something genuinely fun, though some design choices hold it back from being truly great.

Progression Done Right

The progression system feels great. You're constantly working toward something, whether that's finding new resources, fighting bosses and farming them for loot, or crafting and combining different armors and trinkets to optimize your build. The loop of explore, gather, craft, and conquer works really well here, and there's always a tangible next goal to work toward.

The bosses themselves are cool with good variety in their fights. Each one feels distinct and requires you to adapt your approach, which keeps the combat from feeling stale as you progress through the tiers.

Enchantments That Actually Work

The enchantment system deserves special praise because it fixes Terraria's biggest frustration. In Terraria, you're constantly rerolling gear pieces hoping for a good enchantment, often burning through your entire bank and still not getting what you need. Necesse solves this by having enchanting scrolls that you find in chests throughout the world. These scrolls just apply their specific enchantment to an item without any friction or randomness. You still have the option to pay the Mage NPC for random enchantments if you want, but having that guaranteed path through scrolls is a game changer.

Colony Management Satisfaction

The colony system is genuinely the best addition for this type of game. Nothing beats setting up chest rules, work priorities, and work areas for each villager, then watching your town become a well-oiled self-sustaining machine. The management here hits that sweet spot where it's engaging without being overwhelming.

That said, it does become too easy to sustain yourself once you get going. You quickly reach a point where you never have to worry about feeding your colony, which removes some of the challenge and decision-making that could have kept things interesting longer.

The Villager Problem

Here's where the game stumbles. Once you've explored each biome, there's really no big incentive to keep exploring. This issue gets worse because of how generous the villager resource gathering system is. You can send a villager to gather resources for a small fee, and they'll come back with massive amounts that you probably couldn't match even if you farmed for the same duration yourself.

This completely killed my motivation to do resource runs or go fishing for specific items to make potions. Why bother when I can just send a villager who will get multiple times the amount in half the time? It becomes an even bigger problem when you come across a higher tier resource or ore. Your villager can now farm as much of that resource as you want, which means you can skip several progression tiers or have full armor from a biome you haven't even set foot in yet. It undermines the entire exploration and progression loop.

Technical Issues and Build Balance

The cartographer's table has been completely disabled since the 1.0 release, and as of writing this review three weeks later, it's still not working. For a game that emphasizes co-op exploration, having the map sharing feature broken is a pretty significant issue.

On the combat side, melee builds feel very lackluster compared to other options, at least at the 28 hour mark where I'm at. Maybe this changes in endgame, but for a significant chunk of the playthrough, melee just doesn't feel rewarding to play.

Verdict

Necesse is an amazing game that successfully combines two beloved genres into something that feels fresh and fun. The progression is satisfying, the enchantment system is brilliant, and the colony management hits that perfect sweet spot. But the overpowered villager gathering system seriously undermines the exploration loop, and being able to skip progression tiers removes meaningful challenge. The broken cartographer's table and weak melee builds are frustrating issues that need addressing. Despite these problems, the core experience is strong enough that I'd still recommend it, especially for co-op. Just be aware that the balance issues might make the mid to late game feel less rewarding than it should.