Under the ignominious banner of the King Dragon, thousands upon thousands of dragons have decimated the world’s population through fire, tooth, and claw, the world teetering on the brink of utter destruction. Humanity is on its last dregs, the vast majority of survivors fleeing from burned-out settlements to the city of LastGuard, the only remaining bastion. Can anyone rise to slay the wyverns hunting the sentient peoples of the realm, or is defeat the only outcome? The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a traditional RPG with visual novel elements. It tells a desperate yet epic tale of survival and hope even in times of despair and history repeating itself in the worst and best ways possible.
To say that I enjoyed playing The Nameless: Slay Dragon is an understatement. From the character creation screen onward, I was very much hooked. Making their way to LastGuard, players step into the role of a young man, essentially the sole survivor of a dragon attack. Those first few trudging, under-leveled steps brilliantly set the stage as you point and click across a desolate wasteland map. Stopping points along the way for skill checks determine event outcomes. Things become tense with the arrival of a wyvern and a decision point that determines if you’re even to survive the following fiery ordeal. The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a choice-heavy game, with its narrative premise and the potential impact of how skill checks play out as incentives to keep playing.
When first starting the game, there’s little to work with capabilities-wise because you’re severely under-leveled and alone. You befriend your first party member upon entering the city proper, the “cursed” street urchin Andy. Eventually, your duo becomes a trio and then a quartet, with the addition of the chaotic spellcaster Mew and the healer elf princess Cynthia. Andy, Mew, and Cynthia are all likable and believably written characters, with Andy and Cynthia, in particular, showing substantial character development throughout the story. You can grow closer to the three of them based on actions and decisions in the narrative, and even though your player character is a silent protagonist, the game offers sufficient dialogue choices that you never feel the lack of an active voice in the plot.
The Nameless: Slay Dragon utilizes a job class system with several jobs already available for each party member. Later, as you progress, more powerful jobs open up for everyone. Upon raising levels and earning enough awakening points, you can learn an ability from anywhere you choose in a character’s job pool, allowing you to gain skills as you see fit. I focused on mastering two or three jobs per character, save with Mew, who has several specialized elemental magic job classes to dabble in. The sheer versatility of approaching job classes and gaining abilities is stupendous.
Not only do you have job classes to contend with, but each character also has individual traits they can learn as they level up. These traits offer advantageous stat bonuses, such as a thirty percent healing boost, but a given character can only equip a handful at a time. This system encourages you to play around and experiment with different trait combinations to find the right combos for your playstyle. Once you learn an ability, you can also equip acquired sparks. Sparks are reminiscent of support materia from Final Fantasy VII in that they offer an ability enhancement, such as giving it an additional elemental affinity or adding a status effect to the selected ability. You can even awaken super-powerful versions of an ability once you’ve used it enough in battle to “master” it. At first, you’re limited in how many sparks you can access, but you gain more as you progress and level up, creating truly devastating customizable moves.
While you begin the game as weak as a newborn babe who doesn’t stand a chance against even the lowliest dragons, the progression system transforms you into a proper powerhouse party that can take on the toughest wyrms by the time you reach the endgame. To further help you advance, The Nameless: Slay Dragon utilizes a simple yet surprisingly robust crafting system, allowing you to create helpful restorative items and potent gear with materials gathered throughout playing. You’re limited in terms of supplies and money at first, so you rely on crafting quite a bit. It’s easy to pick up the general gist of combat and gameplay as you play, yet its systems offer surprising depth and complexity the more you experiment with them.
The map-style visual presentation for The Nameless: Slay Dragon reminds me of the gameboard/storybook approach of series like Voice of Cards or the game Crimson Shroud. It’s simplistic but eye-catching, really bringing to mind the Dungeons & Dragons vibe the game is so clearly going for. I also adore the gorgeous character art and breathtaking visual novel CG illustrations that pepper the tale. The UI is crisp and clean without appearing busy, even during hectic turn-based combat. The text font fits the game’s fantasy world setting, even if it borders on being too small at times.
I also love The Nameless: Slay Dragon’s overall soundscape. Sound effects are plentiful and fitting for scenes. While limited, the game’s few music tracks are nicely composed, setting the stakes for scenes and battles phenomenally well. My biggest complaint with the soundtrack is that certain battle tracks, in particular, are pretty good and rather catchy, but they’re sometimes too short for the often prolonged fights you get into. This shorter length means that they noticeably stop and loop frequently, which is somewhat immersion-breaking whenever it happens.
Speaking of immersion-breaking, I noticed a few glitches toward the end of the game that I hope the devs fix in a future update. During one optional story scene, a character’s dialogue suddenly switched away from English for one line before reverting. Besides that, even after I defeated one of the final bosses, I could point and click to restart the entire fight as if I hadn’t won. The game wouldn’t acknowledge the previous victory if I selected that portion of the map, even though going to the other selectable areas instead would cause the game to advance correctly. There was also a fight where a character’s dialogue portrait superimposed itself over the battle screen so I could not read highlighted actions or see menus. Fortunately, that glitch only happened during that particular fight, and the map glitch is easy enough to navigate past. None of the glitches make the game unplayable, but hopefully, they get sorted out. Otherwise, this title would be an enjoyable RPG experience. I even defeated four optional challenging Elite Bosses just for fun because I was having such a blast with the combat!
The Nameless: Slay Dragon is an impressive indie RPG. Robust gameplay systems merge with a choice-heavy narrative that, at its core, is full of colorful characters and insightful messages. Throw in the game’s unique and creative visual presentation, and you have a traditional RPG/VN hybrid that’s well worth the curious giving it a try. While the game’s title is The Nameless: Slay Dragon for plot reasons, this is one fantasy adventure that begs to have its name remembered.
