No Rest for the Wicked has players divided, as it launches to Mixed Steam reviews and plenty of complaints

The launch of No Rest for the Wicked hasn’t gone as smoothly as many had hoped. While there were no server issues to contend with, or severe optimisation and game stability problems, the reception has so far been mixed.

The problems mainly revolve around the state of the Steam Early Access build, but once you get past that, so many of Moon Studios’ design decisions have left players surprised and often annoyed.

While No Rest for the Wicked definitely skirted controversy early by being playable offline, having no microtransactions or even anti-cheat, it seems a lot of the issues players have with it couldn’t have been avoided - unless the game was delayed.

For instance, a lot of complaints revolve around, well, how early this Early Access release is. The current build doesn’t let you remap controls, only shows Xbox buttons, and the graphics menu strangely doesn’t offer individual settings.

There’s some talk of stability, but most technical issues are around performance drops and hitches when traversing the world. Indeed, while the game will receive DLSS support at some point, the current version does at least offer resolution scaling, as well as a decent dynamic resolution option.

Nevertheless, performance problems and the limited number of tweakable settings are some of the most common complaints in many Steam player reviews, where No Rest for the Wicked currently sits at an overall Mixed rating, based on over 3,200 player reviews.

For its part, Moon Studios quickly addressed player concerns on the Steam forums, as well as the official subreddit. The developer is aware of all the major pain points, and promises to unlock those graphics settings as soon as the game’s next patch, though without offering any timeline for all the others.

Away from all the technical issues, the other major contributor to the discordant reception has to do with gameplay. In particular, the types of mechanics in No Rest for the Wicked and how they interact with each other. While the game may immediately look like a Diablo-like action RPG, it shares much more with Soulslikes, survival games, and even roguelites than it does Diablo.

That melding of genres has made it hard for players to nail down their expectations, and many of the reactions so far reflect confusion or outright animosity towards some of those mechanics. Weapon and item durability, for example, is one of the more common complaints, with many lamenting how it limits exploration, on top of being yet another element that requires constant maintenance.

The fixed camera has been called out, too, as something that makes it hard to truly understand the layout of the environment, leading players to struggle with certain encounters, or avoid venturing into certain areas altogether. Fall damage being as punishing as it currently is has been a point of contention, too.

Perhaps the most controversial, however, is the game’s limited healing options, which ties into its survival mechanics by requiring players to gather ingredients and learn recipes to constantly top off their health, rather than having a clear renewable source.

This launch of No Rest for the Wicked has perhaps not been Moon Studios’ best. Even looking at player numbers on Steam, the game peaked at close to 34,000 concurrent players, barely tying it with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which remains the team’s biggest Steam launch.

These figures can - and often do - improve over the weekend, but the so-so word of mouth might hurt its prospects there. We’ll keep you updated as No Rest for the Wicked evolves in Early Access.