Review: Mists of Noyah on PS5

It’s a real shame when a video game’s intriguing concept doesn’t quite match up to its final form. In the gaming industry, promises are made—and not always kept. While we all know the old saying about judging a book by its cover, in the gaming world, it’s important to deliver on your word. Let’s consider No Man’s Sky. Initially, there was a lot of disappointment. The launch didn’t live up to its ambitious promises, and yet, over time, it has transformed into something quite special. Hello Games powered through and have rightly earned their accolades. It’s a good reminder for other developers not to make promises they can’t keep. Today’s PS5 game, Mists of Noyah, on paper, seems like it could redefine genres. However, as we’ll explore, its execution leaves much to be desired.

Imagine a game that skillfully blends crafting elements, reminiscent of Terraria, with a roguelike Metroidvania style. Exploration is the main focus, with each playthrough offering something new. It should be a title many of us would eagerly dive into. But, Mists of Noyah doesn’t feel like a finished product. There’s so much potential here, but it seems to have been left in the dust somewhere along the way.

Starting up Mists of Noyah, I was eager to see my chosen warrior’s capability. The premise was thrilling: protecting a village from nocturnal monsters, collecting and building by day to defend against the night-time doom. It sounded like the perfect balance of challenge and strategy, with a ticking clock adding tension. But when I began, I was dropped into a forest without much guidance.

The game completely lacks a tutorial. Now, I don’t necessarily mind being thrown into the deep end with no explicit instructions. Often, discovering the world on my own can be rewarding. I don’t need an elaborate story up front, and I enjoy piecing things together as I go. However, Mists of Noyah left me feeling like a tutorial was skipped—not for immersion’s sake, but due to oversight.

I quickly picked up on the basic controls and started leaping around, slaying enemies, and gathering resources. Chopping trees and mining weren’t out of the realm of deduction, and I managed to figure out how to craft a wooden armor set, all with trial and error through the menus. But I kept getting reset back to the start without a clear understanding of what I was doing, only to face tougher foes at night.

The night-time enemies were way too powerful. My puny bow barely had any effect, so I chose to bypass them, aiming to locate the village I thought I should’ve been in from the start. After a few failed attempts and respawns in the same zone, I stumbled upon the village, only to be met with further confusion.

The village didn’t offer much more coherence than the initial segment of the game. The vendors were there but lacked any dialogue. Without understanding their wares, spending accumulated gold felt like a gamble, with no clear payoffs. I tried a dungeon run, selecting an easy difficulty without knowing what to expect, and faced a swift death from the first creature I encountered. Determined to give Mists of Noyah an honest try, I ventured into other available biomes.

These biomes didn’t really differ from the starting woods; they were merely slight reskins with arctic or desert themes. The transition between them made little sense, adding to the disorientation. After moving through a few woodland areas, I’d suddenly be on frozen terrain, then a desert, then back to woods again, still clueless about my objectives. While the combat was adequate and the level design not bad, the drive to continue was noticeably absent. Though day and night cycles were a neat idea, they only made my tasks harder, given my vague sense of direction.

A small clock on the screen provided a time frame for the nocturnal threat, theoretically a neat addition to ratchet up tension about looming danger. But it kept running even as I fumbled through the game’s many lackluster menus—nothing pauses it. Buying a scroll in the village granted me the first bit of story, and it was ten pages into reading when I realized, to my horror, that the clock had kept ticking all along. A game that encourages piecing together the narrative should also accommodate the time it takes to do so. This might have been an intentional challenge, but it instead felt like just another overlooked aspect. Mists of Noyah desperately needed an auto-pause feature, among many other things.

Ultimately, Mists of Noyah feels like an unfinished shell with a lot of unfulfilled potential. The story is barely there, and the world fails to capture interest due to a lack of direction. The whole experience smacks of a project released prematurely, perhaps as the developers’ attention turned elsewhere. With little care seemingly invested, why should players invest their money or their time? Visually, the game is enticing, but in terms of depth and engagement—it’s severely lacking. In British folks’ parlance, it’s “all fur coat and no knickers.”

If Mists of Noyah was still in Early Access, this critique might be different, with anticipation for future enhancements. Instead, the game wants players to pay £8.00 for what feels like an incomplete experience. Astonishingly, the Steam version is priced nearly twice as much, years after its initial launch. For a console port to trail years behind and still feel incomplete, it’s a hard sell and feels like a cash grab.

In summary, Mists of Noyah is a missed opportunity that doesn’t justify its price tag. While its potential was high, the game we got is a muddle of ideas without the polish to turn those into a fulfilling experience. Save your eight quid for a game that truly earns your time and money.