No Place For Bravery Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · September 27, 2022

Our No Place For Bravery Review has us in a world where peril awaits on every path through Dewr, a harsh world of ruined beauty and violent tribes. In this game, you must contend with fast-paced battles filled with dodges, parries, and counterattacks. Making mistakes will be punishing and you’ll experience a lingering sense of fragility while facing the dangers of Dewr. Thorn, a retired warrior plagued by nightmares, stumbles on an opportunity for redemption after finding clues to his daughter’s disappearance from long ago. Survive rampant and violent battles in this 2D top-down action RPG, and discover the bone-chilling tale behind Thorn’s odyssey.

No Place For Bravery Review Pros:

Beautiful pixel art graphics.
3.2GB download size.
Top-down action RPG gameplay.
Four save slots.
3 difficulties – Story, No Place For Bravery, and You are not prepared.
The difficulty can be further tweaked with health, defense, stamina, damage, and parry window sliders.
Gameplay settings – Auto target after kill, target lock retrigger, and always show direction indicator under a thorn.
Beautiful soundtrack.
Hack and slash combat complete with blocking, dodging, and parrying.
Stamina-based system for running and combat.
Enemies downed can be executed for possible item drops or if timed quick enough can do a quick execution for stamina regain and rewards.
Stunning vistas and locations.
When walking, after a short while you will run.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
Save when you want in the pause menu.
Assign items to quick access slots.
Clear easy read Hud.
Battle memorials can be interacted with to pray and buy new skills along with acting as a respawn point.
Praying will resurrect fallen enemies.
Enemies have 3 attack types – light, regular and heavy.
Skills are tied to weapons.
You can hotswap between weapons with a button press.
Some of the best character models and animations I have seen in a long time.
Platforming sections.
Slight puzzle elements.
The glossary fills in with information as you discover new items, Weapons, locations, and characters.
The map fills in as you explore.
Sacrifice-found artifacts can be exchanged with cash for new skills.
Collect lore pages from the World.
Multiple choice encounters.
Gorgeous yet treacherous locations.

No Place For Bravery Review Cons:

No touchscreen support.
You cannot rebind controls.
Long initial load time.
Can get really hard to see what is and isn’t a platform.
Minimal settings.
Slow starter.
Ranged enemies
Small text in places.
A lot to take in.
The slowdown happens a lot when in combat with only a few enemies.
The map is pointless as it’s not interactive, doesn’t zoom in and you can’t even see where you are!
You cannot pause the game and it doesn’t tell you this, you are welcome.
You have to press and hold to pick up items.
Combat has a learning curve to it especially as you get used to the layout of buttons and general flow of combat.
When it is loading a save it hangs then freezes and then kicks in the loading.
Stop-start conversations.