Review: Mists of Noyah (Nintendo Switch)

Mists of Noyah is a role-playing platformer developed by Pyxeralia and published by QUByte Interactive. What could have been something great missed the mark in more ways than one, so let’s talk about it. 

When starting the game, you have the choice of choosing between five characters. Each character has their own level of beginning stats—from strength to defense, from health regeneration to attack range. They also have unique powers, such as fire manipulation, water, etc. I chose Lance, who attacks with a bow and arrows. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, so ranged attacks it is!

After picking my character, I created a world and then was promptly dropped into the game. This part somewhat acts as a tutorial for Mists of Noyah, but it’s half baked. The game teaches you the basic controls–attack, jump, that’s it. In the bottom left, you’ll see you can eventually use all four shoulder buttons for special attacks, but you need to unlock them.

This tutorial part puts you through a forest to make it to the village. Throughout the forest, you’ll chop wood, cut stone, and gather other materials for building and upgrades. Enemies also appear, such as green slimes, zombies, and more. Mists of Noyah has quests you can work toward to help you progress. For example, the first one is to gather 25 pieces of wood. By the time you make it to the village, you’ll need to defeat a certain amount of green slime. The problem with that is I could never make it back to that forest after reaching the village, so I could never fulfill that quest.

The village is the rest area, so to speak. You can buy items, food, and upgrades from merchants, create your own potions, store items, construct buildings to help restore the village, try challenges… it all sounds very exciting, but unfortunately, it’s not. I never got to build anything because I didn’t know how. The tutorial only explained a fraction of what I can do in the game. I had to figure out everything else on my own. 

The whole gameplay experience is jumping from one biome to another. You can portal yourself to a few biomes from the village, such as to the ice area, desert, and jungle. The return home portal tried sending me to the forest once, but it froze, and I had to reset the game. It never worked again after that. The only way back to the forest was to travel to the jungle biome and backtrack. However, some enemies in the newer areas were so powerful (and the game is so buggy) that I died countless times. It wasn’t worth it to backtrack through a difficult area to an easier area just to grind and level up for the difficult area.

Other areas are available on the map, but only if you survive long enough to get through the biomes before it. For example, to get to the underground caves, I had to trek through the desert a bit and then go down a set of stairs. Mists of Noyah gives you a map to show how many sections of biome there are and which biome connects to where. However, you don’t get maps of individual sections. You’re on your own for that one.

As you level up, you’ll earn perk points, which allow you to trade in for extra health and the like. The problem is, if you try to do anything outside the village, time doesn’t stop. Whether you’re in your inventory trying to equip a stronger piece of armor, you’re looking at the map, or you’ve simply paused the game, the game doesn’t actually pause. Enemies will spawn as you check your stats and you’ll die because you won’t be able to see or hear anything going on behind the inventory box.

Progress in Mists of Noyah is difficult. It requires a lot of grinding, and you have to figure out how to do anything in the game on your own. Not to mention, the game lagged often and was buggy‌. Overall, the concept is pretty neat, but it simply wasn’t fun to play at all.

I appreciated the art style and the varying characters, though. I tried Allure at one point, who has fire powers. His attacks were more up close and personal, so I didn’t spend much time playing with him. I preferred Lance with the bow and arrows. It’s somewhat satisfying to collect materials and go fishing. And, as I leveled up, some enemies were a breeze to get through. However, everything grew to be repetitive, especially since I didn’t know how to progress further. According to the game’s description, there are tower defense events, but I never saw them. I don’t know how to trigger or unlock those events. 

Mists of Noyah is an ambitious game. Either the developers needed much more time with it to polish it to a fine shine or they had too many ideas and needed to cut bits out. Unfortunately, they did neither, and the game is a bit of a mess.