Necrosmith 2 Is Vampire Survivors Meets an RTS Necromancy Sim [Review]

There’s a good chance that you didn’t play the first Necrosmith, and nobody can blame you because there are simply too many games now, and it’s very hard to keep track of them all. However, might I suggest that you rectify things by grabbing Necrosmith 2?

We Can Rebuild Them

Necrosmith 2 builds on the first game with more areas, more mechanics, more body parts, and more difficulty. Your aim changes in each of the game’s levels, but basically, you need to put together undead using different body parts, resurrect them using mana, and then let them loose onto the world to defeat enemy lairs, find you more body parts, collect relics, and protect your tower.

You start by building undead using skeleton and zombie parts, but as the game and the levels go on, you end up with earth elementals, jötunn with the Tesseract, three-headed dragons, and even robots with Gatling guns. It’s very innately silly, but it’s also deeply satisfying when you start getting new body parts. Plus, if you find the right combinations, the created bodies can get special buffs.

Along with that, and new for this entry, is the Titans. These are enormous cobbled-together undead that you sacrifice a lot of body parts to create life in, and they come in different flavors based on which parts you want to give them. You unlock new parts as you beat certain bosses, too, which is a great way to keep you fighting.

Then you’ve got the spells and upgrades you can buy in between runs, which range from stuff like teleporting your undead back to your tower to guaranteeing a delivery of cursed armor body parts every night and summoning meteor swarms. Basically, even though you’re going to fail a lot in your mission to find secret things on each of the levels, you’ll always be making progress in Necrosmith 2.

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They Did the Mash

You’ve got new options for orders now, too. You can now tell your undead to guard the tower, attack enemies, attack lairs, collect items, or just guard a specific spot. You can also still gain direct control over them, which is great if you like a more hands-on approach to your necromancy. It’s just very satisfying, and while it does feel a bit more challenging than the first game, there’s also more of a plot this time around and more mysteries to uncover.

Necrosmith 2 is an upgrade on the first game in every single way. I’d recommend playing both, but you’re not going to be confused by any plot points if you didn’t play the first one. Whether you want to jump into a game for half an hour for a semi-conscious body-building experience or you want to take control and play more strategically, Necrosmith 2 has you covered. It’s also absurdly cheap, and while that’s not always a good sign, it’s really just one more excuse to go ahead and buy this and lose your weekend to it.

Necrosmith 2 will be available on PC on March 27.