Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse is in an awkward position. The concept is promising, seeing as it is both a Metroidvania with roguelike elements and involves us controlling a witch hat that can body hop from entity to entity, turning that being into the main character. However, the pacing is off. Part of it is repetition that involves exploring the same rooms far more often than expected, with other times it comes down to being forced to end runs sooner than expected or due to difficulty spikes that feel geared toward multiplayer sessions. It’s a situation filled with potential that clearly flounders after a few runs.
Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse begins with a young woman on an alter, her crystalized essence being stolen by an Ancient Witch and dipped into a cauldron. An explosion occurs, and we see a hat, half the crystal, and the body of the girl fly out of the castle and into the depths. The witch herself remains above, though with her form changed as a result of her actions and half of the crystal at her side. At the end of the fall into the ruins, we find ourselves controlling… the hat. After a quick bit of exploring, we reach and possess that body, using it to move and perform actions. However, as a twist, we can release it from our possession to reach new spaces, then use magic essentially to respawn it beneath us somewhere else. Our goal? To confront the witch who did this to us above, making our way through the depths with this body and that of our enemies.
In terms of gameplay, Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse tends to feel pretty solid so long as you’re in the hat or human body. Attacking and dodge rolling feel responsive, and it’s really easy to possess or release that body or take over additional ones. You go through the ruins, fighting enemies and possessing them and collecting Blessings, Grimoires, and Spells that can affect things like your attacks and abilities, so you can unlock doors, and proceed further. The roguelike element comes from needing to periodically return to the village hub to make use of new furniture and blueprints, build new facilities like a Research Station, Witch’s Caultron, and Training Scarecrow, gain resources and become stronger. For example, after the first boss fight and run, you return to the church and can head to the village inventor to get the Pillar of Survival blueprint to access a new skill tree. As you grow stronger and the village develops, you eventually get to go to new areas like a garden and academy.
However, it is those other possession possibilities that become an issue. The first element to this is that I found I didn’t get to make use of it as often as I expected. Considering it seemed like a selling point, it seemed a bit odd when it turned out I wasn’t constantly using it to swap between vessels. The other is that, while novel, sometimes it felt like remaining the human girl was the best bet. One of the earliest examples of a character you can take over is a sort of skeleton-dog-like creature. When you possess it, your movement is hampered, you lose the ability to do things like climb ladders, and you get a sort of biting lunge attack. Later, a minotaur is another option. Its physical punching power is handy and its movement options are better than the earlier dog-like entity, plus it certain feels useful in the biome where it is used, but I still felt like the human form was more comfortable.
But the most awkward elements of Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse involves elements tied to progression. While the product page claimed these dungeons “are auto-generated and change each time you play,” it felt like they didn’t. I kept seeing the same sorts of situations and layouts. Also, while fine early on in the ruins, the difficulty feels like it can keep spiking once you reach the volcano. Going through repetitive situations knowing it wrecked me the run before that due to the strength of enemies and status effects got discouraging. It sort of felt like it perhaps needed a rebalancing patch or like at that point maybe it was expected that I was taking part in co-op runs?
I appreciate the idea behind Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse, but the execution doesn’t feel quite right. I suppose I was hoping for more excuses to possess things with the character’s unique ability, for one. The level design and difficulty spikes also get in the way a bit too. It’s an interesting concept, but maybe a patch or two might help.
Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse is available on the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.