Little Witch Nobeta Review (PS5)

I’ll defeat you with my cuteness!

You know me, I’m immediately drawn to games where the protagonist is a witch and it’s a plus when it seems like a game I will end up enjoying. Little Witch Nobeta actually came to my attention when it was still in early access through watching Iron Pineapple’s videos on lesser known Souls-like games. Two years later, wow I can’t believe it’s been that long, it still stuck with me and you can imagine how much I wanted to pick it up when I saw that it was releasing on consoles. So how’s Little Witch Nobeta now that I can finally play it.

Little Witch Nobeta is pretty light on the story. You play as a cute witch named Nobeta who suffers from amnesia. Other than her name and how to use her magic, she remembers nothing. However, she was weirdly drawn to a castle, or to be more specific a throne that is located inside the castle. She believes that getting to the throne and sitting on it is the key to unlocking her memories. It also doesn’t take long for her to find a black cat, which she also felt drawn to, which helps lead her to the throne. Or well, try to lead her as while the cat just wants to head straight to the throne (and I suspect is a Kuudere), Nobeta is quick to help others and get sidetracked. Of course, getting to the throne won’t be an easy task.

Throughout most of the game, you’ll be exploring the castle and looking as you make your way to the throne. At first, the game does seem to be pretty linear, but it does open up more after you learn how to play and fight the first boss. The castle is split up into areas with shortcuts that you can unlock so you can travel through faster when going back or being able to get to a goddess statue. Goddess statues are scattered all around and is the way you’ll be able to save your game, level up your various stats, change your costume, buy consumables, and restore your health/mana while also respawning enemies. Though, some places can be too samey (I had a few instances where I may have been running in circles).

Of course, you will come across a bunch of enemies throughout your exploration of the castle. Good thing that Nobeta’s knowledge on how to defend herself and fight wasn’t affected by her amnesia! You of course have your basics, where you can dodge out of the way of upcoming attacks and use your trusty staff to hit enemies that are up close. Being a witch, though, brings in some fun. Being going into the spells, while Nobeta can’t block attacks she can counter attacks through Absorption (which you unlock early on). I didn’t quite get the hang of it, but attacking either right before or right as you would get hit will activate it and will stun the enemy and replenish your mana. The timing for this is hard to get, but it is helpful.

When you first start playing, Nobeta’s walking and dodging speed does feel like it’s walking the line of being too slow and being just right, but honestly it works. And I’m saying this as someone that can’t really stand slow walking speeds. I think it really helps that the enemies feel like they were designed with Nobeta’s speed in mind, rather than them being faster to add more difficulty.

Anyway, to the spells, Nobeta will be able to learn four elemental spells that she can utilize in battle and quickly switch between. With the melee attack being so weak, you’ll be using your spells as your primary attack. You start out with the basic Arcane spell which is a single shot spell with a few seconds of cooldown. As you progress more, you’ll unlock Ice which is a rapid-fire spell; Fire which is basically like a shotgun; and Lightning which has the slowest cooldown, but is the hardest hitting one and you can use it to snipe enemies from a long distance. Not only that, but you can chant a spell that each element has to deal some serious damage. Not only that, but what’s cool about this is that they have passive effects when chanted as they all have a timer you need to cast the spell in. Like chanted Ice gives you a boost in defense, including not being able to be stunned, with casting it will let you target multiple enemies to get hit with a bunch of projectiles. I also really like how the game gives you a scenario (I’m hesitant to call them puzzles) to learn about the passive effects.

Using magic will require you to have mana though, so you’ll have to keep that in mind or you may find yourself shooting nothing but a puff of air. Luckily, there are consumables you can pick up to replenish your health/mana and up your defense for some time. In Souls fashion, this does have Nobeta put into an animation to use it. Nobeta also has a stamina bar, so you’ll have to keep an eye on it while fighting and running. Running out will cause Nobeta to fall down and while it honestly is pretty funny, she takes a while to get back up and this can cause you to get hit.

Every enemy you defeat will grant you soul essence and you can use this to level up Nobeta’s stats which includes giving her more health or increasing her chanting speed. As you notice, this doesn’t include leveling up her spells. Instead, you upgrade them through finding spellbooks located in chests. Chests, which either include a high-tiered consumable or a spellbook, are hidden all around the castle. You can get a feel on where they’re hidden as you progress, but a good handful are pretty well hidden. This does heplp encourage exploring, but it does have the byproduct of going into the point of no return underpowered if you end up missing a couple spellbooks. Luckily, you do unlock the ability to teleport between statues and there are guides with all the chest locations.

Aside from the chests, there are items that you can pick up. The items are this game’s collectible and you can find these through either progressing through each area, defeating certain enemies (generally in the area they get introduced in), and breaking breakable items like vases or barrels. The last one in particular even helps encourage you to do it as the breakable objects do have a chance to give out mana/health or consumables (cursed consumables, but still). These items also have some flavor text you can read, which actually gives you snippets of this world’s history. You don’t have to collect these and read about them, but it really turns your thoughts from “this is a cute game about a witch” to “oh, well that’s not so cute”.

In terms of difficulty, I ended up playing the whole game in Standard difficulty. Standard is pretty much like an easy mode, despite what it seems compared to Advanced difficulty, but it does still bring in some challenge in the beginning before you basically become a powerhouse around the point of no return. I didn’t die by the enemies, but instead through falling to my death. However, if you put the game on Standard, you won’t be able to switch it to Advanced. You’re not told this when you’re picking your difficulty at the beginning so even if you want to switch after getting the hang of the game, which I wanted to, you will find yourself not being able to. I really wished you could change your difficulty from Standard to Advanced, or at least be given a heads up at the beginning about not being able to switch.

I did play a bit on Advanced difficulty and it is definitely different. Where Standard is pretty much a cake walk where there will only be a few instances where you’ll run out of mana and most of your deaths will be falling to your death; Advanced will make you sweat as you take more care into dodging, try to learn Absorption so you can activate it more reliably, and using consumables more.

There were only a couple things I wished were implemented, or expanded on in terms of one of these, but the game is still solid despite this. I ended up wanting a quicker restart when dying, a way to change difficulties mid-game, and maybe more implementations of using your magic to solve environmental puzzles (though this might have the side effect of the game becoming longer). At least for the difficulty, I can guess that the reason you can’t switch is due to an achievement for completing the game on Advanced difficulty; but surely there has to be a way to mark save files that had Standard activated on it. Especially since other games have similar achievements and you can’t cheese those by changing difficulties last minute.

Verdict

Little Witch Nobeta turned out to be a pretty good game. While there are a couple things that I wished were improved on and I wished there was a bit more story content, I had a lot of fun playing the game. The combat was fun and the weak melee plus strong spells paired well together, Nobeta’s speed works well for the game, it’s really cool that spells have passive effects when chanted, the bosses are really cool, and enemy attacks are telegraphed well. Not to mention, this is a great game to pick up if you want a Souls-like experience without the soul crushing aspect of one.

Little Witch Nobeta may not aim to be as difficult as die-hard Souls fans may want, but this is just perfect for those that want more of a casual Souls-like experience with the added bonus of playing as a cute witch.

Also, while I’m still not sure how I feel about Little Witch Nobeta being $50 on consoles, I actually do think it’s worth the price if you’re able to get it around $25 (the price on Steam). It may be worth it more if you’re planning on at least playing it twice or getting all the achievements, but not so much if you’re a one and done kind of person. However, I do think it’s worth $25 as I had a great time and had about 15 hours in the game which included me finding all the items and chests (and of course I would have taken longer if I started in Advanced difficulty).