Developers: Apollosoft, Mebius

Publishers: Red Art Games, Bushiroad

Platforms: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), Steam

Review code provided by Publisher

Goblin Slayer Another Adventurer: Nightmare Feast is a tactical RPG inspired by the popular Goblin Slayer manga and anime. While the game has been available on Steam for some time, this marks its debut on Nintendo Switch with full English text support. The story begins on a humble note: a young woman returns to her hometown following her father’s passing, tasked with assuming the role of proxy ruler. However, her responsibilities extend beyond governance as she quickly finds herself aiding the local Adventurers’ Guild in managing their increasing workload. Stepping into the role of Guild Master, she embarks on quests alongside adventurers seeking work—among them, the infamous Goblin Slayer and his crew.

As a long-time fan of tactical RPGs, I was eager to dive into Goblin Slayer: Nightmare Feast. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of genre-defining titles like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, it still delivers a solid experience that fans of strategic gameplay will appreciate.

The game’s structure is fairly straightforward. Each chapter kicks off with 10-15 minutes of character dialogue, delivered in a visual novel style. These scenes feature static backgrounds with character cutouts in the foreground, accompanied by Japanese voice acting and English text. The voice work is strong, and the English translation is serviceable, if not flawless—it gets the job done without feeling out of place.

You’ll meet a host of characters from the Goblin Slayer universe early on, each introduced through these dialogue-heavy segments. Interestingly, the game leans into an unconventional naming system, where characters are referred to by their roles or titles rather than personal names—think Guild Master, Blood Princess, Polar Bear Priest, High Elf Archer, and Inheritor of Ambition. While unique, this naming approach creates a slight disconnect, making it harder to forge a strong emotional bond with some of the cast.

That said, a few characters manage to stand out. Polar Bear Priest and Blood Princess bring intriguing backstories to the table and hold their own as compelling personalities. I found myself wishing for more depth and development for these two, but given the game’s relatively short runtime, the character arcs we do get feel sufficient.

After each dialogue segment wraps up, you’re brought to your Base, where a simple menu system offers several options. From here, you can manage guild activities, oversee your adventurers, and purchase gear and items. Everything is presented in a straightforward manner, keeping the process intuitive. However, the customization options for your adventurers are fairly limited. You can’t change their jobs or skills—your only options are equipping character-specific gear and promoting them once they’ve earned enough experience.

While this streamlines character roles, it also leads to significant overlap, especially with later additions to the roster. With more than 25 characters to choose from but only 10 slots per battle (one of which is always reserved for the Guild Master), I quickly found myself focusing on a core group of nine, leaving many characters untouched. This system inevitably sidelines a good chunk of the roster, particularly those with minimal involvement in the story.

In retrospect, I would have preferred a more focused cast. Reducing the roster and giving more narrative and gameplay significance to key characters could have made for a tighter, more engaging experience. As it stands, the abundance of underutilized characters feels like a missed opportunity.

To advance in the main quest, you’ll need to complete a set number of side quests. For example, if the main quest requires two side quests to be completed, you’ll have to choose from the available options to move forward. However, this system has its drawbacks. While you can see the names of the rewards for each side quest, there’s no way to inspect what those items actually are beforehand. Once you’ve completed the required number of side quests, the remaining ones vanish, and their specific rewards become permanently inaccessible.

This design forces you to make blind choices, attempting to guess which rewards might benefit your preferred characters based solely on item names. It’s a frustrating limitation, especially if you’re trying to optimize your team’s gear. Additionally, locking players out of content—quests and their rewards—feels arbitrary, especially since the game includes training quests to manage team leveling. These training missions provide ample opportunities to keep your party adequately leveled, so restricting side quest access doesn’t seem to serve any balancing purpose.

Once the required side quests are completed, you’re free to progress in the main quest, but the system’s restrictive nature detracts from an otherwise engaging gameplay loop.

Starting the main quest, you have another segment of dialogue which lasts about 5 minutes or so and then you are put onto the battlefield. During the battles you are able to select the opening position of your characters and which characters will fill your party. You can also place a few traps around the map to assist you, although I never used these traps I relied purely on my characters. The way the battles work is as follows, your entire team can all take their turn and this includes moving your character and then choosing an action. These actions are broken up into a few different segments of abilities. There are Attack, Arts, Spells, and Tools. An attack is just simply attacking with your weapon, arts are abilities that use AP, Spells are abilities that use MP, and Tools are using items like healing potions and status cleaning items. After you select all of the movements and actions you want to perform, you can end your turn and the enemy team gets to do the same. Sometimes there are guest characters that you can also move and interact with to keep them alive and safe from monsters, but mainly you just get to control your party for most missions.

The one thing that makes Goblin Slayer a bit different for games in this genre is the introduction into dice rolling mechanics, that are times where a character will attack or defend and you may have a chance to roll the dice for an additional effect such as doing more damage or negating some damage you take. However, this is very limited and you have no real control on when these moments will occur, so you can’t actively try to save a character from dying or activate the mechanic when you know it will actually let you kill an enemy monster. Once you win the battle you are presented with another 10 minutes of dialogue to expand upon the story and set up the next chapter of the game. Once you complete the main quest, the list of adventures to take from the guild are refreshed, new equipment will be available for purchase, and perhaps new characters will join the guild as well. These gameplay elements repeat for about 10 chapters, overall each chapter might take about 1-2 hours depending on how much leveling you want to do which puts the overall game time about 20ish hours.

Overall, Goblin Slayer Another Adventurer: Nightmare Feast delivers a solid tactical RPG experience. It achieves what it sets out to do, offering an engaging, albeit straightforward, story. Fans of the Goblin Slayer franchise will likely appreciate the narrative and character interactions more than newcomers, as familiarity with the source material enhances the experience.

In terms of gameplay, the standard difficulty doesn’t pose much of a challenge. It’s relatively easy to manipulate enemy movements and stay out of harm’s way. While I would have liked more character customization, the decision to stick closely to the source material makes sense from a lore perspective.

Ultimately, fans of Goblin Slayer will enjoy the expanded story, and tactical RPG enthusiasts will find the gameplay satisfying enough. However, for those outside these groups, it might be worth waiting for a sale before adding this one to your collection.