Little Noah: Scion of Paradise

Genre: Action-Platformer / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Little Noah, released in 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, is an Action-Platformer and Roguelike leaning hard into the “Roguelite” side of the Roguelike spectrum. In this game, players take on the titular role of Noah, a young woman searching ancient ruins looking for her missing father.

What sets this game apart is its “Lilliput” system. On her own, Noah is incapable of attacking, doesn’t wield any weapons or have any abilities beyond a double-jump and an air-dash. Instead, as she proceeds through the game’s randomly-generated dungeons, she will acquire a growing roster of various little ghost helper characters named Lilliputs which will attack for her. This randomized Roguelike element means that every attack in your combo of moves (up to five attacks total) will be represented by one of these characters, and you have the freedom to arrange their order as you please, or swap them into a special ability slot to use their more powerful ability instead.

This makes combat in Little Noah extremely varied and customizable. You’ll start every run with the same basic three Lilliputs, but soon enough you’ll be making tough choices about who to have in your attack roster and where to place them, and who to bench. Maybe you acquire a new Lilliput who does massive damage, but their attack just doesn’t really work well in concert with your other attacks. Sometimes you have to decide which of two Lilliputs have the better special ability to put in that slot. And sometimes, you’ll want to play around with the order of your attacks so they flow into each other better, or progress farther outward as enemies are pushed away from you. Perhaps you’ll want to focus your roster exclusively on distance attacks, or highlight attacks with fire abilities… there[s a lot of mix-and-match potential here, and it can really make for some delightfully fun and unique runs through the game.

The levels themselves aren’t anything particularly interesting, though there is a decent enough variety in types of rooms. A standard room will have you fighting a series of enemies and then opening a chest afterward, receiving either gold, a stat-boosting accessory, or a new Lilliput to add to your roster. However, sometimes you’ll be faced with challenge rooms full of tougher enemies, rooms where you must defeat enemies quickly or without getting hit, rooms with an obstacle course of hazards to navigate to reach a chest, a shop, a chest room… in short, there’s a decent enough variety to keep things interesting, even if there’s nothing truly surprising here.

When you inevitably die, you’ll head back to your base where you cash in everything you got in your run in exchange for mana to spend on a pretty good selection of permanent upgrades to choose from before you head back into the dungeons again. This includes the ability to upgrade the Lilliputs themselves, so when you randomly encounter them next time, they’ll be even more useful.

The presentation here is quite good, making use of 3D visuals with simplified anime-esque character designs, and the designs for the enemies and Lilliputs in particular are varied and appealing. There’s some good detail and animation in the backgrounds here, though generally this is seen through a blur filter to imply the distance between foreground and background. And these visuals are accompanied by Japanese-language voice acting for the game’s characters, and good instrumental fantasy adventure-style music to accompany the action. Everything is nicely polished, and has a good sense of unique style to it.

When it comes to complaints, my biggest complaint here is that once you get a full lineup of Lilliputs, it can get easy to lose yourself in the jumble of characters as you fight with enemies. I got hurt multiple times because there was such a crowd I couldn’t tell that I was on the wrong side of the enemy I was trying to fight. Also, I kinda’ wish they went even farther with the custom fighting system in this game and allowed players to customize light and heavy attacks in addition to specials, but perhaps this might be a bit greedy.

Even with these issues, Little Noah is an absolute delight and a genuine surprise of an Action-Platformer and Roguelike. It’s inventive, the combat is fun and varied, the presentation is polished and appealing, and overall this is a phenomenal entry in the genre, and one that fans of “Roguelites” should absolutely be looking into.

tl;dr – Little Noah is an Action-Platformer with Roguelike elements (on the “Roguelite” side of the spectrum) where players fight through dungeons as a young woman whose attacks consist of “Lilliput” creatures collected along the way and assigned by the player into their own custom attack combos. This makes for an extremely varied and enjoyable combat system, in an overall polished, appealing, fun and original take on the genre. If you like Roguelikes, this is absolutely a game you should try.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Action Game, Best Value ($15), Most Original

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