Goblin Slayer Another Adventurer: Nightmare Feast

Platform: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Strategy/Tactical Roleplaying Game
Developer: Apollosoft Inc, mebius
Publisher: Bushiroad Inc
Director: Akio Kitamura, Hirokazu Kawase
Designer: Shinua Ishihara
Writer: Kumo Kagyu
Composer: Takashi Okamoto, ending theme by Cassie Wei & Yamato Kasai
Finished: 2025-09-20
Playtime: 17h 11m, with post-game it was 27h 17m
Rating: 3/5

Goblin Slayer is a light novel, manga and anime series written by Kumo Kagyu with art by Noboru Kannatsuki. It's a story set in the Four-Cornered World, a fairly generic fantasy world and a place where no one really seems to have a name. Kumo Kagyu is a big fan of tabletop roleplaying so it's no surprise that the story takes a lot of inspiration from Western fantasy like Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings, a fact that he acknowledges in his books. The series follows the titular Goblin Slayer, a man deeply damaged by some rather unpleasant childhood trauma involving goblins and who has one goal in life - killing goblins. His dedication and single-mindedness basically make him the John Wick of goblin murder.

The story aims for a darker tone though it probably comes off more "grim dark" than anything. Personally, I think it uses the shock value of horrible acts done to women as a bit of a crutch to show the horrors of the world and then doesn't really follow through. The early narrative explores what exactly an adventure is. It strips away the idea of noble adventurers plundering ancient tombs for treasure or saving fair maidens and presents a more stark reality - there's no glory in killing monsters. It's scary and brutal and if you're not careful it'll slowly erode away whatever humanity you have left. There's a segment in the first book where High Elf Archer asks Goblin Slayer why goblins do what they do and it's hard to tell if he's talking about them or himself.

I think Goblin Slayer sums it up best himself in a conversation with the main character of the game:

Guild Master: It's tiring, isn't it, fighting goblins?
Goblin Slayer: It's no adventure.
Goblin Slayer: Long ago there was a village attacked by goblins, just like this one.
Goblin Slayer: No one came then.

Goblin Slayer is no adventurer

I went into playing this game with some background knowledge of Goblin Slayer. I read a few chapters of the manga and watched the anime series back in 2018 but haven't kept up to date with it since then. I'm a big fan of strategy RPGs and remembered thinking the series was okay so I thought I might as well give it a go. Sadly I'm also a real sucker for physical copies of these more obscure games on the Nintendo Switch so I couldn't resist.

The main question I had while playing is... why is this a Goblin Slayer game? You could argue it's simply because the story is written by Kumo Kagyu himself but Goblin Slayer and his party are not the main characters and they barely play a part in the story so why is called Goblin Slayer? Is it thematically similar to the series? Aesthetically? Tonally? After playing through the game and the post game I still wasn't sure so I decided to go back and read through some of the light novel to see if I could find an answer.

In the world of Goblin Slayer goblins are considered the weakest of the weak with the story frequently comparing their size and strength to children. However, they're also incredibly petty, vicious and above all cunning (also kinda like children). They win because novice adventurers underestimate them and because they have large numbers, set traps and use ambushes. They don't fight fair. Goblin Slayer is equally unfair in how he slays them - he smokes out nests and kills them as they flee. He diverts rivers into their nest to flood them. He uses poison gas. He sets them on fire. This is something the game really fails to deliver as goblins are really just treated like any other enemy in the game. They don't try to overwhelm you with numbers and because of how the maps work they don't set any ambushes. This means you're really missing out on the fear and tension from inching your way through some dank cave as you watch your back in case something jumps out. The game attempts to emulate Goblin Slayer's ruthless preparation by allowing you to set traps on the map before some battles but they're mostly useless and you can go through the entire game without using them.

Battles themselves can be quite slow. Your characters have a small amount of movement and entire turns can be spent just moving your characters forward, especially on some of the bigger maps. In the late game you also run into the issue that your slower characters get left behind and most of the action is over before they can catch up. It's often better to just turtle you way across a map and let the enemy come to you which can really limit the tactical feel of the game. I'm not saying they're boring or easy - you need to think strategically about character positioning and trying to optimise the turn order of your characters to maximise damage, protect your squishier characters and avoid friendly fire from your area of effect spells. Enemies can do a lot of damage very quickly, especially to your casters. This does lead to some fun and tense moments but there's no real penalty to having a character die besides them getting less experience for the battle.

The maps themselves lack interesting layouts so you can play each of them in basically the same way. This changes a little in the late game where some destructible crystals are introduced that lower the amount of damage you do to enemies but to be honest all that does is slow things down. Battle objectives are also bland and consist of killing all enemies, killing the enemy leader or protecting one or more NPCs. The only truly interesting battle that made me think was against the final boss.

The game has a unique mechanic where under certain circumstances you're able to roll the dice of fate in order to get some kind of benefit. For example, if you're attacking an enemy with their weakness you can roll to do more damage. You can set a limited number of these abilities and you can only use them a few times each battle. The mechanic is emulating a key point from the story as the gods of the world roll dice to compete with each other. However, one of the main taglines of the series is "He doesn't let anyone roll the dice" which refers to the effort Goblin Slayer puts into his preparation when fighting goblins. I guess since he's not the protagonist of the game it's fine to include it. The mechanic comes in handy sometimes, especially when you unlock the one that lets you survive a deathblow but overall it felt kinda pointless.

In between main quests you have to meet a "Normal Quest" quota before you can proceed. You typically have two-three to choose from and you can only do a limited number of them before they disappear. These quests have nothing to do with the story and feel like extra playtime padding but they are one of the main ways to get money and equipment that the shop doesn't stock. You can also choose to do repeatable maps that are designed to grind for experience points. These maps are tedious and you can avoid them entirely if you stick to a single party for the game. Occasionally you'll also have the option to do sub-quests that usually contain some extra story or an amusing small skit involving some of the characters, such as all the winos trying to find a legendary cask of wine. These are a nice break from combat and show a bit of extra character development. These may or may not involve a battle.

God is pro alcohol

The story is a fairly typical fantasy affair with a touch of anime tropes but it moves along at a nice pace and doesn't overstay its welcome. There are ten chapters in all with each one maybe taking around an hour or so to complete. The writing is fairly basic but there are these occassional moments when it describes a scene that can really evoke some nice imagery:

There are flowers that drink blood to bloom.
Red blood dripping from corpses:
Gulp, gulp.
Loud slurping.
As the morning comes, the flowers become even more beautiful.
Poisonous flowers with thorns, swaying beautifully under the moonlight.
As bright as blood...

The most notable thing is that this is not a story about Goblin Slayer himself (it's right there in the title "Goblin Slayer Another Adventurer: Nightmare Feast"). He and his party are side characters that have little to no bearing on the main storyline - they're called in because there are goblins that need killing. You can't change Goblin Slayer's equipment which is a bit of a character trait of his from the book. He's constantly described as having cheap, dirty armour and a basic weapon but he's also very practical with how he fights and makes heavy use of weapons that he finds on corpses. This could have made an interesting game mechanic if they worked it into the game. Honestly, it's hard to see why he's even in the game at all other than because he's what will sell copies.

You play as Guild Master, the headstrong and impulsive daughter of the local lord that's returning home after the unexpected death of her father. Upon arriving at the adventurer's Guild Hall she gets reports of goblins holing up in a local abandoned castle and decides to head off by herself to scout things out. She gets spotted and ends up fighting her way through the castle until she falls through a collapsed floor and accidentally awakens Blood Princess, a vampire with a mysterious past that instantly lays claim to Guild Master. The two of them kill the remaining goblins before returning back to the village. Eventually you find a mysterious box in you father's room that becomes one of the main plot points of the story.

Your party, and main characters of the game, consist of a childhood friend of Guild Master called Scout, a girl very interested in heroic deeds (hint hint) named Conan and best of all Polar Bear Priest. You can hire adventurers to add to your party but to be honest I didn't bother using any of them. If you use the main party and Goblin Slayer's party you'll hit the ten character limit per battle so there's no real need to branch out.

The story is told through visual novel style cutscenes between battles. The main story segments are fully voice acted (Japanese only) and while the character art is good it's also pretty static and has a small number of character expressions. There is the occasional piece of very nice CG art that I never failed to take a quick screenshot of. I think the illustrations were done by Noboru Kannatsuki.

I look at the window

One of the main themes the story plays around with is that no matter how long we live we all only have one life and it's up to us to make the most of it. On the other hand you have the main antagonist of the story - a cult obsessed with finding an artifact that can be used to raise the dead. I think the cult is done in an interesting way as they very happily justify their horrible acts with the fact that they'll just resurrect you later. This also means that they don't fear death as they have absolute faith that they'll be brought back to life later.

Once you finish the story there is some post-game you can play through. This consists of a small prequel story about Blood Princess and a series of Ruins Exploration quests. The Ruins Exploration quests are a series of 20 maps that slowly increase in difficult. They're incredibly basic and just involve you moving through a largish map and killing everything in sight. You encounter a few different variations of enemies you've already fought in the main quest. They do provide some decent loot up to map 17 but given there's no NG+ it's pretty pointless. The final map doesn't even have an interesting boss to fight, just a high level regular enemy. It took me maybe 10 hours to slog through them all and it honestly felt like a waste of time.

So... is this a Goblin Slayer game? I think technically... yes, though I'm not sure I'd consider it a good adaptation. The writing is definitely similar but I'm not sure it captures the feel of Goblin Slayer (at least the early novels) and having him relegated to a side character doesn't really help. I'm really on the fence about how I feel about the game but I think it is overall still enjoyable and the story was good enough to keep me engaged but I'm definitely glad this was a sub 20 hour game and not a 100 hour one.

Polar Bear Priest

What I liked

What I didn't like