Nine Parchments is an action RPG similar to Gauntlet. The game starts off really well, is fun and is even greater when you are playing with your friends in co-op. You go through several levels together and as you play you unlock hats, staffs, and characters. After each boss you beat you unlock a new random spell. During your adventures you are also finding quills. Each level has 5 quills to collect. The more you collect the more additional staffs you unlock. You are also earning XP. Each level you gain you will receive skill points to help increase your character’s stats. Max level is 50, but once you beat Hardcore mode with a character, you unlock a Gilded version of that character, and the max level is increased to 60.

I find this game much more difficult when you are playing co-op as there are a lot of AOE spells. This game has friendly fire which cannot be turned off but can be altered to take less damage or split the damage between all characters. After a few hours of playing Nine Parchments, it becomes very repetitive and slowly starts losing its initial magic. To make matters worse, while we were playing this on Steam, we encountered many bugs that made us have to restart the level each time because we could not progress. Sometime it took multiple tries to finally be able to progress.

Overall, it is a fun co-op experience, but I wouldn’t play it with more than 1 friend as it will get pretty hectic. Get this on sale, it is a good distraction for a few hours.