This is a really beautifully drawn and sung game. All of the voice talent does really well with the music and there are some truly striking musical moments that give me chills.

I enjoyed the plot and the modern interpretations of the gods a lot, Aphrodite in particular stood out to me, I won't spoil it but WOW that made me emotional. The story is very well-written the choices you're given are compelling and sometimes very tough.

The one complaint I have and for me it's pretty significant, is the lyrical writing. The style of lyricism isn't exactly my thing, there were some lines that made me cringe and that often pulled me out of the story. There were also some word choices that felt very forced or jammed in which was distracting to me. Perhaps I'm too picky about that kind of thing, but it stuck out to me and impacted my experience playing, but it won't be that way for everyone.

It's definitely worth a play and maybe one day I'll play it through again but for now it's definitely shelved.

This might be a bit of a niche game but I really loved it. Narratively I think they wrote a story that suited the genre of "Musical RPG" really well. The story was fun and engaging but didn't take itself too seriously. I found myself grinning and laughing - it almost felt like participating in the musical episode of Buffy or something. There are some big name voice actors in this and the acting did not disappoint. I thought the characters were very compelling and well designed. As far as criticisms - I do wish the art had been a little more fluid. The art style was beautiful but I think it needed some more frames to get across the flow of action better. There were also a couple of songs that didn't quite hit with me. But all in all I struggle to find things I didn't overall enjoy with this so it gets a high rating from me. I think it did what it was trying to do very well.

He disfrutado mucho de la ambientación, los personajes y la presentación de Stray Gods. Es ambicioso intentar hacer un musical con un sistema de decisiones. La cantidad de trabajo que implica hacer ya no solo canciones que funcionen cambiando sobre la marcha, sino que hilen con las decisiones anteriores de forma orgánica y natural, no es ninguna tontería.

Sí es cierto que quizá esperaba un poco más de las canciones en sí. Quitando algunas excepciones, las que he escuchado yo (sé que cambian según las decisiones y la personalidad de Grace) eran todas bastante similares en cuanto a tono, melodías y demás. Aún así, respeto mucho lo bien cuidadas que están.

Por lo demás, no hay mucho más que comentar. Es una visual novel sencilla basada 100% en diálogos. Los personajes son muy buenos (¡y las actuaciones también!) y la trama es interesante, aunque quizá algo predecible a ratos. En cualquier caso, merece mucho la pena probarlo.

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I've really enjoyed the setting, characters and presentation of Stray Gods. It's ambitious to try to make a musical with a choice system. The amount of work involved not just in making songs that work by changing on the fly, but weaving them with your previous choices in an organic and natural way, it's nothing to scoff at.

It is true that perhaps I expected a bit more from the songs themselves. Aside from a few exceptions, most of the ones I've heard (I know they change depending on your choices and Grace's personality) were all pretty similar in terms of tone, melody and such. Still, I really appreciate how well done they are.

Beyond that, not much else to talk about. It's a simple visual novel that's 100% dialogue-based. The characters are very good (and so are the performances!) and the plot is interesting, although perhaps a bit predictable at times. In any case, it's definitely worth a try.

I understand replay value but I want to just play a game once and achieve my perfect ending where everyone lives/gets a happy ending. Idealistic? Perhaps. But I'm a control freak and will not rest until I craft my perfect story in a choices-matter game and it's impossible to do everything in one run of this game.

TL;DR choice paralysis a la roadwarden

EDIT: ok I did some more thinking on why I dropped this game so early on and I think it's because the fates of several major characters are dependent on ONE choice you make at the very beginning of the game (i.e. what personality Grace has) and THAT felt like such a monumental decision that my control freak ass could not cope with. How am I supposed to know who I want to save if I haven't even met these people yet? I know the answer is just "play the game, stop looking shit up!!!" but quite frankly, it feels way too punishing of a consequence for a decision you make 10 minutes in. I just sat there thinking to myself "damn, what if I really like x character when I meet them but I can't save them bc I fucking picked red grace??"

Stray Gods is a game that I was greatly interested for its desire to incorperate the musical genre into its game, but to be honest, the first word that may come to my mind is "mid".

You can see the love everyone involved in this project have put into this, and that is something that I admire, but its quality is very... yeah, mid.
First things first, the music was not great. There were many times when it sounded dissonant to me, and if it wasn't, the phrasing/pace were not great. There isn't a song that was memorable neither, which is quite alarming if this is one of your selling points.
Though, it does feel like your choices have an impact on the music, although I wouldn't be able to properly tell since I didn't spoil myself.

The story was okay. I enjoyed meeting every character, but the conclusion of my romance option was VERY underwhelming. It felt like the romance songs were forced into the scenario so you can feel like it had an impact.
And please, let's not talk about the trial. I got blue balled from it.

I also want to mention the renders that were not that great. Being able to count the background's pixels was quite disappointing considering the game has not the graphics of an AAA game...

I don't know. I'm just slightly disappointed. I held my hopes too high, but I still appreciate the efforts from the creators.
Dive into this without any expectations and with a bit of tolerance. This is clearly a passion project.

this game like... wasnt actually that good. the concept was cool, the gameplay style was fun, but like. the songs were bad, actually? the audio was terribly balanced? the switch version is literally just blurry which is insane to me. anyway i dont think there are actually that many diverging paths in this game, a lot of the time i ended up back at the same line even when picking different options. the romances feel pretty flat. anyway eros freddie hecate and asterion you four are the best i love u so much. just super disappointed in this game

The story's good, the music is nice (sometimes the lyrics seem weird tho, but maybe it's fine for a musical, i haven't seen them much). Also, for a musical i expected it to have more "genres" of songs and/or songs that i'd want to listen outside of the game, but there is no songs like that for me. But such things weren't promised to me or anything, so it's my fault for expecting this.

P.S. Maybe it's just an issue with my game, but for some reason there was often times when the volume of dialogues would change. Like, character 1 speaks at normal volume and right after it the character 2 speaks like 50% louder. And it can be vice versa.

all in all a satisfying game with beautiful visuals and wonderful songs. far more choice than i expected what with the layout of the game, but being able to change the vibe of the song was so much fun. more choices than i thought would be possible as well, as i only really knew it was a roleplaying game via playing as grace and that you could romance certain characters.

honestly only have three complaints really, and they aren't enough to not recommend this game to people.

first off, the pc controls, as playing with mouse and keyboard, while not excrutiating, would often see my mouse jumping to the next confirmation button during certain screens, which was jarring. i feel a little more fine tuning with regards to the pc controls would be for the best.

next, you get to choose from one of three different "moods" for grace, both as her character and in songs. while i predominantly chose red or green, the blue options often felt the least fleshed out, or at least like there wasn't as much agency in there. it feels like blue was added to create less of a this or that type game, and while i'd rather its inclusion than cutting it , i feel a little more fine tuning could make the blue options really stand out.

my final complaint, honestly, would be with how little of the world we get to see. i think the story behind the story and the worldbuilding are just as interesting as the story we got, and while it's understandable that there wouldn't be as many idols as there once was, i wish we'd gotten to see a lot more greek gods and legends personified in this interesting world than we already did.

i recommend at least one playthrough, and don't be scared to redo a song if you don't like the outcome.

also, if you get to aphrodite's party, go red. even if you don't make that your canon choice, at least listen to the red song.

I have Neil Gaiman’s American Gods / Sandman series to compare this game’s script to (since Sandman dealt directly with Calliope and Orpheus in far more tragic (and artful terms), but it’s an unfair comparison because Stray Gods pales so desperately in comparison.

The script wasn't terrible, but it lacked heartfelt magic apart from that first auditorium scene.

The same goes for this soundtrack. Like seriously, way to phone it in, Austin Wintory. Maybe he had his hands tied by the script and the executive direction on this game, but jeez. This is a shitty musical.

Like by any standard, the music isn’t harmonically cohesive or catchy. And Laura Bailey seems like the only one trying, with nobody else keeping up. The first song feels like the magic musical moment in Act 3 of Kentucky Route Zero where the roof comes off and you’re transported to this other world of music. But every other song in this game feels like it’s trying to get back there and floundering. It would be unbearable on stage live.

I don’t fault the cast, but I do think the problem is that this game feels cast forward, art second, script a distant third, and gameplay forgotten in the shuffle. This is not a role playing game: it’s just a visual novel. And as a visual novel, it’s fine. It’s just vastly inferior to its peers in adjacent media of literature and musicals.

As a video game, it looks good. But there’s no immersion with the characters. Scenes just play — and you pick the emotional tone of the response. And maybe you flirt a little bit (which feels forced). Don’t get me wrong, I love visual novels and the premise of present day gods who use glamours to hide their presence. I liked Wolf Among Us, too. But unfortunately even that script was much stronger, even as a nerfed adaptation of the Fables comics.

Please forgive my dour review. If I never read, attended a musical play, or played anything like Stray Gods, I’d be swooning right now. So please know I like this premise and it’s illustrated art, but I’d advise checking out American Gods full-cast audiobook if you liked this game and find my review offputting.

P.S.,

I had a shit ton of bugs in this game that really hindered my enjoyment of it, too. Super rough for a game 6 months after release.

These are just thoughts and notes I wrote down as I played/in between play sessions. They're not the be all end all of my opinions, just the raw, unfiltered version of them

First and foremost, I have to say that I’m not a music snob. I took Music Theory and that’s about it. I like a lot of different genres of music, and I love spoken word music. That being said, I think Stray Gods isn’t great, the music especially isn’t my favorite.

-Audio Mixing can be pretty bad at times. I don’t know what went wrong there. It could just be something I noticed because I have higher-end headphones, but regardless, the issues were present and were quite noticeable. There were also some visual bugs here and there, duplicate characters, screen flickering, and the Minotaur just wasn’t in half of his song. It’s clear he was supposed to be there but I guess the Sprite wasn’t loaded.
-The voice actors feel like they weren’t given great direction 100% of the time. I know the voice actors for this game, and they are good names (mainly Laura Bailey and Troy Baker), but they don’t really seem to put the talent to proper use, at least not always. That being said, Grace and Apollo are good, there are no problems with them. But some people like Eros, Hermes, Persephone, etc. often felt like they just got the first take and rolled with it.
-It is also very clear when someone is not a talented voice actor. Minor characters very obviously do not have VA to the caliber of the rest of the cast.
-Everyone feels like they’re afraid to yell, there’s a lack of emotion behind a lot of dialogue. It’s very clear when Hecate is met, especially with the weird little voice filter.
-The voices often clash too much and don’t harmonize very well, making the music harto listen to at times. They went for voice actors instead of musical actors, which I feel is very, VERY clear here, and it certainly wouldn’t have been my choice given it’s supposed to be a musical. There’s a lack of OOMPH behind lyrics that are obviously supposed to have an impact because the actors don’t seem like they have proper vocal training. There are moments in a song where they really SHINE, usually just a line or two at a time, but it’s still there and I have to give credit where it’s due. Hecate and Orpheus have the best voices I think, but they don’t let them fully doesn’t play to their strengths. Orpheus especially very clearly has an actual musical background.
-The rhythm is super off. There’s a lot of talk-singing that just doesn’t sound like it goes with the flow, off-kilter deliveries. There are a lot of artists I listen to that go against the rhythm and have very talky-singy moments (Everybody’s Worried about Owen, and especially The Narcissist Cookbook), but they usually go with the rhythm, and if not it is very clearly intentional listening to the lyrics, it’s meant to bring forth attention to what words the singer is saying. Stray Gods does not utilize it like that. It uses it as if it’s a sort of “style”, not as a deliberate choice to call attention to specific moments. It’s done because that’s the only way they can get the lyrics to work with the music, and it still doesn’t work with the music. The first Persephone song is most guilty of this. At least, it’s the one I noticed the most.
-The people who made the music have a super mega hard-on for two people singing over each other. And to be fair, I tend to like that in music, it adds some extra oomph to the track when used properly. To reiterate, when it is used properly. But once again, the voices clash far too much. Sometimes it’s the point, I’ll give it that, but it’s most definitely not always the point.
-The music overall isn’t memorable, but when it is, it’s not a compliment. The instrumentals usually are pretty good tho.
-The writing is mondo garbage 70% of the time. A lot of sigh-inducing moments where they were obviously trying to be funny/clever, the line-to-line dialogue is wack too, there are just random shifts sometimes that come out of nowhere. Everything feels so stilted/forced In terms of dialogue, rarely do things feel natural.
-The choices feel weird. I’d often feel that there was not a piece of dialogue I wanted to choose. I felt like I was just settling on a choice, especially in the songs, so I opted to mostly go with the Blue Options. And even then, I felt the dialogue choice didn’t do a great job of reflecting what Grace says, quite often I found myself going “Hold on, that’s not what I wanted her to say.”. The choices also felt like they lacked impact but in two completely separate ways. First and foremost, the most literal sense. Too many choices felt meaningless. And second, I felt like I was making more or less uninformed decisions. Sometimes it made sense, Grace didn’t know any better than I did, and that’s okay, like with Freddie and Pan. But not every time was like that.
-Because of the choice-based nature of the story, there are jarring transitions between dialogue, and I found it very noticeable.
-The story is okay? The way people flip on a dime after a song or a choice feels super jarring (Persephone, Apollo, etc.). Sometimes the flow is proper, but that reeeaaallllyyyy felt like it was the outlier. The story felt pretty obvious. I wanted to like a lot of the characters but felt they didn’t get fleshed out enough, and/or flipped too much on a dime because I sang a song.
-A lot of the character's character felt like it relied a little too much on the fact that they are known Gods. However they don’t do enough to make their own takes on these well-known Gods unique, distinct, or interesting in any meaningful way despite their circumstances. It’s like they chose a God, and assigned them a single trait. Either one they’re known for or one that goes against the grain, one that’s unusual or extreme for them. The characters feel kind of backloaded. There are no real secrets to the characters. They beg the question just to tell you the answer instantly, barring the main mystery of course, and Persephone’s connection to Calliope. There’s no real inherent intrigue to the characters. Apollo on the whole is a bit of an exception, he’s interesting and feels more like a meaningful unique take, but I can’t really say I loved his character.
-The Grace part of the Aphrodite song was actually really good. Then it falls generally off again. Probably the best song, it’s overall like a 6/10
-The Minotaur song was supposed to be played for laughs but that’s just how all of the songs sound lol
-The Orpheus song starts off great when he sings, when the others sing it bogs it down lol. And then the flow takes a nosedive.
-Confronting Athena actually has a good track, probably the best one? It has a really strong start to it, and they do a good job not just making the music exposition that is sung to you, like most of the songs.