It's a fine game, really. Nothing's really wrong with it, it just isn't really that fun and the story was alright. The visuals this game provided were really good, and the first of the only two bossfights this game gives was enjoyable, but it just felt like your run-of-the-mill sony third-person walking simulator a ton of times and I didn't really enjoy it all that much because of it. The characters are also weakly written, doesn't feel like they underwent some irreversible change in any way which would usually happen in a story like this. It's a decent game, I just don't recommend it.

If The Last of Us and Hellblade had a baby, it would be A Plague Tale: Innocence. A story about family bonds intertwining with religion, ethical controversies and a good dose of surrealism. Stunning graphics, intriguing characters, and a decent plot to tie it all together, with some good twists along the road by the way. The gameplay loop is quite satisfying too, a formula similar to Portal, because i see Plague Tale as a stealth puzzle game.

The biggest flaw of this game is the second half, as everything we've already seen is presented again with a new coat, quite too similar i would say. It's not good enough, it's not that engaging. Perhaps it's a bit longer than it should be, it gets a little tiresome. But you see, it's also an affordable game. It's a small-scale game that behaves like a Triple-A. Asobo Studios didn't try to reinvent the wheel or subvert clichés, they simply did the basics well executed. A very solid experience! I really thought they were going to drop the ball at the end, but that's not what happens, gladly.

I just can't anymore. I uninstalled and reinstalled this game three times before I finally pulled the plug.

Incredibly frustrating, awful dialogue and acting, rotten characters, very linear design, instant fail nonsense if you don't do things EXACTLY the way the developers want you to, blah blah blah.

It's such a VIDEOGAME videogame. Go here, press this button, interact with this shiny thing, press that button, go there. I haven't played a game that wound me up like this in a while. Unbelievably annoying.

Finally getting around to this game and it was a solid enough experience. The game is consistently throwing new mechanics at you almost until the final two levels to keep things interesting. The final bit does get a bit unforgiving with the one-hit kills and sometimes rough checkpoints, but it's solid enough. I give them kudos for having every boss in this game have a unique mechanic to beat.

The story is fine. I think the personal relationships between the characters is better than the overall story. Way too much of it feels like something it's either waiting to show me in the sequel or expects me to listen very intently to every bit of random dialogue enemies say. It's not bad, but it's passable. The relationship between the main character and her brother are top tier though.

I had a great time with the first "A Plague Tale" game !

Granted, it feels rough around the edges in a bunch of ways. Some tinier (overlapping voices in dialogues, some unbalanced gameplay mechanics) and some bigger (the game drags in the last half, the presentation and voice acting can be spotty).

But overall, the relationship of the main siblings works quite well ! It doesn't aim to be as deep and nuanced as a "Last of Us" and that's fine. It succeeds in what it's trying to do, and I cared way more than I thought I would about the cast.

The game is mostly puzzles rather than action sequences which I quite enjoyed, no matter how simple they were. They always had me thinking at least a little, and there's surprises until the very end which I didn't expect.

Although it's not the best game ever, it was a welcome little adventure that had some great, if clumsy ideas. Can't wait to see where the second one goes !

the game started off really strong in the first three chapters, but everything after was unfortunately not fun for me, the combat isn't exactly reliable and the different items you can craft yourself can sometimes miss due to the unreliable aim assist when enemies are moving, leading to an instant death; moment to moment interactions with different characters feels somewhat off, with them talking over each other and sometimes the mood shifts too quickly

the general game itself is just not fun unfortunately, the game focuses too much on being cinematic that it's hard to tell what you need to do and need to think "what do the devs expect me to do" very often based on what's around you and the crafting materials you pick up, i kinda wish the game focused more on just using stealth and your sling and build purely around that

This gave me MAJOR PS2 era throwback vibes, the same sort of feeling I had when I played Hellblade for the first time. Love this new space mid budget (or AA, I don't know) games have right now. It allows weird ass games like these: weird subject matter, edgy and cryptic storytelling with kind of mid but charming gameplay. Great to play stuff like this once in a while, a rarity nowadays - but so commonplace on the Playstation 2.

As for A Plague Tale itself: it's a charming game with charismatic characters on a pretty original setting, even if the dialogues and performances are iffy sometimes. The gameplay has some unique ideas, while mainly focused on basic but fun stealth mechanics, even if they do get a bit repetitive. It has some variety sprinkled in depending on which sidekick you have with you on a mission. It attempts to tie storytelling with gameplay somewhat like Ico or The Last of Us, with their companion focus, though not as successful as both. Looking forward to playing the sequel!

A Plague Tale: Innocence has a pretty compelling narrative which holds as its pivotal point throughout most of the game, its a pretty beginner-friendly game due to the fact that you feel like its more of an interactive movie. That being said, I gotta give kudos to the team for the creativity of the rats system, it single handledly became the best thing to come out of the game and seems like that was the team's intention.

Overrall its a pretty good game but runs out of time pretty soon and thats a bummer, I also felt like the ending was pretty abrupt but other than that I had a good time while playing this.

I wanted to like Plague Tale about as much as I did Hellblade. By all means, it's not a game I should enjoy. It packs some of my least favorite things about gaming into one - Stealth segments, Cinematic Playstation-y over the shoulder design, and puzzles.

But I ended up enjoying Plague Tale... to a certain point. Around Chapter 13 or so, Plague Tale's flaws began to show. The writing of the game fell off a cliff, and ran into the realm of nonsensical with an ending that doesn't really do much for me, personally. And that includes the after-credits scene as well. I suppose one could argue that the ending didn't need to be too complex. Sure. I'm not talking about the writing when it comes to that.

Yes, Plague Tale's writing falls off a cliff. But the gameplay mechanics Plague Tale begins to rely on in the latter chapters expose the game's flawed design. It is an unpolished mess at worst, and frustratingly difficult to wrestle against at times. Hugo gets a mechanic late in the game that feels janky to use until he gets immunity to it later. Later chapters double down on the weak combat as well. I don't like Stealth or Puzzles much, but that's the strong suit of the game, and I was disappointed that they ditched those in the later chapters. Stealth is also hit or miss at times. There were times where enemies just wouldn't hear the rocks I threw to distract them, even when hitting a box of armor, and several rocks were needed to draw their attention. Amicia's sling isn't the best thing to control either, and you have to wonder how she'd fare against Goliath if these were the mechanics she had to work with.

But all of the game's unpolished jank gameplay-wise is topped off by quite possibly the most poorly designed boss fight I've ever experienced. I can't spoil much, but boiling down a boss fight to multiple fail states and one-shotting you in what essentially becomes a floor is lava situation is quite annoying. Yes, I did it anyway. It doesn't mean it needed to be designed that way.

I've dogged on this game a lot, but it just really exemplifies my problem with "Cinematic PlayStation-y" type of games. You bank on your cinematography and storytelling to the point where you forget to make a VIDEO GAME, which should be a priority first before your storytelling. Plague Tale just isn't fun to play and many times during the story I wondered how much more I'd enjoy it if it were a show or movie instead.

I have some gripes with some characters too. They're all kids so I can't critique it much. Hugo is really frustrating and annoying when it comes to how he's written - he acts like a kid should, but it doesn't change the fact that he can be really grating in many of the important story beats. And Melie is just so... ugh. Bland, and unlikable. I didn't trust Melie at all, even when we got to the end of the game.

Amicia on the other hand is fantastic. Her character growth is wonderful, she's well-spoken, she's courageous, she's everything you really want from a female protagonist. Getting good female protagonists nowadays is rather rare, and Amicia should be one of the standouts.

TL;DR: To wrap up, Plague Tale is a nice experience despite how much I've ragged on it. Please don't let that turn you away. I'm just expressing my personal gripes with this style of game because I really want to love Plague Tale, and I do like it, but I don't love it. And I wanted to love it as a big fan of historical fiction, as well as Amicia's characterization.

Score: 80