It’s sort of linear but that doesn’t necessarily bother me. In fact, I thought it was going to be more of a walking simulator but I found that you get a slingshot which doesn’t sound like much but they make it pretty impactful. It’s not a stealth game but there are stealth sections so you can throw rocks and pots to distract and sling if you really want to hurt something. But you also knock things down to go to the next area, it’s a nice companion without just being a gun or sword, it really makes you feel like David from David and Goliath. I remember being impressed with just how much it reinvented itself right after learning a new technique.
It’s also got crafting, not an absurd amount and not as required if you don’t want it to be but it’s more for things like holding more rocks in your bag as well as crafting materials and bettering your slingshot for accuracy and drawback speed.
The atmosphere is also pretty great, there’s this part at the beginning of the game with an apple tree that looked straight out of a painting. But these guys are French so there’s a lot of that influence. Like at the beginning Amicia’s hair is tied with pink string and put up like a rose but afterwards she makes three braids leading into one, I appreciate the design quality. It’s also a longer game than I thought, from previews, it just looked like a tech demo but no it’s a full 10 hour game. (at least for me it was 10)
The story focuses around a girl and her brother which I’m sure you’ve already gathered as well as it revolving around rats, which is true but these rats are afraid of the light so you can imagine the mechanics it tries to incorporate. It’s like a better Alan Wake. But because of the brother’s illness, he hasn’t really gone outside which can be a problem because he wants to venture out and catch the frogs and see the windmill and stuff which causes him to run away and play hide and seek. He even talks very proper like most of his experience with words has come straight from a book.
But I will admit some falls in the storytelling because they set up all these questions like why is her brother sick or rather what is he sick with? A simple one. Why is the inquisition after them? And my first day of playing it, I played up to chapter 4 which is when they explain all those things and I found the answers to be kind of dumb. They try to incorporate alchemy and the plot turns into “I gotta go get this book.” Bleh! But there’s this one section where they make you sacrifice a pig and make alchemic fire, why not just make a firework or bomb or something? It’s just kind of too far out there, it just goes off the rails from there and I can’t believe I’m saying this but it could’ve been more grounded and have had a greater effect in my opinion. Speaking of though, this can be pretty brutal and dark, there was this one scene where Hugo (the brother) says “I can smell something cooking, is it a fair?” In an innocent like voice then Amicia (the sister) says “It doesn’t sound like a fair.” So I joked “No, we’re cooking bodies tonight.” Or something along those lines. My dark sense of humor and wouldn’t you know it, they’re burning a person at the stake. My jaw dropped.
There is a companion system where you can tell someone to go and turn a wheel or where to cause a distraction (which I hope gets expanded upon for the sequel). On a gameplay level, this is really fun, there are some really standout moments. The only complaint I have on that front is the final ability, it can be janky sometimes especially when you first get it. So yeah, I’d give this game a much higher score, I mean, when I was first playing it, it was checking off all my boxes, but the story didn’t keep that up.
It’s also got crafting, not an absurd amount and not as required if you don’t want it to be but it’s more for things like holding more rocks in your bag as well as crafting materials and bettering your slingshot for accuracy and drawback speed.
The atmosphere is also pretty great, there’s this part at the beginning of the game with an apple tree that looked straight out of a painting. But these guys are French so there’s a lot of that influence. Like at the beginning Amicia’s hair is tied with pink string and put up like a rose but afterwards she makes three braids leading into one, I appreciate the design quality. It’s also a longer game than I thought, from previews, it just looked like a tech demo but no it’s a full 10 hour game. (at least for me it was 10)
The story focuses around a girl and her brother which I’m sure you’ve already gathered as well as it revolving around rats, which is true but these rats are afraid of the light so you can imagine the mechanics it tries to incorporate. It’s like a better Alan Wake. But because of the brother’s illness, he hasn’t really gone outside which can be a problem because he wants to venture out and catch the frogs and see the windmill and stuff which causes him to run away and play hide and seek. He even talks very proper like most of his experience with words has come straight from a book.
But I will admit some falls in the storytelling because they set up all these questions like why is her brother sick or rather what is he sick with? A simple one. Why is the inquisition after them? And my first day of playing it, I played up to chapter 4 which is when they explain all those things and I found the answers to be kind of dumb. They try to incorporate alchemy and the plot turns into “I gotta go get this book.” Bleh! But there’s this one section where they make you sacrifice a pig and make alchemic fire, why not just make a firework or bomb or something? It’s just kind of too far out there, it just goes off the rails from there and I can’t believe I’m saying this but it could’ve been more grounded and have had a greater effect in my opinion. Speaking of though, this can be pretty brutal and dark, there was this one scene where Hugo (the brother) says “I can smell something cooking, is it a fair?” In an innocent like voice then Amicia (the sister) says “It doesn’t sound like a fair.” So I joked “No, we’re cooking bodies tonight.” Or something along those lines. My dark sense of humor and wouldn’t you know it, they’re burning a person at the stake. My jaw dropped.
There is a companion system where you can tell someone to go and turn a wheel or where to cause a distraction (which I hope gets expanded upon for the sequel). On a gameplay level, this is really fun, there are some really standout moments. The only complaint I have on that front is the final ability, it can be janky sometimes especially when you first get it. So yeah, I’d give this game a much higher score, I mean, when I was first playing it, it was checking off all my boxes, but the story didn’t keep that up.