Asobo Studio · May 14, 2019
This is the type of game for me-Story driven. I love getting immersed into the storylines. Great story!
at the beginning it was boring and uninterested to me. and the kid was silly. then there shows up alchemy and everythig became beautyfull and interesting to me. i love alchemy and alchemist books. im some kind of alchemist. game was really beautyfull. well made story.
About 2-3 months ago A Plague Tale: Requiem dropped. It's the sequel to this game. People praised it's graphics quite a bit on Twitter as far as I was made aware and despite it's late release it still made some entries in the potential game of the year awards. I researched about it a bit and more and more I got the feeling this is The Last of Us if it were set in the middles ages. Is that a bad thing though? Well, the parallels to TLOU are undeniable. In a lot of ways it looks like Asobo Studio - a french group which previously worked on a bunch of disney & pixar movie tie-in games - played TLOU and were like: "We can do our own TLOU. We have the means, we can recreate it." They replaced the setting from a near apocalyptic future to the 14th hundreds and exchanged the zombies with the bubonic plague. The guns are replaced by a slingshot and all sorts of alchemic concoctions which help you progress through the game. Much like in the Last of Us games just about everything and everybody is after you and like in those games you primarily follow around a duo of characters: an older protector type with fighting abilities (the older sister - Amicia) and a young child, who has some skills of their own, but is mostly just to be defended because of some story related characteristic that makes people want them (her younger brother Hugo). Among the misery the somewhat initially estranged siblings bond and the story offers some wholesome emotional scenes to boot. Where A Plague Tale however stepped away from it's TLOU inspirations is the actual gameplay. Don't get me wrong: on paper this would probably still read a lot like TLOU, but APT is way more puzzle-based and you are more rarely pushed in scenarios where action can be the solution. After all Amicia - our protagonist - only has 1 life. One bonk on the head with a sword and she is down. She has no physical means of self defense, only a slingshot her father gifted her pre-plague and some cool alchemic substances she learns to craft along the way. Unlike TLOU APT also has some roadblock moments: \-The boss battles seem to be Mario inspired. Each comes with a three phase duration, where you must figure out the weak spot of the oponnent to deal damage and progress the fight to the next stage. Three hits and the oponnent is down. This is one of the major parts through which APT can be harder than TLOU. It probably took me over an hour of time + watching some successful attempts and tutorials to figure out how to defeat the final boss. \-Aim assist sucks. It's pretty good when your aiming your slingshot at stationary oponnents, but when they charge at you, there is a decent chance you might miss regardless of how promising the yellow blinking target seemed. Most of the game this is no biggie, because you don't depend solely on shooting oponnents, but can compensate for it by being stealthy and using the environment to your advantage... but just 10 minutes before the final boss battle, there is a section, where the game will send 3 waves of soldiers at you with no available advantage in your environment and with no stealth. You are required to flawlessly murder all 8 of the soldiers in cold blood as they charge at you. Only leeway you get is the ability to have some somnum's at your disposal, which have a similar function to an extra life in most games and which will take down the soldier who comes to close to you. \-Auto save is not optimal. I mean it's fine, but in some sections it will send you back a bit further than you'd like and force you to relisten to quite lenghty story chunks rather than throw you straight at the beginning of the action. Have I already mentioned the part where you have to murder 8 soldiers in cold blood head on? Yes? Every repeat of that part begins with a cutscene you would rather not have to rewatch after dying. Now I may have done quite a bit of this review in comparison to The Last of Us, but it's also a really good standalone game, which does not just live in the shadow of that similar older game. The gameplay based heavier on puzzle solving adds to it's individuality and even if the story is not as beloved or good as TLOU what we are given here is still solid. I will absolutely give Requiem a chance too, but first I need to get the earworm of Vitalis shouting "Die! Become one again!" out of my ears.
This is actually of those unforgettable games you can experience. Plague Tale Innocenence has this kind of chilling vibe with a compelling story. Amicia and Hugo's journey throughout the entire game will really keep you playing each chapters. I love how they were able to think a game like this. Such a superb experience. **VISUALS** _Artistry: 12/12_ _Technical Merit: 6/8_ **SOUND DESIGN** _Music: 10/12_ _Sound Effects & Vocals: 7/8_ **INTERACTION** _Control & Interface: 6/8_ _Player Agency:6/8_ _Accessibility: 4/4_ **MECHANICS** _Feedback & Fun: 8/10_ _Depth: 5/5_ _Variety: 2/5_ **CHARACTER** _Narrative: 6/8_ _Heart: 4/6_ _Originality: 4/6_
Cool
Intro: If you've played The Last of Us, then this might be something for you. This game is set during the year 1349, a time when the second bubonic plague was at its peak. Despite seeming like a game for the horror genre, there are no jumpscares, just a promising new IP from Asobo Studio, with your progression hinging on solving puzzles while evading, hiding from, or combating rats, or soldiers, or both. Gameplay: Camera: 3rd Person Camera Controls. No manual controls to switch shoulders, but there are built-in scenarios where camera switches to other shoulder. Movement has sensitivity slider but camera's movement speed ramps. Movement: Protag has three variations of movement based on scene context. Normally, protag will either walk or jog, based on context. But can crouch to engage stealth and move under environment objects or within stealth grass. Has also Sprint button that will disengage crouch/stealth. Protag might not be allowed to sprint in certain scenes. Sprint also increases speed of detection. Protag also has dodge, but is useful only in very specific scenarios. Combat: Protag gains ability to do combat early in the story and difficulty of combat increases as more abilities are provided to the player. All combat is done at range. Engaging in melee will usually result to a scripted game over, except in certain scenarios. Protag also gains upgrades for their combat abilities. Economy: Player progression depends heavily on crafting. There are no currencies related to character progression. Player will need to pick up items for crafting to improve abilities. Crafting materials are limited and do not respawn. Exploration is rewarded with either more crafting materials or collectibles. Collectibles provides lore and achievements, nothing else. If you've played TLoU, you'll recognize this mechanic. UI: UI provide some customization. There are two standard presets, Standard which provides all UI in the game. Immersive, which removes most UI, except for important UI elements like environment interaction prompts, reticle, and tutorials. Subtitles are also available. Saves: There are 3 save slots. These save slots include chapter progression and game preferences as part of the save profile. There are also checkpoints in a chapter where you can continue from after quitting. Certain checkpoints have triggers, like picking up collectibles, upgrading tools, and progression. Make sure you don't trigger a checkpoint during combat or you might trigger the checkpoint right before a game over. I had this happen to me during the late parts of the game. Minigames: There are no minigames. Bugs: No game-stopping bugs encountered in playthrough. Stealth mechanic does not feel polished. Archers have a very high detection range and sometimes feel like it passes through objects. Rat detection mechanic felt it was given more love than the stealth detection mechanic. Auto-aim for targets that are close to each other is also a pain, since a slight movement could change the target and mean that the outcome is different, since shooting the head means detection but taking out their light and getting them eaten by rats is not. Music: There's not really a song that stood out for me that I loved. Delivery of the music did not feel out of place. Lots of string instruments were used, possibly to give out that rural 1300s vibe. But Mystical Castle felt unnecessarily intense to the point of jumpscare-y without the jumpscare when it first played. Composer: Olivier Derivier. Composer for Dying Light 2. Number of Tracks: 26 tracks OST in Spotify: Yes Story: I am satisfied with the story. The story's execution felt natural and that only added to the experience. But sometimes there is the weird character maturity/motivation shifts that changes to the drive the story or to add to the drama. Voice Acting: All story scripts are fully voiced. Game comes with 3 voice languages, English, German, and French. I particularly liked Hugo's voice and his interactions with everyone. Amicia comes at a close second. Multiple Endings: No. Only one ending. Linear progression. Narration: Game follows the story of Amicia and Hugo. Some of the story is told through the environment, with the support of voice lines from the main characters. Collectibles also provides lore. Both of these are provided thru thorough exploration of the environment. Pacing: The story's pacing felt natural. Timeskips are also used to imply some character progression, and weather changes in response to these timeskips. It does not feel like everything happened in the span of a week. Worldbuilding: You need to apply some suspension of disbelief with the rats. The setting takes place in the 1340s, at the same time as the historic second bubonic plague. Setting feels correct. Nothing too out of place. However, the game shifts the actual known threat to rats and their bites instead of just the plague itself. Some cutscenes and environment interaction seem to imply people can be contagious, enough to kill sick people for it, but this idea was never a threat to the characters. Lastly, loved the fact that they kept themselves from doing a plague doctor reference since plague doctor masks only started appearing in the 1600s. Lifespan: Chapter Select/New Game+: Chapter Select is immediately available after finishing a game. Since it is one ending, linear progression, a new game+ is really just for getting everything you missed. DLCs: Only cosmetic DLCs. No story content from DLCs. Duration: HowLongToBeat lists this as 10 hours. I beat the game within 12 hours. Graphics: The graphics of this game is at the triple A level. Detailbuilding is also remarkable. Nothing really felt out of place. I, however, prefer the nighttime scenes of this game because of how the light works. Graphic Settings: Extensive graphics settings. No benchmarking. TAA can't be turned off via the in-game settings. There's also an "Auto" setting for the graphics, which possibly adjusts the graphics based on load(?). There's also an auto select in the game settings itself that chooses the best setting based on your hardware. Optimizations: YMMV. Graphics felt unoptimized. Frame drops are experienced despite running the game at a setting lower than the recommended. Either the issue comes from the rats' CPU consumption or from something else. Also, your CPU will also take more load than normal, possibly due to the rats. Achievements: Missable Achievements: Lots of missable achievements. But chapter select will allow you to easily try them again. Multiplayer-Only Achievements: No multiplayer. Time-based Achievements: None. High-Skill Achievements: The aim training achievement at the start of the game is possibly the only "skill-based" achievement in the game. Other than that, it's all achievements that are awarded through exploration. Accessibility: Varying Difficulty: None. Auto-aim, named aim assist, is available and can be set to normal and low. Controller Support: Yes, with availabilty of PS4 prompts of DS4 controllers. In-game Button Remapping: Keyboard remapping is available. Controller remapping is not, but there are two presets to choose from. Subtitles: Yes Pause in Cutscenes: Yes Hold button to Skip Cutscenes: Yes Requires Button Mashing: Yes. Cannot be changed. Tutorials: Yes. Multiplayer: No Multiplayer LAN: Online-Coop: Online-PVP:
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