A Plague Tale: Innocence
A very story-heavy game about the outbreak of a plague in 14th century France. More specifically, it's about a young girl named Amicia (the player-character for most of the game) and her younger bother Hugo and what they had to endure.
It's hard to be much more specific without including spoilers, so I'll just say that the story is the game's strongest point, and I thought it was excellent by industry standards.
It's a good thing the story is as strong as it is though, because the game is lacking in other aspects. 90% of the action consist of stealth and/or puzzles. There really isn't much else. The remainder is some very limited exploration and simple crafting.
Even the combat, if you can call it that, is more like a series of puzzles than actual combat. In the event you're spotted by an enemy, you usually have only a matter of seconds to deal with that enemy in a very specific way or you're reloading from the last checkpoint. Death is automatic if an enemy gets within melee range or hits you with a ranged weapon.
From a visual standpoint, the game looks really good both technically and artistically. It reminded me of Kingdom Come: Deliverance for obvious reasons and achieves a similar level of visual fidelity. The soundtrack, by
Olivier Deriviere, fits the setting pefectly.
The game doesn't overstay its welcome. I finished it in three sittings and found around 90% of the various collectibles you can find. I think it took me around 12 hours total.
I've seen a few people compare it to The Last of Us which I think is misleading. They do share similar stories about people just trying to survive in extreme circumstances, and they also hit similar notes on an emotional level, but A Plague Tale is much more limited by comparison, especially gameplay-wise.
It's a good game, but one that, imo, is getting much higher scores than it deserves. It currently has a 94% positive rating on Steam and 81 and 8.8, from critics and users respectively, on Metacritic. Perhaps I'm simply not the target audience, but I must admit to being a little surprised by those scores.
What it does it does extremely well, but it's somewhat of a one-trick pony. If you think the story is something you would enjoy, then definitely go for it. Just don't expect a lot of variety when it comes to gameplay.
6.5/10
