A Plague Tale: Innocence Review (Spobbles)
A lovely little story.
This review contains no spoilers.
In short:
A Plague Tale: Innocence provides a dark yet heartfelt linear narrative alongside solid gameplay and pleasing visuals. The 8-10 hour story is told with finesse and makes the most of its relatively short runtime by focusing on what matters: the main characters and their relationship. Throw in some stealth-based gameplay encounters, a bit of combat and lots of rats, and you've got a pretty cool game. How about that.
Letting the gameplay reinforce the narrative:
Throughout much of the game, our protagonist, Amicia, needs to not only navigate horrific environments, deadly encounters and challenging predicaments, but do so while looking after her little brother, Hugo. This often means holding his hand to lead him through the world and keep him safe; a simple thing, but it makes all the difference. Having Hugo there on screen, tied directly to your actions both strengthens the characters' bond, and helps to hammer home the realities of their situation: he's a young, scared kid, often a detriment to Amicia due his lack of logical reasoning and physical ability, but she can't just leave him behind, can she? We're not monsters, and Hugo does manage to prove himself useful at times.
Between corpse-strewn battlefields, rat-infested dungeons and other, equally nasty places, you have to feel for Amicia and Hugo. Brave though they may be, they're both still just kids that have found what must feel like the entire world pitted against them. Personally, I found the overall narrative rather enjoyable. There were a few moments, namely in Amicia's reactions or decisions, that I found a bit odd and/or forced, but they were small blemishes in the grand scheme of things.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2829481446
So about that gameplay stuff:
Some games really screw up the sneaky bits; they make them unnecessarily frustrating through busted mechanics or wonky controls. A Plague Tale: Innocence is not one of those games. Lucky us. Players have quite a few options to get through alive, including several methods of murder and distraction, and just plain old good timing. The violent options don't become as viable until later in the game, as Amicia unlocks various tools along the way, but by the end, she is a one-woman death factory, and Hugo can help out too - for better or worse. The UI, animations and controls are solid, so when it does come murder time, you're all set.
The addition of an upgrade system for Amicia's equipment is nice, I suppose, though I didn't feel it particularly necessary to progression. I had more than enough of everything I needed throughout the experience, and the upgrades were mostly for the sake of convenience. The game has no difficulty settings, so I can't imagine any situation where I'd be stuck without them. Ultimately, I didn't find any aspect of the gameplay to be overly challenging or deep, but the mechanics are mostly there to facilitate the storytelling, so I'll forgive the game that.
There are some puzzles too:
As is standard in linear experiences like this one, our main characters will have to work through a few progression-blockers. These mostly revolve around giant rat swarms – the kind that eat people. They can be manipulated using light sources such as lanterns and braziers, and the goal is generally to open the path to whatever lies beyond the swarm. Again, I didn't find any of these challenges particularly difficult, but they can be a tad unintuitive at times. Still, the overall concept is pretty cool, and being surrounded by hordes of ravenous rats definitely ramps up the tension in service of the overall atmosphere of the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2829481483
It sounds, runs and looks noice:
The game is a couple years old now, and while its age does show a little, it still looks pretty damn fine across a variety of locales including winding streets, giant cathedrals and beautiful open countryside. Similarly, the music is nice, voice acting good, and effects appropriate. With the specs listed below, the game ran just peachy at 60fps on high settings. As far as bugs are concerned, I don't remember encountering any.
In conclusion:
A Plague Tale: Innocence is a fine game. I'm not going to call it a masterpiece, but it's a good'un. Its heavy focus on the narrative and very linear nature will be off-putting to some, but that's the nature of games and their differing genres. I'm glad I finally got around to playing this game before the release of the sequel.
Buy game. Receive rat-related phobias.
Specs:
This game was played with the following PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
16GB RAM
GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4GB
1680x1050 resolution
Windows 10
Game installed on NVMe SSD
This review comes courtesy of Summit Reviews.