2/5 ★ – jordybgood's review of A Plague Tale: Innocence.

I was really looking forward to A Plague Tale: Innocence as I’m a huge advocate for single player experiences and I kept hearing about how this was a “medieval Last of Us”, that it’s a compelling a story about two siblings surviving together in the dark ages on the peak of the bubonic plague. That’s a pretty unique backdrop for a video game in my eyes so I threw it on and took a few days with it, anddddddd I thought it was OK. The first half I really enjoyed aspects of but throughout the second half the game just kept falling apart for me. Because of how much potential it had. The core crutch of this game that’s gonna make it or break it for you is the gameplay variety, which to me, there’s really not much of. For the most part you’re either moving past enemies through stealth sections, facing them in short combat encounters, or solving puzzle like progression sections involving swarms of rats. It’s interesting at first especially how because they emphasize how brutal the death scenes are for enemy ai and the player, but the gameplay becomes so repetitive and dull after the first 10 chapters or so, I didn’t feel like I was rolling with the game anymore I just felt like I was slugging through it. The game has a pattern to it which is pretty much Walk through scenery/cutscene Sneak past enemies(with the same damn enemy dialogue over and over) Fight enemies Solve Rat mazes Run from rats Mini boss fight Rinse and repeat for like 15 chapters, and none of it feels much different from the last. The combat with Inqusition solidiers is almost a joke because you realistically have to think about how this 15 year old girl is using a slingshot to kill these military trained soldiers with basically nothing but rocks and potions. It’s really goofy and not particularly, well, exciting. There’s no pizzaz to it, no variety, and when you get to the final chapter it feels so bogged down by its shortcomings that it’s just not fun to play anymore. The most positive feelings I had for A Plague Tale were in regards to its art direction and sound design. The games environments look absolutely stunning, and the different sounds are just haunting. Particularly the rats. The rats in this game filled me with so much dread and disgust, it kept making me think how A: how much it sucks to be living in the dark ages and B:Rats are absolutely terrifying. They just sound so disgusting when they run in droves and how they eat people in this, I get grossed out typing it. This game has some really disgusting imagery and it does a fantastic job to make you feel uncomfortable with all the senses. What you see, what you hear, it’s all very effective in this light. What about the center of it though, how is the story? This is what also makes or breaks the game I’d imagine. For me it starts off with interesting ideas, and then it loses steam pretty quickly. The bare bones is a teen girl named Amicia has to run away from home with her “sick brother” named Hugo. Their family home is raided by soldiers of the inquisition, forcing them to trek across the land in search of answers. They meet other orphans, try to discover what’s wrong with Hugo, and plan revenge on the Inquisition for their evil deeds. This story starts off like a pretty standard hero’s journey in which Amicia is clearly unfit for the world outside of home and has no relationship with her brother, but now they have to get to know each other better if they are to survive. That’s a lot of character work that has to be done there, but the game for some reason introduces not just 1 but 3 other orphan characters in the story, and you barely get to know any of them. This was not only distracting for their character arcs, but that it took away any time we could’ve had for Amicia and Hugo. For a huge chunk of the game Hugo is just gone and then it becomes riddled with cliches and I just didn’t stay invested in these two leads anymore. Amicia comes off as a terrible person, and Hugo is most of the time just a whiny kid. There’s no relationship there that worked for me and the game needed to work on this more. What’s even worse is 2 of the other orphans die for them in the 3rd act, and you don’t care about them AT ALL(at least I didn’t). Once they discover the villain he’s so cliche and his plan is a complete farce. For a plot that felt very real and dark where the Inqusiton was using the rats to murder towns of people, they decide to go full blown fantasy and make the head villain some maniacal prophet who wants to use magical rats to take over the world, which he can only do with Hugo’s blood since apparently it has the ability to control rats. This is where the game was really losing me. It failed to establish its own rules in the first half as it felt like a real story set in the dark ages, and then it just turns into complete schlock, with a really lackluster ending. The timeline of events is all over the place in the third act too. They sometimes jump days, and then suddenly they jump a whole month, like wait what? There’s so many story decisions like this that don’t add up and it’s really a shame because it has a fantastic tone for a horror story, and I was genuinely creeped out by a lot of sections, but it just couldn’t keep up that momentum. What doesn’t help is the direction or the sound mixing of the voice acting is god awful. Nobody feels like they’re actually talking to each other, it all feels heavily edited and buggy. I know it must be hard if you have a low budget but the voice acting in this game is reallyyyy weak, and it’s hard to get invested in your characters if they can’t even have a coherent conversation without breaking or sounding genuine. Two characters will be talking while you’re playing and then all of a sudden a new character talks over them, probably because you’ve hit the spot for the game to trigger the next conversation, this happens sooo much it becomes aggravating. The game’s graphics are also very inconsistent. I think if it had come out in the early cycle of the 360 or PS3 it would’ve looked fantastic, but now it already feels dated. The facial animations aren’t anything to rave about and the physical movement of characters just feels very jarring at times. The way enemy ai would die too just became a joke, some would fall out of the map, some would like plain goofy, it’s all over the place. I really wanted to love A Plague Tale, but there are so many issues that hold it back for me. Fantastic art direction and sound design, but a lackluster story and dull repetitive gameplay just make this game a disappointment in the end. If you want a 10 hour tv like experience and you have nothing else to play I would say it’s worth a rental possibly. But I would definitely not buy it, and if you do I’d be surprised if you’d think it’s worth a second playthrough. 5/10.