4/5 ★ – sunbather's review of A Plague Tale: Innocence.

I wanted to start reviewing games like I have been with films in recent months with Letterboxd as I have many games lined up this year thanks to the holiday sales on Steam and Epic. So, here we go! A Plague Tale is entirely bleak, dreadful, and downright heartbreaking, but incredibly beautiful at the same time. I was worried about Hugo’s character being an annoying pain that was going to be more of a liability than anything, but his compassion and authentic inquisitive nature turned out to be my favorite part of the game. You feel bad for the kid for not knowing basically anything about the world around him and slowly realize the true horror of why he was kept in such captivity. Some of the dialogue in the game was lame, but I had to remind myself that these characters are all teenagers trying to make sense of the unfolding events, and keep themselves afloat with their own lighthearted moments of banter. That being said, I do not know if it was just my game, but sometimes the dialogue overlapped to the point that it seemed as though characters were constantly cutting each other’s sentences off. It was appropriate in moments, but I think it happened far too often to be normal. The gameplay was smooth and easy to get a hang of, and it was great to have so many different ways to either take out enemies, or work your way around them. The crafting was straightforward as well, and there is a lot of reward behind scouring corners and looking for secrets to gather necessary materials for upgrading your items. Even though I did not really care for a couple of the upgrades - namely the last two that become available - I still found myself doing my best to cover all the ground that I could. The final “boss” battle was good, and the ending was sincere, which I really enjoyed. I liked that the combat was not entirely too unrealistic or difficult either, especially given the fact that you’re just these two kids on the run. But I have to admit, the best parts of the game were the darkest - walking across a sea of bodies, controlling the rats to shred people apart, etc. It was a solid length as well, and was easy to play alongside the excellent score of brooding music that really elevated the world we traveled through.