Pyre

frustrating. there's a lot of interesting experimentation here, from the weird sports/vn genre combo and extremely vast narrative openness.. but it just doesn't fit together right. long, awkward, and not all that fun, feels like a fumbled deviation away from the tight gameplay systems of Transistor but it at least ended up as a vital stepping stone for the more streamlined-yet-branching narrative design of Hades.

i did like the mustache dog, though.

Picked this up game after finishing Hades and looking to try something else from Supergiant. The center of the game, the actual Rites, were for the most part a very enjoyable little sports game. Unfortunately the Rites are a relatively small part of this game as it seems to be first and foremost a visual novel. Each character had grown on me by the end of the playthrough but for the most part I found myself mashing through dialogue that I didn't really care about.

Pros/cons:

+ Magic Ritual Basketball!
+ builds stakes really well for some matches
+ beautiful art direction
+ Darren Korb's score is gorgeous and evocative
- gameplay loop is WAY too long at the beginning of the game (30 minutes between Rites??)
- several more characters than the story needs
- can really feel the lack of quality voice acting that makes Hades so special
- kind of an incoherent setting
- combination of out-game difficulty setting and in-game difficulty modifiers. just pick one!

All in all I would recommend this game to someone who is interested in a decent visual novel, or a Hades fan who is interested in seeing some of the same ideas that went in to that game executed somewhat differently.

I loved Supergiant game's previous two games, so much, they were stunning to look at, sounded amazing, and extremely fun to play, and while this absolutely hits the first two beats, the gameplay is just not my thing, the whole mini sport thing is not fun to me at all, I genuinely dislike it. Hades looks great though and I will be buying it.

a great sports game, and for me its maybe the best game from those devs over Transistor, still havent made my mind on that one. I love the writing and how unique each character is. The actual sport i found to be too easy for most of the game, but i blame that on me for choosing the wrong difficulty (also its really hard to consider upping the difficulty when each game is crucial). There is a remarkable amount of depth to the gameplay sections, and the rpg narrative ties to it in clever ways. I had a great time with it, and it shows how privileged we are too be gaming in this era for a game of this quaity to be pretty forgotten 2 weeks after launching. It would be a contender for game of the year in any year prior to 2010.