Stories: The Path of Destinies

this is a game i meant to review long ago, i even wrote up a whole document of points to make once i finished it.. but god, this game was so boring and draining to 100% that by the time i did, i just lost all interest.

that being said, these notes have been sitting here for two years now, so i thought.. why not just post them! they basically function as a review of their own.

so, without further ado:

the good:
- the designs (character, level, artwork)
-- levels themselves are particularly really nice and fun to run through. unfortunately, game design means you run through the same small set of levels way too often.
- the concept
-- it is INHERENTLY fun to discover new paths. obviously, this dries up due to the grind described later, but still.

the mediocre
- combat
-- very limited options
-- very limited enemies
--- explosion enemies are particularly annoying
-- ok arkham-like system but is exceptionally easy to just mash
-- the gems give some more choosiness but some seem rather useless, i found a set build and stuck with it
-- same complaint about gems with the weapons, which don’t seem rather useful–near the endgame i basically only used the purple sword to speed up my running outside of combat.
-- both sword and gem upgrades will likely max out by the time you get the true ending, leaving no changes for getting the remaining endings. chests then just give you health and magic items (it could’ve given exp as a reward, but nope..?)
- story in general is ok
-- endings range from bad to alright
-- both companion characters switch characterization based on which route you’re on
-- both companion characters have interesting moments and fun characterization at times, which is largely route-dependent and inconsistent.
-- added lore hidden in readable, hidden objects throughout game with terrible ui and small text. couldn’t be bothered.
-- “true” ending leaves many questions unanswered and sidelines one of the companion characters at the end.
--- as well, “true” ending seems like something that could’ve just happened in one of the normal endings but it just happens to work for no reason.
- music is like, whatever.

the bad:
- whole game has a tone problem where i can’t figure out how serious anything is, which starts at the beginning of the game when a child character is killed and it seems to not matter at all.
-- many serious moments taken with a jovial tone. many other serious moments taken.. extremely serious.
- repetitive storylines for many paths, near identical until the last minute of story before you complete a route.
- the leveling system, amount of exp to get all skills is absolutely immense
-- effectively impossible to get all skills even if you do literally all endings (25 playthroughs). you have to do more grinding on top, while enemies and levels stay equally difficult (aka trivial).
-- also, the skill system in general–most of them are meaningless and minor, while others trivialize combat
-- also, even if you get all skills, the game still lets you level for no benefit.
- the path system in general
-- no way to skip half of the cutscenes in the game
-- no way to see which choices have been entirely completed, meaning you either need to look up a guide or meticulously catalog later choices for completionism
-- many choices don’t make any sense for the protagonist to choose or even consider.
-- choice-based deaths reset you to the beginning of a level. these choice-based deaths are then no labeled as deadly later, in case you manage to forget.
-- other than the true ending, learning truths has no effect on any routes. it only adds extra options that cause death, or adds added dialogue that the main character then ignores so you can still get the old route’s ending.
--- many of the route endings seem like they should unlock multiple truths, but only unlock one. many of the endings seem like they should unlock none of the truths, but unlock one anyways.
-- getting all endings does nothing. not even a bit of fanfare.
- dialogue is filled with really bad reference humor.
- game has occasional slowdown at the end of battles for no apparent reason. i’m surprised it never crashed. glitches were fairly minor for me on ps4 and never gameruining, though i’ve seen conflicting reports.
- i kinda hate the main character. he’s a dick. and an idiot.

This game was free on PSN when I had a free trial so decided to play it during Christmas of last year. This game has kind of a cool idea, and that's you can replay the game and make a combination of different choices to get different endings, I believe the game has something like 16 total different endings, but the problem is most of these choices are arbitrary and come down to selecting a descision and the end of a mission and remembering which one you chose so you can go down a different path your next playthrough. I think once you got a combination of 3 or 4 different types of endings you could get the games true ending. Now my problem is this game is repetitive and offers little reward. It plays sort of like a poor man's Bastion and you play as this random fox dude, and its a generic war story. I mean there are different paths you can take which do end up giving you new missions but there are only so many different missions and many paths reuse the same locations so you end up redoing the same shit on different playthroughs and the game just has little variety in combat and abilities that it isn't interesting after your second or so playthrough. Each playthrough takes around 1 or 2 hours roughly but its anywhere from 8-10 hours to get all 4 endings plus the secret one, but its still fairly short. The story just isn't that great or memorable, the characters are all boring and forgettable, the different paths and choices really don't mean shit especially when it comes down to making your choice through a button prompt at the end of each mission, and to be honest the game isn't super fun either, its just generic and has been done better in other games. It was a mildly amusing free game to play once, but I never will have enough motivation to pick this up ever again.