Stories: The Path of Destinies (2016)

This title is a charming action RPG with a unique branching narrative, the MC is called Reynardo, a witty fox who relives different paths in search of the true ending, with each run revealing new “Truths” and possibilities. The storybook presentation, colorful cel-shaded visuals, and a charismatic narrator give the game a distinct personality that stands out from other indie titles of its time. This one is yet another title that I got interested in playing it solely because of the art-style, but I finished playing it because of the gameplay.

Combat is fast-paced and enjoyable, with upgradeable swords and magical abilities that keep fights engaging, at least at first. However, the enemy variety and environments are limited, which makes extended playthroughs feel repetitive. It is indeed not a very complex and replayable game, but this was never the intention, its a short and concise experience. This repetition is the game’s biggest drawback, as pursuing multiple endings often means revisiting similar levels with only slight variations.

Despite this, the clever writing, humor, and inventive narrative structure make the experience worthwhile. The PC version runs smoothly and remains the best way to enjoy the game. If you like story-driven adventures with meaningful choices and don’t mind some repetition, this game is a hidden gem worth exploring. If you are looking for a more complex game, with lots of characters, and gameplay variety, then stir away from this one.

I did not know what to expect from Stories but after first playing through its spiritual sequel Omensight, I am intrigued by the fact that both of these games ride on the time-repeat concept that drive the narrative forward. For Stories, it leans on the choose-your-own-adventure mechanic the most with a common goal of the main plot. As Reynardo, fox and former pirate, you get caught in an ominous event fed by the conflict between a mad emperor and a rebellion group. Your intent in the first place is to help the rebels win the war against the emperor and his crow troops with overwhelming odds, but old relics have started to re-appear... How you go about your path falls upon the choices you make along the way, leading to consequences that define one of many unique endings you can discover. With enough clues collected, a path leading to the true ending will be unlocked, granting a satisfying endgame.

The story is mainly told by the narrator in a storyteller's fashion, with a healthy dose of humor shot in to brighten up the grim fairy tale setting. As much as the voice actor delivers the narration and the dialogues of different characters professionally, I would have preferred more if there were other voice actors for each character to get more connection with.

The hack n' slash combat system is quite easy to get into and the attack button can even parry incoming attacks, impale enemies to be used as a meat shield or thrown. The combat challenge tests you more in maneuvering and deciding your next move when facing against 3+ enemy crows. The skill system unlocked through levelling up allows you options to buff your preferred playstyle (the gems do that for you, too) but since the game is merely plot-focused, don't expect the choices to be vast.

After playing for a couple of hours, the repetitiveness starts to bring the game down. The worst offender is that I'm unable to skip the cutscenes I've seen more than a few times already when I want to see a different ending on the similar story paths. And as much as going through the same levels killing the same crows is a way to raise my exp level further in, the lack of both enemy variety and mission level freshness makes me wish there was a skip button to jump straight to the path decision that I haven't cleared yet.

Stories: Path of Destinies is still worth a shot if you'd see yourself enjoying some moderately simple action RPG with emphasis on a charming, multi-branched story amusingly told by a proficient narrator. It will take you only a few hours to get to the true ending but expect to see yourself grinding if you want to see all the endings of a plot that roams between the tragical and (mostly) comical outcomes.

Played this over the weekend, and well, it was okay. The name is an absolute travesty, but the game itself is just fine. I'll do this review in my favourite low effort format: pros and cons!

+beautiful music and nice, colourful art style

+pretty satisfying combat

+short and easy, good for casual play

-repetitive

-the name. Who came up with that and why?

-after getting the swords upgraded, (which happens really really fast), there's absolutely nothing to do but run through the same levels you've done several times already and fight the same enemies

Sooo yeah, it was fun enough, and short enough that I don't regret playing it, but didn't really do much for me.

Not the BEST game I've ever played, but it provided a good deal of entertainment.

Mechanically it's a fairly simple isometric hacknslash with Arkham-like counter & combo-build mechanics. The challenge level drops precipitously as one gets accustomed to it and if one buys the right skills/upgrades in the RPG-like leveling tree. BUT, I think it's alright that the combat becomes trivial, because that makes it very easy to run through levels as you repeat them to complete alternate story paths.

I quite enjoyed the game's narrative implement, which is a magic book that allows the protagonist to read through all the different courses of action choose-your-own-adventure style, discovering truths and learning of many unfortunate endings before finding the right one.

The narration is great, with lots of well-done references to other video games and fantasy pop culture, some self-deprecating humor, and plenty of cheek. It changes as you replay levels with different choices, even if the levels themselves don't change mechanically, reducing the feeling of slog that comes with replaying the levels while pursuing new paths.

It's an ARPG with Arkham counters and piss easy enemies. It's surrounded by subpar fantasy story writing and "twists" to attempt to spice up the fact that you'll be replaying the same game but even easier with barely anything added to it. It's such a bog standard top down action game that I was really taken aback by its asking price afterward. The aesthetic is a very unreal engine terrain swap, the music is forgettable.

I'd probably give the game more shit than this but it had the heart in a good concept just so badly executed. Don't play this game. Go play Bastion it's WAY better. (4/10)

Stories is a poor attempt at copying Bastion. There's some sort of big drama, the world consists of floating platforms, there's a narrator providing commentary that's supposed to be witty, there are weapons you can switch between, etc. I loved Bastion and i was looking forward to playing this, but i was really disappointed.

Pretty much every element of Bastion is copied poorly. The narrator isn't that bad, but his lines are. The environments are pretty but generic. Level design is clumsy and you often feel you missed out on things because the way back is constantly hut behind you. A core part of Bastion was the amazing music by Darren Corb which i still listen to. I'm not even sure if this game has music, it's probably that generic. The worldbuilding in Bastion was light-years ahead as well, Stories just has platforms with no history to them.

The game also suffers from poor optimisation. The game looks nice but i had to reduce the automatically applied graphics settings due to lag. Perhaps all the fog and depth is to blame. And there are bugs to. The Back buttons in the crafting/skills menu are somewhat unresponsive and instead sent me to the main menu several times (and i only played for an hour). The worst bug was that the game kept bringing up the main menu during combat, i'm honestly not entirely sure why. I think it registers clicks incorrectly.

All of the many flaws add up but they could have been forgiven if the gameplay was solid. It's not. There's pointless "exploration" (e.g. you cross a bridge to open a chest), you have to smash objects to heal (and rarely find materials) and you're constantly being interrupted by cutscenes. Combat is rather boring and mostly consists of smashing the left button on your mouse. There's no real dodging, countering requires little thought and you don't get a ranged weapon (at least not in the first hour). You can grab and throw enemies, but that would reduce your score. And your score determines how much XP you get, which is an awful system. I'm also puzzled by their decision to not automatically heal the player between encounters. Mostly it's just boring.

That's actually a good TL;DR. Stories: The Path of Destinies - mostly boring.

I really wanted to like this game. That's the most hackneyed way to start a review, I know, but it is really true for this title. Based on the gameplay videos I watched this game promised to be a little bit serious, a little bit sad, and a little bit snarky. A winning combination. The character art also seemed to hit just the right note of "grim fairy tale," even though I'm usually not a fan of anthro characters. But after some bland level design, some frustrating combat encounters, and a game-breaking bug I decided to uninstall this title and move on.

The narration was well done, which is important because the narrator is the only one who does any voice over work in this entire game. Because there was one person doing all the voices it felt almost like someone was reading a picture book to me like when I was little, and that's a strong vein of nostalgia right there. The main system of this game also worked well, though sometimes it felt a little rough around the edges. The way it works is that you play through the game several times and you can pick different paths at certain branching points. For the most part you will fail and die at the end of the story and then restart the story in order to pick a different branching path. Your character is aware of his failure too, so the new path you take is influenced by the failed paths you previously took. This is certainly a complicated sort of narrative to create, so I congratulate the game devs for pulling it off.

The problems of the game though are mundane, and that makes me sad because a little extra time spent developing this game could really have elevated it to something special and memorable. Levels looked flashy (at least the first few times through them) but ultimately were just a series of interconnected hallways and rooms. Combat felt like a combination of Assassin's Creed and the Batman Arkham series, with the character snapping to each combatant instead of you having to run over to them as well as a heavy emphasis on countering. The main problem is that if two or more enemies attack at once (which happens often enough) you can only counter one of them and you are automatically hit with the other attacks. That drops your health fast. This is not necessarily terrible, and some careful play really helps. But it just seems counter-intuitive to a counter-heavy combat system.

Finally, about ten hours into the game, I encountered a bug that stopped me from progressing. The game just failed to load some of the rooms properly, so my character was standing in an invisible room with only the level's background animations under his feet. Because most of the rooms are just rectangles this might not have been a problem, except that this happened right at the start of a puzzle where I'm supposed to ride a platform and avoid fireballs. The platform to ride (and the switch to turn it on) were invisible. The cannons that shot the fireballs were invisible. All I could see was my character, a few fireballs, and the distant horizon. I could not progress. I even played the same level 3 times over (because saving in this game is pretty limited) and the same thing happened each time.

I did a quick Google search and found a few people with the same problem but no one posted any kind of solution. I could have tried reinstalling the game or getting in touch with the game developers but honestly this title was just not engaging enough to merit that kind of work, and with a triple-digit backlog putting even more pressure on me to move on I decided to shelve this game for now. Maybe I will come back to it one day and see if a fresh install helps me get through.