Whoo boy, I do not quite know I feel about this game. On the one hand they took a swing and I applaud them for that. On the other hand, while they did make contact, I think it might have gone foul. Oof, let's stop stretching the baseball metaphor before it snaps.
So, at base level, the musical mechanic is really good. You get three distinct choices at various points in a song, each one tied to a different style and melody, and you can mix and match them relatively seamlessly. That's really cool! There should be more games that do this!
Unfortunately a lot of the songs are kind of meh. You know how some musical songs are just, like, songs, that you could listen to out of context and still enjoy (albeit with a particularly Broadway flair)? And then others are extremely specific to the show and can feel kind of forced and awkward? Stray Gods has mostly that 2nd type. And a lot of them have clunky lyrics, and even clunky melodies (and as a fan of Montaigne I was really hoping for better). The degree of clunkiness varies and most of them are still enjoyable if not necessarily bops and bangers, but as a whole the soundtrack leaves a bit to be desired. Which is not what you want when that's kind of the main selling point.
Then there's the Greek mythology of it all. I recently watched LambHoot's excellent video on Greek mythology and media, with a particular focus on Hades, and you should all watch it too because it will probably change the way you look at that game and at Greek mythology in general. Seriously, watch it right now, here it is:
After watching that I really had to rethink how I view Greek mythology adaptations, and while I initially found Stray Gods' take interesting, now it feels deeply problematic, having basically all the same problems LambHoot identifies in Hades. I do think Stray Gods does a better job of narratively justifying those choices, but it still ultimately comes from a place that sees Greek mythology as a universal mythos that anyone can play with, rather than something that's part of a specific culture and thus has certain boundaries that should be respected.
And then there's the story. I wouldn't necessarily say I hated it, but...well, that's never a good sign if you're starting a sentence that way, right? I think in general the world was interesting and I enjoyed all of the side stories (with the above critique about cultural appropriation in mind), but the main murder mystery was a bit of a let down. Firstly, because I figured out who the murderer was right away—actually, no, "figured out" isn't right because that implies I did some deduction based on clues. I didn't figure out who the murderer was, I knew who the murderer was because it was obvious. From just, like, knowing how stories work. So as every clue I found confirmed my theory (including the red herrings meant to throw me off of that theory), I became less and less invested in a story I could already see the conclusion of. And again, this isn't me following the clues the game gave me—if you figure out, actually figure out, a mystery before the solution is revealed that's not a problem, then you just get to feel satisfied when you turn out to be right. But when you know the answer because the story didn't do a good enough job setting up multiple plausible solutions in the first place, and then the entire time it's acting like you don't know the answer, that's frustrating.
Secondly, after all that investigating, what happens? You encounter a character who just explains the whole thing. Before your trial. So even if I had been diligently following the clues and making deductions, it wouldn't have mattered. None of that work would have gotten the chance to pay off. I could have made every possible wrong choice, gotten no one to trust me and give me information, and I still would have had it all laid out for me on a silver platter—at least as far as I can tell.
Which is kind of the problem with making a final determination, because I only know the path that I took through the game. I suspect that certain things, including that premature reveal, would have happened regardless (I'm not even entirely sure if there are multiple endings beyond certain relationship choices), but I don't know for sure, and I refuse to look it up because I'm lazy and ultimately I don't think I actually care that much which I guess tells you everything you need to know.
I might try playing it again at some point to see how right I am. But there's a distinct possibility that I will not. Still, I'm glad I gave it a chance, and if it seems interesting to you (and you can get it on sale) I'm not gonna tell you shouldn't too. And I hope people can learn from what worked about this experiment and put it to use in something doesn't fall to the same hurdles. Oh no, another sports metaphor, run!
p.s. Obviously the performances are pretty great across the board, it's clear what their budgetary priorities were. Pan is hands down my favorite, but I don't think anyone really flubbed it.
p.p.s. That being said, the minimal graphics, particularly the relatively small selection of repeated poses for each character, did get a little tiring after a while.
p.p.p.s. As did the wonky map interface, the number of times I tried to select "Go" and ended up literally anywhere else I swear to god just make it a pop-up or something.
p.p.p.p.s. As with basically every RPG this did occasionally have the problem of the choice you make not matching how you interpreted the text. For the most part this wasn't really a problem, but I did end up replaying Aphrodite's song a few times because it wasn't entirely clear which options were going in the direction I wanted to go based on how they were written. That being said, they do have the emotional indicator as well, which it turns out is generally pretty accurate.
p.p.p.p.p.s. Oh, and it also does the RPG thing of certain pieces of dialogue not really accounting for all possible paths through a conversation, so a character might reference some information you never actually told them, or say something that only makes sense if you went through the options in a different order. I mean, Larian this ain't so these are largely forgivable, but they do break the immersion a bit.
