Pyre (2017)

I think adding a difficulty setting in this game was a mistake. And I get the feeling that the Supergiant folks might have shared a similar sentiment because there are no easy/normal/hard settings in Hades.

Trust me and just play this game on hard. Why? Because the branching paths in the narrative mainly revolve around winning/losing Rites, especially Liberation Rites. The game design becomes even more impressive and the narrative feels more natural when real stakes are involved in the matches.

I played this game on the hard difficulty setting and lost about 50% of the Rites. I lost the first 3 or 4 Liberation Rites and... loved it! I mean, don't get me wrong; it was frustrating and heartbreaking to witness Hedwyn fail time after time. To see everyone upset about it. But then, when it clicked (and it clicked in a very particular moment of the storyline), I started winning—the satisfaction was immeasurable! I honestly don't remember when I was so proud of myself for beating a video game challenge. The tension and drama in the final Rites kept me on the edge of the seat. While the ending I received was bittersweet, I felt like I had earned it. I knew I had to earn it. My experience as a player matched the narrative tone so well!

Great game, even better than Hades in my personal opinion.

I got pyre because it looked interesting and i liked the character design. I then skimmed (I like to go blind into games) through reviews and most of them said it wasn't a great game and the weakest entry for the developer. So it sat untouched in my library for a long time since I didn't want to deal with a "mediocre" game. after several years i decided to give it a try and drop it if it didn't grab me in the first hour.

I was hooked in the first 5 minutes.

The game opens up with your standard player-having-amnesia trope, but that is okay, your character is simply a channel for the other ones to shine. Right off the bat you are introduced to three masked individuals that found you, and from their dialogue they are describing a really strange world and from there on I was hooked to know more about this.

The game flow is broken into two parts: Visual Novel and character interaction and then you have your matches. If you have played The banner saga you would be familiar with this flow, you have the Visual novel portion of things where you make decisions, talk to characters, move to the next area and then you usually have a battle right after.

The strongest point of the game is the story, is beautiful told, with amazing background music. The dialogue is all text while the characters use something like sounds like english but it isn't english but really adds to the atmosphere. Something that I really liked was that there is not a lot of exposition to bring the player up to speed with what is going on, you can highlight certain words on the dialogue to learn more about them, and this trend continues forward. For example, they talk about a character called Rukey, if you at any point forget who Rukey is, you can highlight the test and will you a remind of who or what Rukey is and have a picture to help yog your memory.

Then you have the actualy action matches that you play. In essence you play soccer trying to get an orb into the opponents "Pyre", it starts easy but then matches get more difficult and your roaster and "enemy" roaster starts to improve and get abilities that set each one apart. If you don't enjoy this gameplay then is probably not gonna change through the course of the game. On my side, I enjoyed it a lot, it was unique, fun, interesting and enough room to be creative to have a stimulating challenge.

Whether you win or lose the story moves on, you are never stuck, literally. The story changes depending on the outcome.

And that is where the secret sauce of this game comes together, it is such beautiful way the game marries its story with its gameplay that truly makes the game standout. Initially you think these matches are just there to make the game feel unique as a gimmick, but early on the game it is apparent that these soccer matches are so integral to the story, the goal of this matches tie so nicely with the story it is trying to tell and this strangely new world you have stepped into.

Now if there weren't enough, through out the whole game your ears are also filled with beautiful music. Each enemy faction has its own theme which are pretty fun to listen to.

The visuals are also gorgeous and they are filled with so much detail that brings this world alive.

The cast that you meet, friend or foe, are a varied bunch with great design and personality.

but there is one issue I have with the game, is that while you are playing it, you reach a section and some thing on the story implies that the game might be longer than what you signed up for. This gave me feeling of dread, because as much as I liked the game, I couldn't see myself playing the game for the amount of time it was implying.

Thankfully, things don't develop as you expect and the games is about 1/5th shorter than what you think it might be once you reach that point, which in my opinion is the perfect length.

Overall the game is beautifully crafted, tying narrative with gameplay in a way very few games can only dream of. Music and visuals are superb and the story is engaging and touching with fun and unique gameplay and innovative ideas that allow you to progress the game whether you win or lose a match.

I highly recommend this game but I suggest to come on a open mind, you are not going to be slaying goblins or fighting bosses. you are gonna to be playing soccer and chatting with your team between matches. But it is definitely a team you want to get to know and spend time with, and you will be sad once it is over.

As all Supergiant Games, Pyre looks and sounds amazing. Darren Korb's soundtrack is spot on as always and the art style beautiful as ever.

In a way, Pyre has the most innovative idea of all Supergiant games. The basic gameplay is a fantasy football sports game which can be played by various diffrent characters who all bring in very unique defense, attack and movement sets, and each their own background story and dialogue.

The wizard basketball is actually fun as hell, but problem is, you don't get to play it that much. If you're actually reading the story, you'll be actually playing the magician's magic hockey thingy only 10% of the time.

The rest of the time you'll be working your way through a wall of text. It's very unfortunate of Supergiant to have made this decision, especially when having already established the beautiful background narrator voice in Bastion and Transistor.

This helped them tell a story alongside while you play the game without you needing to stop playing in order to read. A brilliant idea that they picked up again in Hades, but for some reason didn't make use of in Pyre.

People will kill me for saying this but honestly, the only way to enjoy the game I found was to skip a lot of text away. It wasn't only the amount of text by the way, but also the not really convincing world building, that made the whole thing a problem.

Some characters are pretty cute and quirky though and I ended up saving all my actively chosen darlings, being left only with some worms and owls and I was like: These creatures's really all I am left with?!

Turned out Sir Gilman with his rapid movement fitted my playstyle perfectly and in the end I really loved that little sporty, flink worm-knight and his ethereal soccer capabilities. Due to his most honourable chivalry-ethos he offered me to be liberated instead of him at the end of the game and I almost cried, that was so cute!

So well, the character writing really was not that bad after all. But the writing was a weak point here. For further reference look at alphadoriest's review it's my favourite review on grouvee.

Steam Curator

It's been a long time since I've played a game whose elements come together as beautifully as Pyre's do.

The music, the story, the gameplay. They don't feel like disjointed pieces, but rather one singular entitiy that all move towards the game's vision.

Pyre is an arcade-style basketball like sports game, paired with a visual novel set in a fantasy RPG setting. It's weird, but in the right way.

For my full thoughts, check out the video review:

I don't need to elaborate on this ,everyone knows supergiant has stellar music, writing and art in their games.

The gameplay though has always been pretty hit or miss for me. Though I was initially intrigued with its VN - Oregon trail - Basketball combo , by the time the first in-game tournament was over I don't think I lost a single game and I was pretty bored. But then I changed the difficulty and what followed was a sublime experience and supergiant's best attempt at mixing unique gameplay with a compelling story(Better than Hades as far as I'm concerned ).

Surprisingly, the supergiant game with the least amount of "game" is the one I like the most.

I gotta say supergiant is a must play. Would recommend their games to just about anyone. I find picking up one of their titles to always be a pleasant and refreshing experience when looking for something a bit different.

Pyre is in many ways similar to their earlier titles. IT very much reminded me of Bastion in the general themes and subjects of the narrative. While it was a different story, it hinged upon some of the same concepts (such as justice) and felt every bit as inspired. I also don't think i've ever seen a game (or any media maybe) fixate and use a concept like ritual magic (which tends to be very weird, abstract and arcane) to illustrate some relatively very simple points regarding justice/injustice.

The only real flaw of this game is the game consists of battles which you essentially grind. The competition changes and has slight play variations (as well as levels up to become more challenging) but a full playthrough of the game runs a little long, and really stretched my appetite's capacity for that kind of gameplay. Still, I enjoyed t enough to explore and unlock everything I could, much more to an extent than I did either Bastion or Transistor. I'm tempted to go back to this someday and see what happens if you deliberately lose every match on person. You'd assume that would be a losing condition but, maybe it's not?

Don't tell me anything, lol!

Half visual novel - half basketball - all awesome. I think my high-opinion of this game is probably an outlier, because the gameplay systems are a bit muddied and clunky, but the story, characters, and art are so, so great. I cried several times.

I'm so curious about what the choice-tree looks like for this game. I would love to see a Quantic Dream-style flowchart system for it, just because there are a mind-boggling number of choices that can be made, and it's so hard to see the seams between them.

Pyre is Supergiant's most ambitious game yet, and for the most part that ambition pays off. The world is interesting, the gameplay is fun and has the usual built-in variety (and brings new meaning to the phrase "fantasy football"), and of course the mechanics and narrative are interwoven in the way only Supergiant seems to do. Ultimately, the story I was able to craft on my first play-through turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted, which is more than I can say for some other games that purport to let your choices affect the story. Oh, and of course Darren Korb's music fits in perfectly as always.

All that being said, there is, if you'll pardon the pun, a downside to the larger game. Not all of the world-building fragments are equally interesting, which makes reading through the increased mass of them occasionally quite dull. The gameplay, especially the travel, can get quite repetitive. The characters that make up the game's large cast are also not all equally charismatic—a couple, frankly, are just plain annoying. And some of Korb's lyrics are a little too specific to really be poetic. The overall effect of these faults, though, is relatively minor, and they can be chalked up to either a developer still learning the ropes of larger-scale game design, or maybe just the necessary trade-off of working on this scale.

In short, Pyre trades the short-and-sweet, tightly crafted feel of Supergiant's previous games for a more lush, expansive style, and while that creates an unevenness in quality, it doesn't feel frivolous or lazy. Though Transistor maintains its champion's belt (I mean, that ending...gets me every time), Pyre is certainly a worthy addition to the Supergiant pantheon, and I have no reason to doubt that their next game will be any less than great.

So... the disliked one.

I dislike sports. I think they're over-funded in the name of youth exercise, inherently repetitive and, for the most part, have rotten cultures. If the stakes were liberation from the underworld in a deity-deigned ancient rite, however, I might flip the channel from time to time. At least the involvement of the ancients probably cuts on costs somewhat.

Ah, robes, for optimal mobility

What is this blasted experiment that stole away that non-extant combat-centric Bastion and Transistor follow-up, then? It's sui generis sports á la ancient rite, baby! We've got a ball to grab, symmetrical courts you'll tour the land to play at, fire baskets to dunk or throw said ball into, players of defense and offense to eventually retire one by one in liberation rites, a mix of penalties and tackling in elimination of players from the court using offensive powers, league tables with playoffs for the final liberation match, little imp fans to impress, self-inflicted handicaps by the gods, and all the emotional turmoil of personal face-offs in friends, siblings and species you could desire. Supergiant has succeeded in whittling down sport to its very core precedents and concepts, including its veneration as a godly structure.

A health and safety nightmare

For people the likes of me who'd choose to rain down white phosphorus onto a football pitch if they'd had a bad day, this is the 'Harry Potter/Star Wars version of chess' version of a basketball-alike. Which is to say, it's thankfully got a violent streak in radial banishment and exchange of ranged phlegethon - now we're talking! It's that additional dimension of tactical pull and push wariness combined with extremely varied non-human players that is sufficiently UNLIKE actual sport that makes this bearable. It might seem off-piece to be comparing this directly to sports; this is a video game with the kind of magical wonderment that would demand crippling regulation, after all! It's important because of what it's not. I'd only play a sports game if someone threatened to expunge the world of Pyre, so it must be doing something right. What's more, it's as hard as you want it to be with the in-game handicaps you impose on yourself. If there were any issue with these, it's that they're too obviously an advantage to the opponents that you have to overcome, which can be dispiriting. I wouldn't shake the hand of an opponent I'd had half the pyre health of. Definition of a handicap, I know, but I wish there were another form of difficulty modifier. A more boring one for an idiot like me to not get querulous about.

Why would you want to escape from this?

On the flip side, we have the context, delivered in stunning fashion from the deliverers of the best-voiced narrators of yesteryears with... text and static representations of characters. It's a compromise of sorts. There's simply an unparalleled wealth of lore, dialogue backed by a free-movement/board travel system to boot. It wouldn't have been conceivable to treat the production as they traditionally have. In fact, it's written and presented in a way that's arguably preferable. Comic lines emanate out of characters to emphasise their emotional state and each character lets out a comforting mumble placeholder. The presentation is immaculate with the smallest details ingenious. Case in point, names and places can be hovered over for a wiki summary - giving rise to the question of why this wasn't invented alongside the wheel.

Speak for yourself, mate

Dialogue choices exist and can be as interesting as being quizzed on your concept of freedom, to moustaches - should they be purged from this world? Yes. These are intelligently backed up by the same hover summaries with a thought justification for each answer you can give. It's not much agency, but it's enough to connect and proceed to miss said characters when they're liberated. Choosing who's liberated IS, in fact, your main form of agency. A responsibility for which you're never pressured, threatened, nor bludgeoned round the head over. These sure are some amicable acceptors of their fates. Your selection of where you'll play and by extension whom you'll play against isn't quite as spellbinding. It plays into the league tables and determines who you'll face in the big league liberation rite, but... who cares - if you win. If you resist the urge to load, the game startlingly offers no fail state. In that case, who is liberated can have numerous effects on what happens topside. That's more like it. Most interesting, and flying in the veritable face of the game mechanically, you may feel it is your opponent who deserves liberation. THAT is a moral quandary with urgency and weight that propels the game around the sun and back it's so engaging.

Poor souls suffer from musical statue syndrome

Might be too long. Just a smidge. The game openly tells you its pace is about to hit terminal velocity and at that point, when you're spoilt for pace, you wish only to break the laws of classical physics, go faster and make it end. A sentiment shared by anyone reading this review.

Which is saying a lot because even before this they are pretty much my favorite game developer (yes, with only two games).

tl;dr: This game has the best presentation in the market, with great gameplay that may not appeal to all, and astonishing story with branching narrative that's done right that keeps giving you new things until the end

Let me start this by saying that this game is in no way for everybody. Which is fitting. Starting with Bastion, i'd have a talk with someone that if they said that they didn't like that game. With Transistor, i'll still have a talk but not as aggressively, because that game has some unique gameplay quirks. But this one, i won't even bother because i know where they're coming from.

Ok so let's start with teh a e s t h e t i c.

It's pretty much what you would expect from Supergiant beautiful, detailed and colorful visuals with mostly (in this case all) 2D. Unbelievably fluid animations with incredible attention to detail. Amazing music (a bit weaker than transistor but better than bastion imo). And excellent sound design.

Next, the gameplay. It's divided into two parts

The first is called 'The Rites' the main part of the game, which... I'll try to describe here, but it's best for you to just look at a video for it, because man, it's so different. It's pretty much a sports game for all intents and purposes. It's a 3v3 game where you try to take an orb to enemy's pyre to extinguish it. Yes, apparently this is the evolution of a studio that made action rpgs. At first you can only do these rites with the first 3 characters you were given, but later the roster go up to 9. All with surprisingly a lot of variety and different gameplay style and abilities. And as per usual with Supergiant games you can have modifier to make the game more difficult but in turn you'll get more xp (or enlightenment in this case). And all of this are given to you at an excellent phase so you will feel as i you are always given something new until the very end.

The second is the game in between the rites. You travel in this blackwagon with items in it that you can interact with including the book of rites which provides you with lore (lots of lore) and in these travels is where in the most part the story will be presented to you, speaking of which...

The story

It's amazing and certainly is my favorite part of the game. It's not necessarily the plot, but the rich and wonderful cast of characters that is very relatable and entertaining. And the fact that the story will continue no matter what, whether or not you succeed in the rites. This right here is the star of the show, which is unfortunate that it is the story because i won't be able to explain without spoiling it just a bit, so skip it if you wish to discover it entirely on your own.

BLOCKQUOTE SPOILER BLOCKQUOTE SPOILER 4 HOURS IN TO GAME

You are a bunch of exiles that are doing the rites to achieve freedom, they can do this by participating on the cycle of the rites and succeeding on the liberation rite at the end of every cycle. You are the one who decide who will go first with each rite. And each character have different relationship to other members of the group but also to different groups of enemies, so there'll be a lot of different possible dialogs and most importantly, endings.

SPOILER END SPOILER END SPOILER END

So, the storytelling is different than other Supergiant games, this game is now text based and a lot of different dialog outcomes based on how you play, it is all the more impactful with the amazing characters which make you really feel for it. it's branching narrative done right. even though i don't really mind the 'branching story' style of the mass effects and the telltales, this right here is certainly something i'll cherish.

Another thing about this game is that it keeps surprising you, both in the story and in the gameplay. You keep getting new stuff, i thought the game was about to end at the 6 hours mark and i would've loved it a lot, but it ended up being around 16 hours.

All in all, it's definitely up there with the list of my favorite games i ever played. And it furthermore solidify Supergiant games as my favorite game developer, and i'm definitely looking forward to whatever they does next.

Rating: 6/10

Oh geez, I'm the first review, and my opinion is pretty different than the critic reviews at the very least. I'll preface this by saying I adore Bastion and Transistor, though Transistor to a slightly lesser extent. I kind of expected to not like Pyre as much, but I didn't think it would be a dip quite this big.

Don't get me wrong, Pyre isn't a bad game. It's worth playing because it does showcase some of the Supergiant Games strengths; namely, excellent art work with expressive and world design. It truly feels like fantasy, from the types of characters you encounter to the areas you traverse. It's gorgeous, to put it simply.

Some people have commended the music, which is another Supergiant trademark. It didn't hit me like Transistor or Bastion did, but I guess it's pretty good. I'd probably have to give the soundtrack a few spins to see if it holds up.

Another element that is pure Supergiant is the fact that it's a pretty original game. They always have something relatively unique in their games, whether that's a sense of style or gameplay mechanics, and Pyre is no different. The originality is in the way it blends visual novel/The Banner Saga story aspects with a sport, kind of like Blitzball from FFX. When you aren't playing the sport you are listening to people talk and making decisions to decide where you go.

Where I have conflict is that I saw how influential you are, how much your decisions matter, how brilliant the story is... and I don't see it. The story bored me, which Supergiant never has before, and while some of the characters are neat, I wasn't compelled to see what happens next. The decision making was shallow; maybe years ago this would have been deep, but we've surpassed what this is offering. Now, I would generally argue that some branching story is better than none, but this is hardly innovative.

The sport itself is okay, but wears thin. It's quite fun the first bunch of times, but it's pretty basic. It's a good idea in theory, having a game of handball going on, but I found myself becoming less enthused as it went on. On normal difficulty--which is a completely valid difficulty to play and criticize--it's easy. The defense is that you can make it harder, but it is literally the normal difficulty, the one that games default to and are meant to be played in unless you want a huge challenge.

Pyre is just like vanilla Destiny was for me: a decent but half-baked game. It tries different things but doesn't commit to either fully, which lessens the experience. I'm aware I'm in a minority here if the reactions I've seen are any indication, but as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "so it goes."