September Check In, Plague Tale Innocence

 

Plague Tale Innocence team

Not a lot of gaming in August or September.  I am feeling some envy of those playing World of Warcraft the War Within but not enough to pay full price.  I know the price will go down soon enough and there isn't anything I need to do early (though my guild doing some minimal group content is something I'll likely miss out on).  I was also interested to see the Civilization VII announcement.  I got enough hours from Civilization VI that I might go ahead and buy it on release.  It is one of the few games (with World of Warcraft) that I'd rather play on PC than PS5 or Switch.  I tried the Switch Civ VI and it felt awful.  I have played every Civilization game including Alpha Centauri so I'm confident I'll enjoy this version as well.  I'm not sure how much it'll push my Dell G7 with and NVidia 1650.  We talked about getting my daughter a computer, so it might be a reason to get an upgrade and give this to my daughter.  It is almost exactly 5 years old, but it is still doing pretty well.

I am very glad I was able to finish Plague Tale Innocence.  I thought the setting was very well done and I don't think I've seen any other games set in the Middle Ages like this one.  The mix of realism and magic was well done too and I liked the use of the rats in the gameplay and they were suitable creepy.

One minor quible was with the difficulty.  The length was great (it took me 21 game hours) and it seems like a game that one could very well Platinum but I'm not inclined.  The ability to make potions and upgrade your equipment reminded me of The Last of Us but, in order to make the game easier, I probably used more potions than better gamers.  Because of that, I didn't have some of the components that would have allowed me to upgrade my sling and I believe that led to one of the later levels to be significantly more difficult.  I'm ok with rewarding exploration (I would have done more if I had to do it over) but because of the overlap between potion and upgrade materials, it ends up punishing you for using potions which feels like making it easier for those who are good at the game.

Otherwise, I thought the difficulty was pretty good.  There were a few areas where I looked up hints (and was glad for the built in hint system) and a several levels I had to repeat a few times but nothing illogical or unfair.  I know it's an older game at this point, but I am glad I finally got around to playing it and the PS5 controls were very good.

Now, I have no idea what I'll play next.