Stories: The Path of Destinies Reviews
Spearhead Games' Stories: The Path of Destinies is a fascinating jaunt through a more mature fairy tale setting that blends serviceable gameplay with remarkable wit.
Stories: The Path of Destinies mixes looping narratives, engaging brawler combat, and beautiful scenery to create a compelling indie adventure that should not be overlooked. Not wholly without fault, but even in the imperfections it's easy to find a lot to love in Stories.
Most of Stories: The Path of Destinies is hinged upon the idea of discovering the best possible outcomes of its story, no matter how nonsensical it may be at first. It's a clever way to build a narrative, because it's built around the assumption one will fail multiple times while still retaining useful knowledge to apply in a different run.
Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a charming and colourful game that is well presented with good narration. The number of paths that can be taken allow for a lot of replayability, and there's some well crafted combat. However, there comes a point where the game does become repetitive, which can make drumming up motivation to unlock all the stories tough. Even so, Stories: The Path Of Destinies is worth going through a few times, even if you don't want to go through all 25 paths.
Despite some repetition and a handful of weird glitches, it'd be hard for me not to recommend Stories: The Path of Destinies. The "Goosebumps" kid in me was just too excited to have branching narratives from a developer that had fun with the concept instead of using it as another box to check in its marketing plans. I'd gladly return to this wonderfully weird world, but if there is a next chapter, I hope that there's more to see.
It's often said that, as a medium, video games suck at storytelling. Stories feels like it's trying something rewardingly different, to do more than just ape the linear style of a summer blockbuster movie. It's embracing tried-and-true hallmarks of action game design and weaving them around interactive fiction elements. The result is both familiar and fresh.
The process of learning new things with each playthrough is rewarding, but the repetition takes away from the experience
An inspired mix of Groundhog Day and Choose Your Own Adventure style decision making, combined with a half-broken action role-player of considerably lesser interest.