Stories: The Path of Destinies Reviews
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.
The process of learning new things with each playthrough is rewarding, but the repetition takes away from the experience
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's like that easy beach reading book that you enjoyed for a few hours on holiday, and then put back on the shelf never to read again.
With its interesting fairy tale feel and engaging mix old and modern gameplay mechanics, Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a love letter to action role playing games of years past. The unique narrative style, the choices system and smooth battle system are quite engaging during the first playthroughs, but the limited amount of content eventually makes the game feel a little repetitive. Even with its issues, however, Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a game that's very well worth the time of action RPG fans.
Stories is a game that has a lot of heart. Sure, there are plenty of things in this game that I have seen before in some form or fashion, but it never stopped me from having a fantastic time with it. The look and stories that are told are fun and exciting to see play out, and the combat works just as well as the caped crusader's adventures.
Stories: The Path of Destinies is quite the compelling curio; a seemingly routine hack and slash affair at first, it soon elevates its calibre with some satisfying ARPG style action, entertaining writing and a wonderfully non-linear multi-faceted narrative. It's just a shame that a multitude of bugs and performance issues tarnish the experience.
Stories is the perfect game for a story explorer, but the inherent repetition of levels will be offputting to gamers less keen on replaying games.
We have to assume that Stories: The Path of Destinies just isn't optimised nearly as well as it should be on the PS4 – and that's an absolutely massive shame, because this is otherwise one of the most charming, original, and enjoyable indie titles available on the system. Branching storylines, cool combat, and rewarding RPG elements work in tandem to form a memorable adventure, but one that needlessly stumbles and falls over various technical issues. This certainly isn't the true ending that we were hoping for.
Bringing the game to Xbox comes with no real upgrades. Sure it supports 4K resolution, but it would have benefitted from HDR for sure. The colors in the world are so vibrant and varied. There is no additional content, but at least Xbox gamers can now discover this incredible title. Do not pass it up, do not sleep on this one, Stories is one of the best games I have played this generation, indie or not.
Solid action-RPG gameplay is elevated by the meta-puzzle that is the game's branching storylines. The entertaining trial and error of trying to find the one "good" ending channels Choose Your Own Adventure books, and lends itself to a story that you'll love playing again and again.
Stories: The Path of Destinies may not redefine the way we think about narrative choice in video games, but it doesn't have to: it's just damn good fun. The idea of playing a game repeatedly to experience all its branching paths may bring to mind unnecessary padding and repetition, but the developers at Spearhead Games clearly took the initiative to avoid that. Stories is a lot of fun to play through multiple times, thanks to some thoroughly smooth and enjoyable combat — even though it's snatched its main ideas from the jaws of the Batman: Arkham games — and great level layouts that let you explore new territory even on multiple return trips. From an aesthetic perspective, I really think a lot of players will dig the fairytale-inspired character design and colorful environments, which might help them overlook the occasional technical hiccups. Overall, this is one action-RPG fans won't want to miss.
Stories: The Path of Destinies offers an interesting narrative, unique plot progression system and often enjoyable gameplay. However, it's held back by unfortunate glitches and quite a bit of repetition.
No wonder the game leans so heavily on pop-culture references, as they help to distract from the relative emptiness of the game itself.