Road Not Taken Reviews
Road Not Taken might not have too much in common with the Frost-written poem with which it shares a name, but it does manage to deliver a meditation on the value of choices and the importance of making the right ones, while also offering the player a complex layer of actual game mechanics to explore.
Road Not Taken is a game that deserves a place in your collection as despite taking cues from two popular genres, there is nothing like it on consoles. It is a game that will take over your time, but one that you can also just pick up and play between other games. Spry Fox have a spectacular hit on their hands.
It's amazing how sometimes the simplest of puzzle ideas can turn chaotically complex. Road Not Taken is definitely one of these games; don't let its cutesy art style fool you in the slightest. Or the raccoons. Pro tip: you see a raccoon, find a way to build a fire and make raccoon soup as fast as you can.
Road Not Taken is an interesting little game. It's tough and sometimes even unforgiving, and I should add that it's not entirely stable. I came across several bugs in the game and it crashed on me twice, so that should be mentioned.
But that isn't the problem with the puzzler, however; difficulty in and of itself is not criticism. Though the beasties change – and the increased difficulty with each round will definitely get you thinking – the game itself never does. Its art style, tone and unique gameplay all make for a fascinating experience that you should certainly give a try, but it's hard to ignore the sense of repetition you'll encounter as you play. Randomly generated puzzles results in increased replayability, but it also means a lack of variety – and that forms the ultimate demise of Road Not Taken when it is so clear there is a direction, an end goal, a climax. Original and novel it is, but there just simply isn't enough reward to keep you going against the odds.
The game's underlying dialogue and storyline is engagingly downbeat and adult.
Road Not Taken is a decidedly "okay" experience, as its strategic gameplay is fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. Matching puzzles and roguelike mechanics make for an annoying combination, as the core gameplay isn't exciting enough to bring players back for more.
Road Not Taken might not always be successful in making players feel remorseful for paths avoided, but the game itself stands as one journey that at least everyone should attempt; if only to expose themselves to the game's frustrating, yet undeniably fresh idiosyncrasies.
Road Not Taken is a game that you should not take lightly. It is a challenging puzzle game with big cuddly scary teddy bears, little white rabbits and scary Witches. It is hours of fun and frustration. Thanks to the shrines, you are able to stop at any point and come back later to pick up where you left off.
Road Not Taken proved to be a very unique game for its genre, or genres actually. The interesting marriage of what could feel like a mobile title, with the punishing difficulty and creative narrative of a console indie makes Road Not Taken a great game to have in your PS4 library. Also, in the Book of Secrets, this is the note under goat says "Goats eat flowers and then poop. Why? Because they are goats. Stop trying to change the world," and how can you go wrong with that?
Road Not Taken is an insidiously clever randomly generated puzzle game that stumbles sometimes around awkward design.
Road Not Taken has all the enjoyable staples of a Roguelike game and presents them well. The built-in replay value is high, and the variables of villagers, charms, banned obstacles, and the woods themselves ensure a different game every time you play. More than once I found myself stuck without the energy to go on, and even knowing that I could start again, I was annoyed to be losing my progress so often. A checkpoint system in the form of an altar helps this problem, for which I was very grateful.
Although punishingly difficult, Road Not Taken's charming graphics, engaging story and unique gameplay make it more than worth the pain.
The entire game just boils down to pairing together items to save children. The narrative aspect of Road Not Taken is surprisingly thoughtful for its style of gameplay, but there isn't much to keep players engaged, nor is there any kind of incentive to keep playing after Year 15. On top of this, the game-stopping glitches we encountered should not have been an issue for a game this light on the PS4 hardware. Nevertheless, Road Not Taken is still a solid, if unspectacular puzzler on its own.
Despite its often infuriating difficulty, Road Not Taken is a fascinating journey where how you play it makes all the difference.
The combination of the small decisions and details that go into tackling each level, alongside the grander themes of opportunities gained and lost, is a quality that makes Road Not Taken a cut above most puzzle games.
As this is an indie title closely aligned with Sony's PlayStation Plus programme, Road Not Taken has its work cut out right from the very start of its arduous journey. Taken on its own merits, however, it offers an enjoyable ride for the five to ten hours that it lasts. Niggling performance issues aside, it's hard not to enjoy being the star of your very own fairy tale world – even if that fictional realm has a particularly odd approach to infant safety.
So in the end, Road Not Taken is a very charming and entertaining puzzler, with a deeper mystery behind it yet to be solved. I will definitely be traveling this road more than once, and you should too!
It's unquestionably smart, almost intolerably cute, and splendidly novel. I'm not quite convinced the balancing is right, and think the levels become too cluttered, too quickly. But it remains completely lovely to play despite it.
It has some interesting ideas, but Road Not Taken is too often both frustrating and confusing.