Road Not Taken Reviews
Road Not Taken is an fun mix of puzzling and roguelike, but it doesn't have much staying power.
These reservations aside, Road Not Taken is fresh, interesting, beautifully presented and demonstrates an intricacy of design that will obsess a certain type of player. It's an acquired taste, though, despite its popular ingredients.
Rogue-like puzzling is a brave experiment, but the results can be frustrating
Road Not Taken treads an unconventional trail, and is mostly better for it.
It looks like a cute fairy tale, but this is a turn-based game that's thorny with challenge and packed with an incredible number of gameplay secrets.
When I first started playing Road Not Taken, I was completely enamored by its premise, style, and world. Slowly, bit by bit, I started having a little less fun as the levels progressed, as the game's initial intrigue wore off a little more. That's not to say it eventually becomes unplayable as I did enjoy the majority of the game, but make sure to bring extra patience along with you on this trip through the beaten path.
It has some interesting ideas, but Road Not Taken is too often both frustrating and confusing.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Despite its often infuriating difficulty, Road Not Taken is a fascinating journey where how you play it makes all the difference.
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.
Although punishingly difficult, Road Not Taken's charming graphics, engaging story and unique gameplay make it more than worth the pain.
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.
Road Not Taken is an insidiously clever randomly generated puzzle game that stumbles sometimes around awkward design.
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 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 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 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.