{"id":7327,"date":"2017-01-26T15:02:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T20:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/?p=7327"},"modified":"2017-02-04T01:29:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-04T06:29:04","slug":"stories-the-path-of-destines-ps4-game-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/2017\/01\/26\/stories-the-path-of-destines-ps4-game-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories: The Path of Destines – PS4 Game Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

With possibly a candidate for the “most boring game title”, the gameplay is rich and diverse. What story arc will you<\/em> choose?<\/p>\n

Title: Stories: The Path of Destines
\nESRB Rating: E10
\nDeveloper: Spearhead Games
\nPublisher: Spearhead Games
\nPrice Tag: $14.99
\nRelease Date: April 12th, 2016
\nGame Engine: Unreal Engine
\nAvailable for these other systems: Windows
\nNumber of Players: Single
\nGenre: Top-down Action RPG<\/p>\n

Game Features: Not one game session is the same as the last one in this multiple story arc, heavily-narrated nonlinear top-down RPG(that’s rumored to be similar to . <\/em>Play as Reynardo, one of the rebel fighters trying to find a game changer to help defeat the corrupted frog Emperor and his Raven army.
\nWill he succeed in his quest and bring peace to the lands? Only the player can guide him in 24 possible endings. Try to find the good one amongst all the bad ones. And if you fail, you can start from the beginning.
\nThere are special doors that can only be opened with a specific type of sword.<\/p>\n

Story: This story, and multiple stories, is about the adventures of Reynardo, one of the rebel fighters of the corrupted frog Emperor taken over by the Imperial Raven Army. As said before, there are 24 endings to this game, and many..MANY ways to play it. After reaching the ending, the narrator tells the player what they did wrong and what they did right.
\nAnd the story goes back to the beginning, however the player keeps their spells and abilities from the last story.<\/p>\n

Main Character: Reynardo, the fox. Intelligent, brave, and quite skilled in melee combat against multiple opponents. He was once an infamous thief who plundered the Floating Isles, but his dying mother managed to convince him in changing his ways instead of being executed for his crimes.
\nMeanwhile, the once good frog Emperor had gone corrupted for some reason (due to the Imperial Raven Army). The Ravens wanted to steal powerful books from a library, but when they refused, the librarians were burned.
\nAnd now ‘The Kid’ has one of these books and wants to join the rebels. Reynardo’s mother asked him to protect the kid (yet never mentioned about the book for some odd reason). And he promised he would.<\/p>\n

Side Characters: “The Kid”, a young yet stubborn rabbit in possession of one of the books of power. Reynardo swore to his mother that he would protect him, yet never mentioned the book was powerful (I assume to keep him to go back to his thieving ways).<\/p>\n

Enemies: The Ravens, working for the corrupted Emperor. They start off as melee soldiers, and then you have Warlocks, explosive ravens, and ravens with shields. The only way to defeat them is with a sword (or by throwing them off a ledge, as they lost their ability to fly… because “reasons”).
\nHowever, they have the ability to teleport into a specific part of the level to ambush the player, forcing them into combat until all enemies are defeated.<\/p>\n

Combat\/Health System: Reynardo mainly uses melee attacks against his enemies, starting with a basic sword and upgrading to a ‘Hero Sword’. Other magical-based swords are unlocked by looting blue-colored chests and gathering enough resources. The player can also collect Gems to socket to Reynardo’s gauntlet(up to three). Yet at this time I don’t know where the player can find them. I assume the bigger chests.
\nThe player can gather up combo points, and countering when required. After all enemies are dead, how the player did in battle is tallied up in points, with an additional 300 “Perfect” points if the player isn’t hit during combat.
\nReynardo can also re-learn his old training by vising shrines to unlock talents.
\n.
\nHealing works by breaking open boxes, vases and other breakables to collect 20 health. Though all breakables are RNG-based, even including some Ore to make the swords. Later on, the Hero Sword has an ability to heal the player as long as a certain button is pressed. The power for this ability will not recharge and can also be found in these breakables.
\nAs of this time, the only death penalty I see is the player has to restart any combat areas they haven’t done, all over again.<\/p>\n

Maps\/Levels\/Chapters: Every level has multiple paths that lead to their own sections. There’s no way to explore every area of a level because of this restrictive level design.<\/p>\n

.
\nWhat I liked;
\n-The game’s playstyle can change at an instant via a ‘game changer’; multiple choice routes. So no two games are the same.
\n-Some of the narrator’s jokes are pretty good. Others, not so much. Just adds a bit of life to the game.
\n-Every level can be revisited to access doors the player was able to before (by not having the required sword).<\/p>\n

What I didn’t like;
\n-Ridiculously long loading times at the start.
\n-The player cannot jump. I thought we were done with this kind of gameplay in the 80’s.
\n-Restricted level design (cannot revisit sections of a level via these magical moving platforms, after the player has used them).
\n-I managed to get myself stuck in the ground once, with no way to get out…<\/p>\n

Final Opinions\/Thoughts;
\nI must say, this is a pretty good game. Though my initial reactions were negative with a very long (20 second) loading time, the rest were about close to 10 seconds which isn’t too bad.
\nThe narrator fits with the overall story, and so do the drawed-in graphics (which I find a nice touch). The characters were well-made and their voice acting and dialog is pretty good.<\/p>\n

The only main thing I disliked was that the player cannot go back to previously explored areas (without completing the story and then possibly re-doing it and then taking another path). This to me feels like the developers hoped the player will play long enough to explore everything (aka replayability).<\/p>\n

The combat system is easy to get used to and master (just counter everytime you see one of the enemies with a ‘!’ above their head).
\nOverall, I do enjoy the backstory was explained well enough to get why the main protagonist was doing before the main game. I feel the developers did a great job here, and I recommend the game to anyone wanting to fill that multiple-choice playthrough itch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With possibly a candidate for the “most boring game title”, the gameplay is rich and diverse. What story arc will you choose? Title: Stories: The Path of Destines ESRB Rating: E10 Developer: Spearhead Games Publisher: Spearhead Games Price Tag: $14.99 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7327"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7361,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions\/7361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benies-blogs.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}