The Basics
Version Reviewed - Steam on Mac
Time Played - 17 Hours
Genre(s) - RPG, Sports-like, Visual Novel
Price - $22.79
Developer - Supergiant Games
Difficulty - Easy to Medium
Style of Graphics - Hand Drawn 2D Animation
Length - Around 7 hours a playthrough
Replayability - Very Repayable, many different outcomes to explore.
Where can you play - PS4, Steam (PC or MacOS)
The Plot, Characters and Story
Pyre is a unique story driven sports-like game. It functions somewhat like a visual novel game in how the core of the game is getting to know a host of characters, interacting with them, and then ultimately making choices that affect them directly and indirectly. In this game, your choices matter. Pyre is hard to explain, since it is so unique and artistic, but in short, Pyre is the story of criminals and outcasts of the society, that have been cast down into another land, and their attempts to earn the right to ascend back into society. You play a character called The Reader, who helps lead your team through the Rites (competitions with a ritual twist), and ultimately if you succeed, you will get to decide who will ascend, and who will stay behind. If you fail, it is permanent, and you have one less team member that can be saved/ascended.
The characters in Pyre are so endearing. I found myself deeply invested in them, and fighting tooth and nail for their ascension. Each was so unique, had their own personalities, pasts, quirks, character flaws and relationships with all of the other characters. It is so immersive and emotional.
Pyre's story and gameplay leads to perfect re-playability, your every choice matters so much that every playthrough would be so drastically different. I love it. I've only completed one playthrough, but I intend to do more to see what happens if I do things differently.
The Gameplay
Pyre's gameplay is that of a sports game. It has visual novel segments between Rites (the sports-like competition for enlightenment or ascension). It is a 3 vs. 3 tournaments, where you select three of your team members, all with very different talents and skills, and then they attempt, together, to extinguish the Pyre of the rival team. One of the big rules of the Rites is that you have to move as one, a.k.a you can only move one teammate at a time. Player have auras around them that banish the rival team members for a period of time, and these auras can be shot out in many ways depending on the character as a projectile/explosion. There is a ball that you must acquire, but when you hold if your character losses their aura and become more vulnerable. You must bring the ball into the rival's Pyre, you can also throw it in as well. These mechanics, as basic as they may sound, lead to high level of strategy and a very ranged difficulty.
I am not a sport game person, at all, but I LOVED Pyre's gameplay. I was so atmospheric, fun, and just the right amount of difficult. Shockingly fun.
The Aesthetics
I cannot praise the aesthetics of Pyre enough. The art is GORGEOUS, its colourful hand painted/drawn style is one of a kind, breath-taking and inspired. Each character design is unique, to the point where I have no comparisons to other media to describe them with. That is rare, especially in the games industry. The animations, as rare as they are, are fluid and nice to look at, and the still art portraits/backgrounds and items are just simply pretty. Any moment in the game could be a wallpaper or art piece on its own.
As for the sound design, an interesting choice to note is that even though the lines are somewhat voice acted, they are not voice acted in any real language. You do have to read everything yourself, but the chatter of the fake language of this world turned out to be actually quite immersing, and sounded like an actual language, which was impressive. And the voice actors had nice voices.
Last but definitely not least is the music. The music is stunning. Ethereal, with some medieval cathedral sounds, and the rare vocals sprinkled in, that just harmonize in a magical way. To give you a taste of this I have attached a song Never to Return, for you to sample to beautiful sounds of Pyre, it is one of my personal favourites.
This game itself is a piece of art.
Final Review
My overall impression of Pyre is that it is a piece of art. It is an artistic feat, with an emotional core, that has genuinely fun gameplay. Pyre is a woefully under-appreciated game, and deserves so much more love then it currently gets. I recommend this game to everyone, it appeals to the artistic and the competitive alike. It is fun and emotional.
For its price of 22.79$ it is a fair price, keeping in mind it had a lot of replay value, and even one run is 7-ish hours of emotional fun. Pyre deserves the following rating:
Overall Rating
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