Pyre

Literally Supergiant's best game and I love everyone of their games

truly beautiful. i really hope supergiant returns to its rich original worldbuilding now that theyve seemed to crack the code on an addicting gameplay loop in hades i & ii <3 i want explore the downside and into the commonwealth so bad

I'm came to this as someone who loves sports and has no experience with other Supergiant Games...games, aside from a brief stint in Hades. However, their reputation proceeds them and is what ultimately brought me to this game. While I did have my issues with this game, I would ultimately strongly recommend this either to people who love visual novels and/or people who'd enjoy a non-traditional sports game (who can probably mash through or outright ignore many parts of the story). As someone who came for the sports, I really enjoyed this for the most part! I found the basic team based ball game style very fun, with a good amount of depth if you want it. There are a number of different classes of players who all have various pro's and con's, and I really enjoyed working with different pairings to find who worked best together. I also enjoyed how the game's story interacted with you decision making in the sports sections. Losing does not end the game, much like real sports you simply must pick yourself up and keep going. If you use a player too much, they will get tired and you may be forced to use unfamiliar combinations of players. And as the story progresses, you may even find yourself wanting to lose some matches on purpose given certain player's relationships to others. However, the story also became a bit of a drawback for me as well. As you progress, certain players will "retire". As this happens, I found myself missing some of my favorite characters or feeling like I was missing story beats because certain players were no longer present. As more and more players leave, I felt the more interesting interpersonal elements of the story became less and less present and the overarching story which I was less interested in became the focus. Towards the end, I found myself mashing through the story quickly in ways I wasn't in the first half of the game. However, I don't felt the game really over stayed its welcome at around 13 hours. It was kind of the perfect amount of time for me because just as I was getting a little tired of the game, the game was ending. I can see how this game might be divisive for some as if you are not into sports at all, I think the appeal here is limited. And there might be too much story (especially told through reading) for those just here for the sports. But for me, it does strike the balance between the too just well enough to hold my interest for the relatively short duration of the story. Despite the many many possible endings, I don't see myself replaying this one. But this one time going through was definitely one I will remember for a while.