Stories: The Path of Destinies (PC)

Stories: The Path of Destinies, from Spearhead Games, is an action-adventure game with a nicely sarcastic narrator, unique characters, a fast-paced combat system, and enough ways to get through the game to keep you coming back for more. The game is set up as if you are reading an adventure story about a swashbuckling fox name Reynardo – specifically, your own story. As you make major decisions between each chapter of the game, you go along new paths, learn new things, gathering goodies and leveling up all the way ... and then you die.

Story and Flow

However, that's just the beginning – at the end of each of over two dozen possible storylines, the game gives you a summary of the choices you made, the results of having made them, and then the pages of your storybook flip back to the beginning, where you start all over again, with all of your levels, items, and upgrades intact. You will also gain some crafting materials or bonus experience points. If you play your cards right, you will also learn a number of significant "Truths" along the way, and these stay with you in future playthroughs – the narration, dialogue, and possible decisions you are offered will vary based on your character's memory of what has gone before. For example, if you learn that a special item you collected in one run has a rather nasty downside, the narration will remind you to be more careful with it in the future, and you will even get extra bits of narration reminding you of the consequences of using it. In the end, you must unlock four different "Truths" in order to unlock the path to the final, true ending; thus, the game is beatable in under six hours, though experiencing all of the potential storylines can easily take you upwards of thirty hours.

Some stories might end up with you coming ever so close to your goal, only to take an arrow to the knee. Some mean the end of the world. Some find you all alone and mortally wounded as a dozen enemies slowly crowd in around you...and then the story begins again, until you get it right. There are even a small number of mid-mission choices that will result in an instant death, but these simply kick you back a bit in the level so that you can change your mind the next time.

Controls and Combat

Movement and attacking are controlled with the mouse: LMB to attack/interact, hold it to grab/release to throw; hold RMB to move (your character will always look towards the cursor, even without a button being held); CTRL/Shift/ALT for moves and powers that you have unlocked; mousewheel to swap swords. LMB+Sweep mouse towards an opponent to parry an incoming attack – You'll want to get this down ASAP, as you won't live long without this and the occasional dash. The movement method takes a little getting used to, but it quickly becomes second nature. Later upgrades will grant you abilities such as slowing down time when you parry at just the right time, or follow-up a melee strike just as your first hit strikes the target. All enemies clearly telegraph when they're about to attack you – it's up to you to do something about it. Maybe you'll parry and then rush in with a flurry of strikes – maybe you'll pull a foe in with your hookshot and beat the feathers off of him – maybe you'll just grab him and chuck him off of the nearest cliff, or toss him into a pack of his allies to knock them all back. It's all up to you.

Combat is fast-paced, with an emphasis on getting high combo numbers, and timing is very important. Fortunately, the game facilitates moving from one foe to another – just click on your new target and your character will zip over to them (the current enemy doesn't have to be dead yet). If there are no enemies on screen, click in the direction where you think they are hiding, and he'll haul tail over to them anyway. Clicking a downed enemy will result in a coup de grace, via a leaping stab, for an instant kill. All fights are handled in small, clearly-defined areas, with EXP awarded for kills, combo chains, style/variety, and whether you escaped unharmed once the current batch of enemies are all dead. Enemies tend to be aggressive enough that it should be possible to do one long combo chain to deal with any given fight, as long as you don't get hit or waste too much time.

Graphics

Cel-shaded goodness, minus the thick black lines sometimes associated with the technique. Camera view is often rather zoomed out when not in combat, but it pulls in closer when you are going toe-to-toe with a hulking black raven. It's not as fancy or as flashy as a Triple-A game (nor should it be), but the visuals suit the method of storytelling, and the adventure mode graphics mesh up with the stylized look of the still images in the framing storybook quite well. Plenty of places where you can see paths that you missed on the current run, as the entire playable world is made up of small, floating islands. As you are riding a floating platform up to a new ledge, you may see paths unexplored, doors and chests unopened, and more, fading out into the distance far below.