Stories: The Path of Destinies

Stories is one of those games, not brilliant, and not revolutionary, but bursting with a certain type of heart that makes you give it a chance to reach its natural conclusion. The game's premise of an unwitting hero, Reynaldo the fox, caught in a time loop, trying to navigate his way to a happy ending while avoiding the choices that lead him to a grim, tragic, or sometimes hilarious demise, is a fun one brought to life by a Douglas Adam's-like narrator. The game has many paths to its final outcome (over 20), but in truth, you'll tap out the gameplay and enemy variety around the time you should have figured out the correct decisions (about 5 or 6 loops) at which point the game will come to its natural conclusion. Played just to reach the end, the game is a fun little diversion lasting three to four hours, but other than some more of those warm fuzzy narrations, I doubt there's much for the true completionist to finish any extra paths.

This game takes quite an innovative pick on the ARPG Genre. To wrap this game up short: the story is told in an interactive novel style, which means you run through a rather short story progression making choices that lead up to 24 different endings. Therefor the story of course changes as well, everytime you reach an end you unlock a new secret that allows you to go up the skill board. You are then send back to the first point where you could pick a new way and go through it again to unlock all the secrets behind the war that is thought in this game. So first I think we should name the weaknesses of this game: - it does have slow downs from time to time so the developers have to iron out some bad code here - each sub story is relatively short - the environment is rather dead So now with that out of the way the strong points of this game: - the battle system is ace, I wish other ARPG had such a well done fighting mechanic it is fast and the controlls are top nodge - everytime you go through a story new enemies appear to keep the variety since each enemy has different ways of defeating it - the characters are extremely cool - the artwork and the design of the whole game can only be described as beautiful, the atmopshere is great - the story keeps you on your feet, you really want to unlock all different sub paths to figure out how things may end for the better - the skill system is not bound to primitive grinding, there is only so much you can do and in order to get more exp per battle you have to perform longer combos, how do you that? By not getting hit so the better you become in actually using the battle mechanics the easier it'll be for you - Sword upgrades and gem upgrade system is great, the further you get and the more you unlock the more you can alter about your character and your abilities - the music is pretty awesome, well done. Everytime you run through a story you feel rewarded. For the bargain price of 14€ this game can only be a recommendation.

Pleasant surprise. I love how multiple endings are not actually endings but are all part of the same (kinda linear) story. Very entertaining. + story and writing. Just seeing all the hilarious ways in which you fail is great :) + lovely art style + combat is simple but fun - little variety in levels, they all repeat constantly - no enemy variety - world and characters could have been more fleshed out - even with all endings still too short Overall 7/10 really fun and unique game to kill one or two afternoons

Storie is a good game. It's well worth its price, albeit suffering some minor problems. + Nice story that unfolds like a tale, peppered with hints of humor that never feels forced. + Including a narrator is a really nice touch. + Enchanting graphics and nice art direction. + Combat system is simple and feels rewarding. - Some texture loading bugs at very specific places. - Beating the game several time at the core of the experience, which can feel a bit repetitive, even though the story always differ. Didn't bother me that much, since the game is a short experience (6h~ to unlock the good ending, and then 15h if you want to max everything out.

This is a game you play for the narrative. The gameplay is just there so you can call it a video game instead of an interactive novel. Since I play games for the storyline anyway, this game is just perfect! Let me reiterate this: DO NOT get this game for gameplay. The fighting, such as it is, is repetitive. With the Dash skill alone you can beat every battle, and there are no boss battles at all. Again, NO BOSS BATTLES! I beat the whole game with no effort at all. And that's alright, because this game is not supposed to be a challenge. This game is supposed to tell a story, and tell it in a very good (and quite amusing) way. If you play this game for the story, you will love it. Each time you start the story you have choices to make. Each choice determines what your future choices will be and each series of choices determines how you will end the story. Usually you will die, horribly and gruesomely. But the magic book will always take you back to the beginning, with new knowledge that you will use to make better choices next time. Or... maybe not. Maybe you will make a different bad choice, knowing full well it's a bad choice, just to see what happens. I did that a few times before I finally took the right path. Enjoy the story. You might find yourself replaying it just to find out more of the story, or what might have happened if...