The Plucky Squire review – the best-looking video game of 2024

Devolver Digital’s gorgeous caller indie merchandise is virtually a storybook adventure, with homages to The Legend Of Zelda and more.

It’s a occupation arsenic aged arsenic video games themselves: a caller rubric is visually amazing, with a antecedently unseen modular of graphics, and yet it doesn’t play anyplace adjacent arsenic bully arsenic it looks. Most commonly these are games striving for photorealism, but not always. The aforesaid inequality of qualities tin besides use to much cartoonish creation styles and portion The Plucky Squire looks astonishing it surely doesn’t play that way.

What’s truthful frustrating astir The Plucky Squire’s faults is that the crippled does not endure from a deficiency of ambition oregon imagination, oregon adjacent a preoccupation with its presentation. There are galore clever and astonishing gameplay elements and portion astir are borrowed from different games immoderate are genuinely unique. The occupation is that a batch of them conscionable aren’t overmuch fun.

The main gimmick is that the crippled starts with the titular plucky squire (real sanction Jot) moving astir and warring successful a 2D world, precise overmuch similar the archetypal The Legend Of Zelda. He’s successful a literal storybook, to the constituent wherever you tin spot the edges of the pages and the table it’s placed on. As the communicative progresses it becomes wide the evil wizard of the communicative has realised he’s successful a publication and banishes Jot to the existent satellite – wherever helium abruptly becomes a 3D character.

The visuals utilized to represent each this are amazing, not conscionable successful the consciousness that the real-world sections look precise realistic but that the wide presumption consistently goes supra and beyond to support reinventing itself and presenting unexpected details and diversions.

From the creator municipality populated by everyone from Andy Warhol to René Magritte, to galore mini-games riffing connected everything from Punch-Out!! to Crypt Of The Necrodancer, The Plucky Squire is simply a clever and imaginative game, that it’s intolerable to deliberation thing sick of successful the opening hours.

It doesn’t instrumentality agelong until the cracks commencement showing though, successful portion due to the fact that the combat successful 2D Zelda games is precise simplistic and this does thing to compensate for that, with immoderate precise rote and unexciting warring that is nary much breathtaking oregon analyzable erstwhile you’re doing it successful 3D (albeit from a fixed camera perspective).

The communicative besides ne'er goes anywhere, and we were reminded of Bayonetta Origins, arsenic the household affable storytelling feels similar it’s gathering towards a tonal displacement but ne'er gets there. The publication is fine, and determination are a fewer bully jokes, but lone a few. For astir of the clip the crippled plods on successful a workmanlike manner, simply getting you from constituent A to B. It besides wastes the beingness of Jot’s 2 puerility friends, who are often pursuing him astir but ne'er bash oregon accidental thing interesting.

A signifier soon emerges, wherever you question to a caller country connected the representation and transportation on successful the 2D satellite earlier being ejected retired into the existent world, to retrieve a indispensable item. These objects dilatory adhd to your repertoire, arsenic you’re capable to not lone leap successful and retired of the publication but besides crook its pages; assistance them up, successful bid to descent objects up and down; oregon adjacent the publication completely, to determination an entity from 1 leafage to another. This is successful summation to much Zelda-esque abilities, specified arsenic being capable to frost objects oregon usage bombs to stroke up walls.

The puzzles making usage of these abilities are mildly clever but since everything takes spot crossed lone a maximum of 2 pages they ne'er get precise complicated. More importantly, they’re of the benignant of puzzle wherever you precise rapidly realise what you’re expected to bash but the existent process of doing it is often long-winded and uninteresting. Some of the puzzles are a existent slog to get through, arsenic you travel successful and retired of the publication astatine antithetic points, going done the motions of a occupation you solved immoderate clip ago.

This is peculiarly existent of a recurring puzzle constituent seemingly inspired by Baba Is You, wherever you tin swap 1 connection successful the assorted sentences that look connected the storybook page. For example, taking the connection ‘huge’ retired of 1 condemnation and replacing it with ‘tiny’ from different one, sees a elephantine sleeping bug shrink down into a miniscule one. That’s clever successful mentation but you person to laboriously determination the words astir manually, sometimes by entering and leaving the publication astatine antithetic points, which ever seems to instrumentality acold excessively long.

There’s immoderate airy platforming but the handling successful 2D is awful, with Jot proving to beryllium perfectly frictionless and jumping truthful precocious successful the aerial helium seems astir wholly weightless. We conjecture that’s expected to beryllium a reflection that he’s conscionable a drawing, arsenic the controls and physics are overmuch much mean successful the 3D sections.

There’s besides the occasional spot of stealth but nary of it has immoderate extent to it and everything is conscionable a bit… boring. It’s not truthful dull that it’s going to person you snoring connected the sofa but arsenic it’s ne'er arsenic engaging arsenic you consciousness it should be, adjacent successful the rapidly reached finale.

In presumption of presumption The Plucky Squire is astir without criticism. There’s immoderate somewhat distracting texture pop-in with the 3D sections but different than that this is simply a adjacent cleanable ocular experience. From the stylish interstitials to the idyllic presumption retired the real-world window, of the child’s chamber the publication is in, the crippled looks perfectly stunning.

Unfortunately, arsenic flawless arsenic the presumption archetypal seems determination are immoderate superior bugs astatine launch. We experienced hard crashes and the camera getting stuck, forcing america to reload, but astir unforgivably we got halfway done the crippled earlier we realised we couldn’t proceed due to the fact that the indispensable entity had disappeared from the crippled world. The crippled doesn’t let for manual saves, and the car ones lone spell backmost a fewer minutes, truthful we had nary enactment but to commencement the full happening again (so apologies if this reappraisal is late).

We’ve tried not to fto that calamity power the reappraisal but the spread betwixt what the crippled is presenting itself arsenic and the world of playing it was evident agelong earlier then. Like galore a storybook, The Plucky Squire is astonishing to look at, with gorgeous illustrations and absorbing ideas, but successful the metaphorical consciousness astatine least, this is nary page-turner.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £24.99*
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: All Possible Futures
Release Date: 17th September 2024
Age Rating: 7

*Free connected PS Plus Extra and Premium

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