izigame.me

Ok, let's start with the good stuff.
The game is gorgeous. Both the 2d and 3d phases are really immersive, you really get the feeling that you're in a book version of The Legend of Zelda ambient-wise, and Sam's desk really holds so much soul it's impressive. Big shoutout to the artists, their work on this is amazing. The concept of going from 2D to 3D is really well exploited on this side, and the visuals live up to the expectations.
I found the mage quite funny as well ; he looks like he's out of this world, his contrast with the world he lives in is well done and expressed (shoutout to his music taste!)
Now with that being said, I have a lot of problems with this game. I had been expecting it for quite some time. I had been sold a mind blowing adventure playing between different mediums and supports, with a large variety of gameplay, some kind of It Takes Two experience.
First off, the gameplay isn't very new ; as we say in French, it doesn't break the 3 legs of a duck. What I mean is for the approximately 2 hours I played, I didn't experience anything different from any other top-down adventure game. The infiltration during the 3D phase was clunky in my opinion ; I restarted 10 times the sequence where you have to walk over a bridge above the beetles, just because I couldn't see where I would land at the end of it ; in the worst case scenario the challenges aren't difficult, just annoying. The bug boss for instance wasn't hard ; the bow gameplay is the same as in the sequence from 5 minutes ago, it's as boring as before, to the exception that the whole body of the bug isn't where you must aim : you have to reach SPECIFICALLY for the eyes. I might have missed the memo ; but I had to die once with the frustration of aiming on the boss and not touching him or dealing any damage, before I understood that I had to go for the eyes. The mosquitoes that he throws are too fast and too close to each other for you to snipe them when the boss throws them ; your target has to go back and forth from the boss to your character, to try and get them before they get you (which they often did). You are encouraged to aim for the longest possible time so that you deal optimal damage, but nothing actually tells you that hey, you don't need to do that for the trash mob, any 0.1 second charged arrow will do.
It's not the case for all of the challenges, thanks god, but when they aren't annoying they are just very easy.
The puzzles as well are not very challenging ; the only time I got stuck was when there was a whole mechanic I did not know existed ("oooooooh so I can do that ??? but how would've I known ?"). The game is awfully linear, and it's a shame in my opinion the 2D-to-3D twist wasn't exploited for more than "go get this 2 pages ago and get it 2 pages forward"; there is no room for any type of creativity for the puzzles. I almost always immediately understood what the game wanted from me, and all I had left to do was the execution (the only exception being the broken bridge with the frogs sleeping at night ; this one got me stuck for 2 minutes. It was quite good, but imo it should be the low/standard challenge for the puzzles, instead of being the hardest one I encountered). The use of words to impact gameplay could've left so much room for creativity as well ; you could have a dozen of different words, each of which impact the game in some way, and up to you to figure out how to solve the puzzle ; but most of the time there are 2 to 3 words you can move, the solution is to intervert them, and tadaaaaa - moving on to the next page ; the average use of the words being "switch a door from Closed to Open".
The narrative rythm is quite slow, which isn't in itself an issue, it's nice sometimes to take your time and enjoy a story being delivered slowly instead of just skipping through every dialogue ; but I perceived every interaction with any NPC as a waste of time. Here it's not "Show don't tell", it's Show AND Tell. "Oh you need a long range weapon" *the camera moves to show a playing card with an archer on it* > ok, I get it, I must reach the archer. I understood : it's a pretty common structure, I'm being shown the point I must reach, so obviously I'll go there. But just to be sure, let's have the worm interrupt me to tell me "Hey, you should get that bow and arrow over there, shouldn't you ?" I didn't find the dialogues to be very well written as well ; they state a lot of obvious things that were already implied (like the example just before), and use the same cliché lines you've already heard thousands of times. I found the two sidekicks to be useless as hell, they don't help, I didn't find them funny ; they just follow you around, interrupt you from times to times and desperately try to catch a smile from you.

To conclude : I'd say the game is overall more of an aesthetic experience. Play it for the immersion, for the -once again- STUNNING visuals, but don't play it for the gameplay as such ; it's really been disappointing for me. In the end I think there was a lot of passion and hard work behind this project nevertheless ; making videogames is hard, especially today, and nothing comes easy ; it's also always easier to criticize than to make, and I would be far from achieving anything as impressive as this (even gameplay-wise). *I also figured out that I probably wasn't the target audience* ; I really wanted to love this game, but I think it's just not a game for me. If you have kids and want to play a relaxing, fun, immersive experience with them - go for it ! This is in any case and regardless of what I've been saying above better than a lot of kids-targeted games.

I won't put a thumbs down, because I want to acknowledge the work of the devs and artists, and a lot of people seem to love the game ; good for them, good for the team !
I just want to warn potential players, so that you don't get caught by marketing and overhype as I've been : this isn't the game of the decade, don't play it for some revolutionary gameplay ; but it's an above average fun little story.

Everything The Plucky Squire tries, it tries successfully. Whether in or out of the storybook, every moment of this game is a delight.
Inside the book is a top down 2-d Zelda clone with the gimmicks of changing nouns and adjectives to shape objects, as well as tilting and stamping the book itself to solve puzzles. It all comes together wonderfully and the controls feel really good.
Outside the book the game adds a little more (but admittedly not as much as I thought) platforming into the mix, and takes a page from Mario odyssey and A Link Between worlds, wall mechanics to meld into the pages of anything hand drawn to progress. I genuinely loved when the game told me I needed to leave the book and find an item, because whatever shape the desk you explore took was exciting. Jetpacking in a space themed desk or scaling a dinosaurs tail in a Jurassic one, really it’s tough to decide which form of gameplay is the best.
Between both sections there’s also a lot of gameplay diversity in some fun mini games. Punch out, puzzle bobble and even rhythm heaven, these moments are really great and none really stink (though I had a controller issue with one or two)
All of this is packaged in one of the most appealing art styles I’ve played through in a long while. The storybook just looks so freaking good. Outside the book doesn’t slouch either, with life size objects reminding me of finding objects in Pikmin. Style can go a long way to boosting a games quality and Plucky Squire doesn’t let you down
…where it DOES let me down is the length. This game took me 6 hours and at a $30 price tag, I’m prepared to say that feels a bit steep. The game is mostly a straight shot of linear game design (also very easy I should mention) with the only bonus objective being finding concept art and glitch birds. Miss any and you gotta use chapter select to go back and look. Even with this though, I feel like there should be more game here. One could make the argument that if that happened, the game could end up feeling bloated as a result but considering things stay the same level of quality throughout, I think a few more hours could have worked.
After all, of the games 9 chapters, only 5 of them feel like full length levels. The other 4 are actual minutes each which can lead to some really weird pacing problems. If every chapter was an equal length I’d think to call the experience complete.
Of course if the only argument I have for the game is in its length (and admittedly a few bugs and lag spikes) then clearly the journey with Jot and friends is worth taking. A wholesome family friendly experience that succeeds at what it set out to do. Current game of the year (but UFO 50 drops tomorrow and Zelda Echoes of Wisdom next week so…we’ll see how long that lasts)
(This review is a copy of my review from backloggd.com)

TL;DR --> The Plucky Squire was less of a main character than I wished.
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Well, this was... more underwhelming that I expected. But maybe I expected a bit too much.
The Plucky Squire (TPS) is exactly as you see on screens and trailers: you take control of the main character of a fictional kid's storybook who eventually gains the ability to leave the book's reality and also progress his adventures in the "real world", in a beautiful 3D. The game features 10 chapters with a Zelda-ish system of both combat and puzzle-solving, and during them you also will do some minigames that are basically throwbacks from classic games.
While the premise is very good, and the artstyle is absolutely gorgeous, this is pretty much where it ends for me.
By the time this review is made, the game is worrisomely buggy (and I will update my review if this ever changes). Not only game-breaking sequence happen (at some point my characters were DUPLICATED on a screen, causing all sorts of weird stuff happening), but also full game crashes. Moreover, for whatever reason, replaying a chapter from the Chapter Replay option doesn't allow you to save, and it is like this BY DESIGN since a prompt box appears telling you that before you jump into a chapter. I honestly don't know how this felt okay to anybody.
Aside from technical issues, my absolute biggest problem with the game is that it treats you like a complete idiot. Despite focusing a lot on puzzle-solving areas, the game literally prevents you from solving anything on your own. Characters will give you all the hints BEFORE you can even start trying to figure out anything at all. It brings the "let's make sure noone gets stuck" to an extreme I haven't seen before. This goes along a very childish story that will not give you many surprising or unexpected events.
The game's difficulty is laughable too. I don't know why there are two sets of difficulty when the "hardest" one is completely trivial all the way through. Every single enemy and wave can be easily dealt with by simply spamming the sword attack, and in case you lose health they will start dropping hearts very, very often.
Finally, the game's variety also drops down after certain progress. At the beginning you will be presented with many different things you can do and you might get excited to see how this will go on. Well... it barely does. Some new mechanics are presented later on but they are more lacking or just less interesting. The final chapters catch up a little bit, though.
Overall, I can see a target audience for this game being kids, but even kids might feel discouraged about how much everything absolutely given right away here. It is not a bad game by any means and I wish Steam, once again, would allow me to give a neutral review, but right not and at a 30-euro price tag I felt this game ended up below my expectations.