The Plucky Squire Review (Krauvando)
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.