Omensight

Omensight is quite the unusual game, however I believe I can definitely say it's a unique genre blend.

Technically, Omensight is a hack n slash' fantasy action game with an extremely simple RPG upgrade system, however it's really a detective game at heart. The basic premise is this: The world of Urralia is on its literal final day as the eldritchian entity, Voden, is unleashed, and the only people capable of stopping it are distracted by the war between Urralia's two major nations, Pygmaria and Rodentia. You play as the Harbinger, an ancient warrior whose existence is said to either warn of the apocalypse or bring it, and your goal is to use time travel to rewind the final day and discover who caused the apocalypse, how, and how to stop it before Voden devours the World Tree which is the source of all life and what allows you to time travel in the first place.

To facillitate your investigation, The Harbinger can soul bond with certain people whose corpses you find in the past. This allows you to travel back to wherever they were at the beginning of the last day and follow them around in order to gather information on the events which precipitated Voden's release. Before your imagination goes wild, there are really only FOUR major players in these events with a hidden fifth for the true ending. However, whenever you come across a major revelation, The Harbinger will gain an Omensight which will allow you to show that revelation to the characters you're following and change the course of events for the day so you can learn more.

Bizarrely investigating isn't all you're doing as Urralia is in the middle of a major war, and you're allying with people of opposing factions throughout your investigation. This means that you will often have to take up your sword to defend yourself and your partner, and this is where I think the make or break of the game will be for a lot of people. The combat in this game is perfectly serviceable for what the game is, and you have a decent toolset and enemy variety to keep things mostly stimulating. However, depending on how you play the game, you might be doing a LOT of combat, and you might have to replay portions of days multiple times in order to progress which can make the combat of the game feel even more repetitive than it actually is. It doesn't really help that you can trivialize combat quite easily on lower difficulties by just exploring the levels and looking for as much upgrade currency as you can. The game tries to keep up by throwing a lot of shield enemies at you later on, but all that does is just make you spam heavy attack. Personally, I didn't have a problem with the combat, and I especially like the partner system with different area attacks depending on who you're paired with for the day (except Indrick cause he's a git), but Ithink it's going to turn off a lot of people with how shallow it is or those just looking for a detective game without a completely different gameplay style inserted to extend the length of the game rather than mechanics which better suit the genre.

This game is an acquired taste is what I'm trying to say. I was personally into it for the story and the characters, plus going through the levels and looking for hidden secrets like the breakable walls was fun for a time. I just think the runtime of the game is a tad too long and the action gameplay wears out its welcome as a result. Either more options needed to be introduced to the action gameplay later on to keep that side of the game stimulating, or the game could have been shortened toits benefit. Still, I would wholeheartedly recommend this game to people who are into narrative games and detective games as that side of the game is quite interesting, and I love the characters.

As a side note, True Detective Mode wasn't thought through. It allows you to investigate on your own without hints, but it also takes away the Investigation Orb which is little more than a way of keeping track of the information you've gathered throughout your playthough. Considering it's visual representation of your progress and if you need to replay certain sections of the game for more information, playing without it is a waste of time and could lead to frustration lateron in the game.

I picked this up after playing and really enjoying Stories: The Path of Destinies.
This did not disappoint. It builds upon the foundation and formula of repeating scenarios with different choices to get alternate outcomes and more.
The graphics are a bit more refined too and the colors really pop in certain areas.

The story and characters are all wonderful and charming, I found my self enjoying all the main cast, a hard thing to do.
My only complaint s the combat can feel a bit unwieldy and clunky at times, due to the finisher animations when killing an enemy, something Stories had as well.
That and for some reason the game is kinda demanding to run. It a nice looking game, don't get me wrong but it feels like it's pushing my PC harder than it should.

Overall it's a great little that you can play in short bursts since it's not super long. Would recommend.
RIP Spearhead Games, I loved your narrative, animal people games.

Can be boiled down to a retake and expansion on the developer's previous game, Stories. It's bigger and has grander presentation as all the characters and cutscenes are fully-voiced instead of narrated.
For me, Stories became very mind-numbing once you get all the swords, but the gameplay of Omensight has more variety so it never gets as boring. It IS missing a bit of the punch that Stories had in its combat and it does feel a bit limp but it serves its purpose.
Omensight has a much bigger focus on story, calling itself an "Action Mystery" which is an interesting but I don't think it totally delivers. Getting to see different angles to the story and characters' reactions deciding the path is cool but it feels like there's some gaps in the characters' history with eachother that I would've liked explored.
Solving the mystery is cool, but it doesn't really FEEL like solving a mystery since you can only take so many paths.
I actually almost missed an interesting piece of characterization because I picked the right paths at random.
In fact, if you choose "True Detective" story difficulty, you can't review the information you've found from each path so you'll have to remember and there's no real benefit or accolade for this.
Lastly, I think the dialogue is a bit rough and the writing too expository in places but I did end up liking the characters in the end. The performances on Indrick and Draga are great, I think Ratika's dialogue and voice is too cutesy at times to the point she seems out of place.
Overall, an alright games, something you can knock out in a few hours. I personally feel a little unsatisfied with some of story's loose ends.

I've played 2 games by Spearhead Games. Stories and this, both are absolutely excellent with a fantastic, semi-time loop game mechanic. This is a more mature story, but still fun and utterly enthralling.

This is a must-buy for fans of interesting narrative games.

I played this game a while back and every now and then I just have an urge to come back and replay it. The game isn't anything special, it's a simple and nice hack and slash with some cool detective mechanics when it comes to the story. The difficulty is adjustable and the game can be either a nice relaxing experience or genuinely difficult. Very sweet and cool little title that I will always recommend.

Had a fun time playing the game, and beat it way back in 2018 for the first time, then recently came back in 2024 to play it again. I only found out this time around that once you beat the game and get a... not satisfying ending, you can load back in and play more to get a better one.
This was fun to find out, because it opened the option to pick which Omensight you showed the characters, in order to explore all available options. The game just doesn't tell you to open up your save again, and if you were like "Oh the game was ok but the ending was unsatisfying" and didn't go back in, then you just miss out.
If there's ONE THING that I really hated about this though, it's that you're required to be a complete asshole for no justifiable purpose in order to get the true ending;
When you show Draga the last Omensight and go with her to show Indrick, you have to fight him instead of showing him the Omensight you specifically went there to show him in order to get a piece of information needed to make progress towards getting the true ending, and the game makes you feel like a piece of shit doing it even though there's no other way to get that information that you need.

After 3 replays, completing all achievements and 38H accumulated. I can safely say this game has earned its 10/10. I'm almost ashamed it took me this long to give it my review.
I enjoyed going through it each time I did. The visuals, the story being told, the immersive world with snappy combat that is easy to learn, hard to master. Playing it feels like a breath of fresh air whenever I've played another game with an overcomplicated game mechanics and self-indulgent universe and graphics.
I would sincerely like to see more of Uralia should Spearhead Games decide to give it another gander.