A Plague Tale: Innocence

(Spoiler-free)
A Plague Tale: Innocence is a story-driven adventure stealth game set in 1349’s medieval France. I heard a lot of positive things about this game before I had a chance to try it myself. I must say, people are not wrong calling this game a “masterpiece”. It immediately became one of the best games I have ever played. This is one of those 10/10 games that, I think, everyone should try. It is definitely a title I will not forget. I would even go as far as to say that if you are okay with the genres this game represents, it will be a guaranteed positive experience for you.
The game tells a story of Amicia and Hugo, two siblings who are still children. They come from a wealthy home and never really had to experience the hardships of life before. Both siblings are forced to run and this is how this beautiful journey begins. Amicia, who is 15 years old, is the older sibling. She is the main character whose shoes we are going to step into in this story. She is already a strong and independent woman who can take care of herself. Amicia is also likeable, benevolent, caring, well-mannered and has an awesome French accent. It’s difficult not to like her, however, I still think that she lacks a bit of personality. Aside from what I already mentioned, her other traits don’t really stand out. I can’t help but feel that she was made very neutral on purpose. There is no reason for you to hate her nor to fall in love with her as a character which is understandable since she is a minor. I personally would expect a bit more personality from the main character. Her brother Hugo, who is 5 years old, is a very bright child. He literally gets excited about everything. His interactions with the world and his voice are adorable. I would expect nothing less from such a young character. I can’t say a negative thing about how he was written but there is a room for improvement when it comes to Amicia.
The world the action takes place in is a really brutal, unforgiving and dark place. It is medieval France during black plague after all. Everyone you come across wants to either kill or capture you. On top of that, the disease is spreading and swarms of rats destroy everything on their path. In this world the most dangerous predator in nature is not human but a rat. Human race never seemed so helpless against an opponent like this. Here rats are a superior race. From the visual side the game looks stunning. The environment looks as realistic as it gets. It is truly a beautiful game. Everything has been done with attention to detail and it shows. I managed to spot plenty of different details in interactions between siblings which warmed my heart more than once.
In terms of gameplay, the game is simply perfect. The world is filled with puzzles. There will be a lot of them but you won’t mind. They were made so that the player doesn’t have to pay much attention to them. They are intuitive and don’t take a long time to solve. I have not experienced getting stuck on a puzzle and answers to them came naturally within a couple of minutes. You don’t really have to play a management game with ammunition and other resources either if you don’t want to. Everything you may need for the puzzles will be directly given to you by the game or found in your surroundings. It is a stealth game where you constantly have to sneak past soldiers wanting to kill you. In theory this can be stressful but I have found the gameplay aspect of this game to be very relaxing. It is basically a smooth sailing through the puzzles, therefore, through the story as well.
There is one thing I didn’t like about this game. Those who are sensitive to animal suffering should be warned. There are scenes that shouldn’t be thrown at a player's face just like that. I don’t think that’s okay. Also, and this can be considered a spoiler, a decision to sacrifice an animal shouldn’t come so easy for anyone. You can’t tell me that after considering your options for 5 seconds you arrive at a conclusion that sacrificing a living animal is your only choice. That’s heartless and not true at all. There were a lot of things they could have done differently and it would be a much better experience for everyone. The scenes I was a witness to lead me only to one conclusion: developer's approach to animals is inhumane. They simply don't matter. One thing is certain, this is not a game for children. Still, I feel like it's the only flaw on this masterpiece but some things needed to be said.
In summary, I played an exceptional game that I will probably not forget for the rest of my life. It was truly an amazing and beautiful experience. I am glad that I played it and I recommend that everyone else follow in my footsteps. It’s not flawless but what is a problem for me, won’t be a problem for the majority of the community. Despite that, for me, this game is art, a masterpiece. I cannot recommend it enough. Simply give it a try and you will not regret it.
You can find more detailed reviews on my curator page Malfour's Choice.

One of the best story-driven and exciting games
The game starts very beautifully and has the best ending
The graphics of the game are amazing and the stages of the game are very entertaining. You just want to repeat the stages and not finish them.
It is really worth the price you pay and it is really worth buying the DLC to support the developer.

I think it's important to understand what you're walking into with A Plague Tale.
It's not a stealth game - it has stealth mechanics, sure, but the path through the game is totally linear and most rooms have only one solution, which may or may not involve stealth.
You might think to call it a puzzle game - figure out which of the tools you have to use to make it to the next area - but if characters don't immediately call out the solution while giving you a prompt to zoom your camera in on it, most times they'll do so after ~20 seconds. The puzzles are also *often* extremely simple, like "here's a single interactable in a room with one entrance, one exit, and one guard" simple.
You might also be tempted to call it a resource management game. There's a nominal crafting system and different ammo types and technically you can shoot and miss; but while crafting ingredients for inventory upgrades are quite scarce, ammo crafting ones are extremely plentiful and the game makes sure you're never in a situation where you lack the resources to progress (which is necessary, because again the whole game is linear with typically one right solution, so punishing players for poor resource management would softlock them).
I am thus forced to conclude that this isn't really a "game" in any of those senses - it's almost more of a visual novel, where the point is not so much skill expression or engaging with mechanics as it is seeing the next scene in the story. And that's ok! It just means that A Plague Tale leans heavily on the story to carry the experience. So how's that?
. . .I mean it's not great. The villains are comically villainous, and probably over half the guards have throwaway ambient dialogue about how they have no remorse and are evil, to morally absolve you of killing them. The protagonists fare a little better, being all kids (so lapses in judgement are wholly excusable), but outside of the main brother and sister (very quickly) learning to trust each other there aren't any big character arcs that I recall offhand after beating it. We don't study the philosophy of characters or really critique how their worldview helps or hinders them, nor is there much to dig into with the broader plot.
The moment to moment writing is not particularly strong, mainly in that it takes very noticeable shortcuts whenever is convenient. Hugo is a clueless, frightened little boy when he needs to be, and then 5 seconds later in the next room will be an observant, precocious, happy-go-lucky child so he can say something topical and cute. A character you meet a third of the way through the game calls alchemical powder worthless, then straight up teaches you an alchemical formula in the very next level. If you focus only on the immediate it's all fine, but it starts to fall apart if you try to tie the package together.
Overall the game looks very pretty and there are some cool environments and locales. You can't look too close nor think too deep here, either, or you'll start to notice doors with no handles, or equipment racks in centuries-old castles that are the exact same model as all the others, or uncanny valley spaces that make no sense. There's an overall lack of verisimilitude that makes the whole setting feel a little shallow, a thin veneer over the parchment of the game's story, which I think would bug me less if the writing really impressed me. I'm fond of historical fiction and if the game had leaned really hard into the life and times of French peasantry or the mechanics of medieval villages or castles or churches or what have you, that would add a lot of enjoyment to the game. As it stands it's all just set dressing meant to evoke a certain time period and setting, not truly live in it. Still, hard to complain about the lighting and overall visual style, it punches pretty high and looks suitably cinematic.
The voice acting deserves some special mention. SIDE did the English version and knocked it out of the park, as they often do. Amicia and Hugo in particular had really great performances that elevated their characters, but the rest of the lineup was generally solid too.
All in all I'm pretty mixed. There's nothing really *bad* about A Plague Tale. It plays fine and is inoffensive and has a lot of polish, it's just not particularly inspired as a game or a story or an art piece. I certainly don't regret my time with it, but I don't think I'll ever go back to it and it's certainly not worth full price (in a cosmic sense, relative to other things you could get for the same money). If you're interested, though, it's probably worth picking up on a discount.

An interesting game with a fascinating story. But there are downsides - these are blind NPCs who don't care what's going on around them, you can at least dance in front of them and then just as easily hide under the bushes (like yo buddy, you can go through, I didn't see anything lol). The game is quite boring and monotonous in places, I literally played for 30 minutes a day, for me this is an alarming sign. The rats in this game are quite stupid, not aggressive, they mainly serve as an obstacle on the road. The atmosphere in the game changes very quickly, a beautiful landscape suddenly turns into a mountain of rotten corpses and it looks creepy. Sometimes there are good dialogues in the game, beautiful landscapes for screenshots, in general, the game with a discount is worth its money. I hope to pass the second part someday, but so far there is no special desire. I give it 7/10

This game is criminally underrated. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay mechanics, but it more than makes up for it with superb art direction that will stand the test of time for years to come. The visuals, complemented by the music and its charming characters, create an eerie, anxiety-inducing atmosphere that pulls you in completely.
The narrative builds in intensity right up to the very end. Highly recommended and I’ll be diving straight into the sequel immediately.

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Human
☐ Lizards

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☑ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding

---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☑ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10