Stories: The Path of Destinies
Stories: The Path of Destinies is an action RPG set in a vibrant fairytale universe filled with floating islands, majestic airships, and colorful magic. Reynardo, ex-pirate and unintentional hero, suddenly becomes the last line of the defense against the mad Emperor and his countless ravens. Can he come up with a plan that won’t blow up in his face, for a change? In Stories, each choice you make takes Reynardo into a unique narrative. From tongue-in-cheek takes on heroic adventures to dark, Lovecraftian scenes, Stories’ repertoire is as diverse as it is action-packed. But Reynardo’s fateful decisions won’t always come easy: Sometimes retrieving a weapon lost at the beginning of time means sacrificing the life of an old friend. But with so many choices to make, so many potential dire destinies, wouldn't it be great to be able to come back in time, learn from your mistakes and find the one true path?
Steam User 13
i played this game back in 2016 and loved it.
guess what? it's still a great game.
the combat itself isn't the best but the story, writing and narration is just on another level.
it is such a novel and unique way to tell a story and they used it again in Omensight; and thats another great game!
Steam User 7
Do you want to play anthropomorphic Groundhog Day with Batman combat? Yes you do.
Steam User 5
Generally enjoyable, with most of the progression systems in the game lasting long enough for the casual playthough (5-10 endings). Worth a try if you already have the game (like me).
Unfortunately, obtaining 100% achievements in this game is a slog, and there are questionable design choices in this game that quickly sour the game experience after a while. My playthrough of this game is strictly with keyboard and mouse only, and some aspects may be different from playthoughs done with a controller. Below are some of the gripes I have with this game:
Inability to Remap Keybinds
You don't need to press too many different buttons to play this game, but you are ONLY allowed to press those specific buttons. Rebinding controls is strictly forbidden in this game—you'll just have to make do with the default controls given to you.
Janky Movement Commands
The movement commands issued from your cursor seem to extend horizontally from the character's torso—not from your feet or aligned to terrain like you would expect. This design choice, coupled with the angled camera, leads to a pretty noticeable parallax error when attempting to move around, and your character will appear to drift when traversing straight corridors.
Stages that feature stairs and uneven terrain in general will guarantee that you get real intimate with the level geometry and end up stuck in corners you didn't know existed. This parallax can also assist you in snapping to the wrong enemy during combat with grouped enemies, which may cause you to miss counters or accidentally detonate an explosive raven.
You are able to adapt to this movement with more game time, but is unintuitive and comes across as jarring when first starting out.
Lack of Input Buffering for Movement
For a Hack and Slash game, you would expect the controls to be more fluid. The attack commands are generally fine in this regard, but the movement leaves more to be desired. There is a distinct lack of input buffering for movement (including dashes), which serves no real purpose other than slowing down gameplay.
When watching cutscenes or waiting for your character to finish an animation, you HAVE to wait for them to finish completely before trying to move or dash. Failure to do so will leave your character idling on the spot (and at the mercy of stage hazards or enemies) until you issue another keydown event on your movement keys. The lack of input buffering becomes a massive hindrance when trying to move fast and clear levels quickly.
Lots of Waiting
The narration and storytelling is enjoyable for the first few times, but you'll discover that waiting is a big part of this game after reaching a few endings.
Every single cutscene and every dialogue option in this game is unskippable, no matter how many times you've encountered it. Yes, tell me more about how I can choose to rescue Lapino, or choose to find the armature, or choose to find the gem for the umpteenth time—I have no idea these options existed and really need the brief.
With 20+ unique endings to reach, and each ending/run taking around 20-30 minutes to complete, having a skip button to speed things up would be a much appreciated quality of life to have. Unfortunately, this game does not spare you that convenience, and forces you to listen to the narration over and over again. Keep in mind that the game pauses automatically when you alt-tab to a different window, ensuring that progress can only be made if and only if you sit through those cutscenes.
Chest Loot and Shallow Weapon Progression
There are chests scattered around each stage, and opening them can provide the player with gems and sword upgrade materials (ore and essence). However, all swords can only be forged to a maximum level of 2, which is easily done after completing 3 to 4 endings. Additionally, duplicate gem drops do not exist, and you are able to easily obtain all gems by the time you fully upgrade your swords.
Once every gem is collected and every sword is fully upgraded, chests no longer contain meaningful loot, and only exist to replenish lost health and energy (if you even need it). This ends up hurting the game's replayability as the player is no longer incentivised to explore stages and look for chests.
Having multiple weapons to craft and use seems interesting at first, but becomes pointless fast. Each weapon has its own unique ability that can aid you in combat, and can allow you to open a corresponding elemental door within stages. Unlocking these elemental doors can provide you with more loot and grant access to alternate routes and shortcuts.
Unfortunately, the different swords all do the same damage with their normal attacks, and are only differentiated by their abilities which all do the same thing—allow you to do more damage by expending energy. The only exception to this is the hero sword, which allows you to regenerate health at the cost of energy,
The fire, ice and void swords all allow you to do more damage when their abilities are active, but are never needed because knockdowns are overpowered in this game. Attacking an enemy in a knocked-down state always results in an instant kill, even if empowered and even at max health. This allows you to completely ignore the amount of damage you do per sword swing and simply fish for knockdowns for every single fight to score those instant kills.
The only incentive to use multiple swords is for their ability to unlock elemental doors to gain access to new areas in stages. These special areas can contain chests (that you no longer need) and shortcuts, but the animation to unlock doors is so slow that you'll be better off staying on the beaten path.
As a result, the only sword that matters is the hero sword, the default sword given to you at the start of the game, only because it allows you to heal the damage taken from enemy encounters.
Limited Selection of Unique Stages
There are only 6 unique stages you can explore, which becomes stale quickly after playing through the game a few times. You always start at the same spot, and always end around the same spot. The lack of variation in enemy types and enemy spawns causes every playthough to become the same—you end up clearing through the same few stages regardless of the choices you make in the story.
Steam User 15
Wish there was a way to instant pass the levels you already experienced.
Steam User 4
The game follows the story of Reynardo, a heroic fox who embarks on a quest to save the world from an evil emperor. What makes the game stand out is the "Choose Your Own Adventure" style of storytelling, where the player's choices affect the outcome of the story. The game also features a fluid combat system that rewards skillful play and offers a variety of weapons and abilities to experiment with.
While the game is relatively short, it offers replayability through its multiple branching paths and alternate endings.
Steam Deck Experience
The gaming experience on the Steam Deck is quite impressive, as the game runs smoothly with high graphics settings and a stable 60fps framerate without any need for adjustments. However, in order to conserve battery life, I reduced the refresh rate to 40hz via the Quick Access Menu (accessed through the three dots button "..."). With this modification, I was able to enjoy approximately four hours of gameplay on a single charge.
Steam User 4
Whimsical RPG that has different endings and branching story paths. Now *all* of the paths seem excessive, there's more than 20 of them, and 4 main ones called "truths". Getting to the 5th and "canon" ending means finding all of the 4 truths beforehand so completing the main story of the game would take 5 runs in total by either getting lucky with your choices or following a guide in this sense.
Voice acting is really good overall, the story itself is nothing extraordinary. Why I say the 20+ runs are excessive is because the levels don't change and one run takes about one hour to complete. You got your sword crafting and skill tree upgrade as means of progression but they don't radically change the gameplay. Grinding out paths or achievements for this game is boring as a result.
The combat is okay although dodging doesn't feel good in this game so it's mainly about countering enemy attacks and mashing your own attacks in between. There's also no variety of enemies.
I got this in a bundle, for what it's worth it's a pleasant experience at least until finishing the main story.
Steam User 4
pretty cute, tho repetitive combat