Pyre Review

Pyre is an enjoyable experience with a great story, music, and ideas behind it. But it comes with a somewhat large warning sign- The main gameplay matches are not the enjoyable part.

The game starts well with a great journey, intrigue, mystery, and characters who are interesting and make you want to learn more of them. With a massive amount of potential dialogue and many different stories to follow and uncover. There is an overarching plot, enough characters to matter without feeling like it's just a flood of names, and great stories for every character I've uncovered the story of.
I can't quite find the words to praise the story and characters enough, so I will keep it to that. Though as usual when there is a lot of good, there's also bad- And the bad I can put into words a lot easier. Don't let that discourage you too much- The good is excellent, and the bad is only disappointing, rather than truly bad.

The negative in an otherwise incredibly good experience is, sadly, the gameplay. There are two kinds, and both fall flat when playing for more than a few minutes. The first is the overworld, and traveling through the world. The overarching system of experience and gaining skills works well enough, but it seems talismans and gold is just sort of there- Once you equip a character with something good, you're probably not going to take it off again. And then you can't really use your gold on anything else either. The economy system is practically invisible, you get enough gold to afford anything you want as long as you don't want everything, and then gold is never actually used for anything of note. The overworld seems to be practically entirely for finding new opportunities to speak to the characters, without anything else you can do as a player to really matter. Vocations are nice, but they didn't feel impactful and it was never clear when they were available.

The second is the rites themselves- The main gameplay matches. The controls are at best clumsy and at worst they downright fight you and make it difficult to do what you want to do. The AI of course has no such issue. They will easily outmaneuver you and make plays that you can not intercept because the controls just won't allow you to do so half the time. The rest of the time, the AI will very clearly only pretend to have a defense or a plan and let you score uncontested. Most of the time, success seems to be not a matter of tactical positioning and skill, but more a matter of putting the fastest guy you have up front, swiping the ball before the opponents get there and then dunking it in before they can react. Any attempts at tactical positioning or pass-plays will just result in your tactical position being shot down or your pass sending the ball back to the side of the field where you don't want it to be. In the end, it will come down to luck more than anything else. And with 12 hours in the game I can safely say I am exactly as skilled at it now as I was when I first started it.
Thankfully, you can lose, and losing will not break any sort of plotline- It is flexible enough that I am fairly sure you can lose every single match in the game without breaking the plot or narratives

Pyre is a good game. But the disappointing gameplay aspects keeps it from being a great game. It is generously priced and well worth the money. Pyre doesn't really try hard in the gameplay department, but it is excellent at story, music, world and characters. It is certainly worth a look.