After having A Plague Tale: Innocence sit in my library for a while, and honestly kinda being done with new games for a while, I decided to give this a shot. It's really good, and I wish I had purchased the second game together with it on sale - but even standalone it's a good experience. It does crib a lot from The Last of Us, but overall it does feel like it is its own thing even if it has very overt inspiration. Can't wait for Requiem to go on sale so I can finish the story!

#Technical Performance The game isn't really problematic technically per se, but a couple of things:

• Lock your framerate using external software (I use AMD Chill, apparently RivaTuner is better). The game doesn't offer an in-game option to lock your framerate, and honestly locked 100 looks way better than unlocked 210-245.

• If playing at 1440p or above, turn down the anti-aliasing. Turning it up makes the character models (and only the character models, strangely) look blurry and hazy, like they were fully covered in petroleum jelly.

#Story and Gameplay It's 1349, during the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, and Amicia de Rune is a 15-year-old minor noble in Aquitane. Her 5-year-old brother Hugo has been ill basically since his infancy, and has spent most of that time being cared for, which is why she doesn't know him much. One day, she and her father discover some sinister goings-on on their estate; soon after they return home, the Inquisition arrives searching for Hugo. Amicia and Hugo subsequently have to escape and find a way to survive while helping Hugo with his illness.

My Thoughts

A lot of these points were mentioned in BWTs, but I will try to expand on them.

• So much of this game feels like it took the challenge of being "budget Last of Us", and the gaps between Sony money and Focus Entertainment money really show - mouth movements occasionally don't match up, and they obviously couldn't make a combat sandbox in the same way, but it's remarkable what they did achieve - the tone, the world (this time built based on a sort of dark fantasy alternate history rather than LOU's decayed modern day), the development of Amicia and Hugo's relationship, the level of tension (magnified by Amicia dying in one hit compared to Joel being fairly hardy), and especially several scenes of horror majesty - seeing a guy being chewed to death by rats is never not unnerving even if the guy deserved it, and the way rats often erupt from the ground like oil is always terrifying.
• Hugo, in many ways, reminds me of Daniel Diaz from Life is Strange 2: he's annoying in a very realistic way, being somewhat capricious and moody (not being helped by him being extremely sheltered in his upbringing), but it's easy to forgive him - he's five, and going through terrible circumstances. Amicia doesn't really fit the Sean mold - they're obviously very different games - but she does feel like she has it together quite a bit for a 15 year old living through a world where large sections of the ground are swarming in man-eating rats. >!The bit where Amicia insists on not telling Hugo that Beatrice is still alive, leading to him literally submitting himself to the villains, is very dumb, but again - 5 years old, and his trust in Amicia, which is already pretty recently formed, has kinda gone.!<
• The supporting cast are decent. Nobody is really extraordinary, but nobody is really bad, either. Lucas is probably the most consistently enjoyable characters to watch, and Melie has her moments (like in the "Amicia the Amazon and Melie the Fury" bit), but overall they don't have a ton of screen time. Nicholas works pretty well as a lumbering, menacing presence in his scenes, and Vitalis is hilariously evil - like he's a monster, but the fun-to-watch kind, you know?
• I like how, unlike LOU, the game is functionally a stealth/puzzle game with the occasional action set piece - it makes sense that traversing the world is a challenge to finesse past rather than something to take on head-on. Some puzzles feel a little shoehorned in to add gameplay, but overall it was fairly fun.
• I do like the mechanic where one of the collectibles is Hugo finding random thematically-appropriate flowers and placing them in Amicia's hair. I do wish it carried over between levels as a sign of their budding relationship.
• I like the moments where we remember that all of the major characters are literally children - Amicia, at 15, is either the oldest or among the oldest - like during the hide and seek section, or the aforementioned Amicia the Amazon section.
• There's a couple sections which do make you feel like you don't have choices - there's a bit in Chapter 6 where Amicia and Hugo have to sneak out of a camp and the only real way to get out is to kill about half-a-dozen soldiers (with even dialogue provided) - which makes it even more meaningful where there are actual, if not clearly demarcated, choices, such as when >!Amicia and Lucas sneak into the de Rune estate and Amicia has the option to spare or kill a couple of injured Inquisition soldiers.!<
• >!Amicia and Hugo's reconciliation feels a little rushed - Hugo had been been with Vitalis for three months training his power, hated Amicia enough to bring Nicholas to Chateau d'Ombrage, and one conversation is enough for him to forgive her? I did expect him to forgive her at some point - the rest of the plot won't work otherwise - but it did feel like there was something missing, like a chapter cut for budget.!<
• There's a couple of sections where the plot feels weird: >!It's clear that the rats clearly recognize Hugo as a Macula carrier, as shown by them not touching his room and even sparing the bodies of the people close to him, like his father and the estate servants, in the de Rune estate. But they will still happily chow down on his sister or even HIMSELF, even after he awakens as a Macula carrier and gains the ability to control rats. I get that there's a part where Hugo learns how to control his power with Vitalis, which is why the rats make way for Amicia, Hugo, and company in the final mission, but it's still... strange - how do the rats recognize Hugo in some ways and not in others?!<
• Part of playing a game patiently means that you have access to information a new player couldn't, such as the knowledge before you even begin that this game has a sequel that continues the same story. I wonder how conclusive the ending felt - and it did feel at least a little conclusive: >!Hugo is still a Macula carrier, but the plague rats are gone, and now everyone has to rebuild their life elsewhere!<, if possibly open to expansion.
• The game has a crafting system, which was fine (it even has you upgrade at workbenches, similar to LOU), but the resource economy feels strange - I felt like I was pretty thorough in exploration and didn't use many resources for get-out-of-death-free cards like Somnium and Luminosa, but I could barely upgrade my sling to max, and the other equipment was completely out of my reach. It's fine, but I wonder why there were so many upgrade kits if you won't provide upgrade materials.

#Visuals and Presentation

• Game composers are not often big names by themselves - there's guys like Lorne Balfe, Inon Zur and Jesper Kyd who most people wouldn't be able to name but whose work has been heard and remembered by tons of people. One of those underrated creators is Olivier Deriviere, whose work I first heard in Don't Nod's Remember Me, and who scores a lot of the work here. The main menu theme in particular really works well here, and the sound design is just immaculate - the rats in particular feel like a marvel both technically and presentationally.
• Apart from the issue mentioned above in the technical stuff, the game looks gorgeous. It obviously does show its age a bit as a 2019 game made for the PS4/XONE generation, but the landscapes look spectacular, and the more nightmarish stuff works really well due to the game's use of light - I wonder how raytracing would affect how this game looks, particularly given its use of fire lighting up several areas.
• Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan are great, and everyone else ranges from decent to good. I do wish that the mouth movements matched the dialogue in any language - English or French - given how often the camera zooms in onto characters' faces.

#Conclusion It's good! I like the story, the vibes, the presentation. This game probably wouldn't exist without LOU, but lots of good media is derivative, and this game definitely has enough to stand on its own. Can't wait till Requiem goes on sale!