| ice said: Seems like South of Midnight is getting some very mixed reception, even a xbox centric site like TrueAchievements gave it a 60/100. Hopefully the game still does decently well and the studio doesn't face any repercussions (like layoffs in the future). NoisyPixel also gave it a scathing review giving at a 5.5/10. One thing seems to be the general consensus with most reviews is the focus of style over substance. |
Eh, it sits at 78 OpenCritic after 75 reviews, that's a great score for Compulsion and is a significant jump up from their previous releases of 60-63 and a pretty good example of what extra time, funding and support can do for a studio, their first title under Microsoft is a 15-18 point increase in critical reception. It's also a strong average even simply in general for any studio.
Main criticism is that the combat is repetitive (a few don't even say the combat is bad perse, simply repetitive) which Tbh I kind of expected after seeing the gameplay footage before release and I think it's mainly the arena fights people are finding repetitive, in settings you can actually choose what to skip (arena fights, boss fights, etc) so if I find it too repetitive I could skip specifically the arena fights but I doubt I will, aside from the combat, I've seen a lot of glowing praise for the story, music, art, etc.
I've seen a few comparisons to Psychonauts 2 which I absolutely loved and Psychonauts 2 combat wasn't the best, I don't think it was bad, it was more like serviceable and I think that's where some of these comparisons to Psychonauts 2 are coming from. Though the boss fights in Psychonauts 2 were cool. That game ended up being one of my favourites of 21 for the art, level design, story, music, etc.
