Pyre Review

Review written by Troy Mundschenk 

 

January’s pick for the Sci-Tech Game Club was Pyre! See below for the official Sci-Tech review of this 2017 classic by well-known development company, SuperGiant Games. To learn more about the Sci-Tech Game Club, go to 6PointsSciTech.org/GameClub/.  

 

Introduction 

 

Pyre is a beautiful exploration of the power of choice and relationships painted over the canvas of a high-octane sport game, all immersed in a fantasy world to rival some of the best in the genre. Its combination of fast-paced tactical gameplay and thought-provoking narrative RPG elements make it one of the most unique and varied game experiences we’ve had so far. Join us as we plunge into Pyre to break down why we think this game is a slam dunk! 

KAVOD – How well does the game help you succeed? 

 

How did Pyre stack up when it came to kavod (respect)? Pyre does a fairly good job of supporting a wide range of players in several ways. Most commonly noted was its difficulty settings, which, while not as versatile and delicate as Celeste, still offers a variety of challenge levels for players of different backgrounds. The difficulty can be changed at any time, and the player will be politely prompted to reduce the difficulty setting if they find themselves on a losing streak. We’ll talk more about how this game handles loss further down, but for now, know that the player is never shamed for needing to use the options. This is a low bar, but you may be surprised at how many developers’ limbo underneath it. 

 

For those that are finding the game too simple, there are also optional “Titan Stars” which can be enabled to temporarily buff the opposing team for the boon of additional experience should you prove victorious! There are 12 stars to choose from, each with different powers, so players can mix and match their experience with the challenges they find interesting. These stars spread the gamut of game modifications, from simple tweaks like a +8 to a stat, to complicated AI reworks like enemies that coordinate their attacks based on your team composition and playstyle. 

 

The game offers occasional embedded tutorials, especially when a new character is introduced, which give you a stress-free way to learn their abilities before you play in a match with them. I’m also going to categorize the in-line hoverable text as a form of tutorial and is one of the things that I most enjoyed about the game’s dialogue design. If you ever need a refresher on who a character is or the details of a destination, you can hover over the relevant text in the dialogue window to generate a pop-up showing the most recent and concise data you have on the topic. Both of these tools helped me feel comfortable and supported without being talked down to, which I know some players are really bothered by. 

 

Some people noted that the characters are not all very kind to one another, but I think that conversation is one that ties perfectly into our next value, Kesher. 

 

KESHER – How well does the game help you build or reflect on your relationships with others/yourself? 

 

One of our highest rated categories across the board, the tact with which game handles the kesherim (connections) between the characters and the player is remarkable. The majority of the playtime of this game, if you choose to engage with this facet, comes from conversations between the player and the members of the Nightwings. These characters come from hugely varied and opposing backgrounds, and this creates a lot of tension as you begin to untangle the threads of the interwoven story. By forging relationships with each of the characters, you can gain insight into their past, the world, and the Rites, some of which provides material advantage as well. Choosing to follow the advice of one fellow over another has benefits and consequences, and the more you interact with the characters, the closer you grow as teammates and as friends. You help them through conflicts with their teammates, challenges with their identity and family, and old and fresh wounds, all by listening and offering kind words when needed. All of this comes to a head during the Liberation Rites. 

 

Probably the most brilliant choice this game has made, every certain number of matches, you are forced to free one of your best players from exile. This choice comes at a heavy cost, and I never made it easily throughout my playthrough of the game. Chances are, your highest-level players are the ones you’re the most comfortable in matches with or the ones you’ve spent the most time getting to know, and sometimes both. You have to decide whether to keep them behind, improving your chances of winning future games and holding onto the unique energy they bring to the team, but condemning them to spend more time in a hellish landscape, or liberating them back to a life of freedom and ease, but losing them as an asset and a companion. This choice, like all choices in this game, is final, and you will only learn the consequences of that choice later on. This beautifully reflects the nature of real-world relationships and reminds us that we don’t always get do-overs, and to cherish the people we have close while we have them, and to celebrate their triumphs if they should have to leave. 

 

In addition to the challenging narrative elements, this game also has local multiplayer, which is a fun way to experience the thrill of the rites with your friends, but this game mode is unfortunately only competitive and has no story tied to it. As the first game we’ve reviewed so far with any kind of native multiplayer, it gains some points for that, but not many.  

 

SAVLANUT – How well does the game encourage you to take your time? 

 

This game had us a little stumped for savlanut (patience)! It seems to bounce between very rapid, high-intensity game sections and long, languishing narrative, and it almost feels like two completely different games at times because of this!  

 

On the first hand, the gameplay loop of the rite is fairly unforgiving. Outside of pausing, there is no quarter for players that struggle with quick reflexes, and even then, the game offers no countdown or ease into reentry. You are thrown straight back in to the action. This hectic energy fits very well with the game’s identity as a sports game but does pair with patience at all. There is no benefit at all to taking longer in a rite, although there is at least no timer or shot clock to put external pressure on you. 

 

Between the Rites, though, it’s a completely inverted experience. Now, the game leans very heavily on the mantra that you do your best work after a period of rest. Mechanically, it will not allow any Nightwings to play in more than a couple matches in a row, as they become ill if overworked. You are encouraged to take winding routes through unfamiliar territory for the potential benefits of enlightenment, companionship, and treasure! There are many optional conversational encounters to have with a cast of characters, few of which provide benefits beyond the furthering of a bond and have no indication or marker of how long the player is spending there. There are mini-interactives that can be performed, like clearing cobwebs and blowing out candles in the wagon, which provide no benefit whatsoever and serve simply as a way to pass your time. This all belies a game that holds your time as precious and wants you to spend as much of it as you like enjoying the world and its many mysteries.  

 

The interplay between these two disparate experiences makes for a game that you can easily take in large chunks, with natural breaks built-in when you read the stars to find the destination of your next match. The game does not offer a manual save button, so you need to wait until an action of yours triggers an autosave, and we found these to be a little sparse. Overall, this game allows you to take your time in some areas, while forcing you to push through at other times, so the level of time stress you’re under is up to you and how much of the side content you choose to explore. 

 

SAKRANUT – How well does the game allow for exploration and experimentation? 

 

A really fascinating discussion that came about when scoring this game in sakranut (curiosity) is how we define experimentation. Is the ability to shape your experience experimenting, or does an experiment rely on your opportunity to try again? This game provides ample opportunity for making game-shaping choices and forces the player to decide on their path at many junctures. However, due to the ever-onward flow of the game’s narrative and rite design, you are never given an opportunity to repeat these decisions. The game relies heavily on blind choice, and learning the consequence of that choice only after it has been locked in. So, do you consider the opportunity to try new things in new situations a true experiment, or does the lack of consistent independent variables keep each moment too fresh to be built on a foundation of past experience? 

 

In my opinion, this game takes a pretty heavy tradeoff between Sakranut and Taglit, and the interplay of these two values is one that we’re consistently finding is being read very differently by each of our reviewers. I struggled with ranking it for this reason. I will give both Isaac’s and my reasoning for our very varied opinions and I will leave it up to you to decide where you feel you fall in this discussion. 

 

When I was thinking about experimentation in this game, I realized that I never felt safe to try out something very different. Even though this game has an incredible philosophy about loss being equally viable progress, I felt there was too much at stake to experiment with a build or team composition that took me far outside of my comfort zone. The exhaustion that a particular character gains after too many consecutive matches forces you to play with more than just your favorite characters, and while I love that mechanic, I didn’t feel like I was willfully experimenting. The descriptions of items were not always clear before purchase what they would do or how effective they would be, and with money being a very limited resource, it is not possible to try out even close to all the items available. The item leveling mechanic also encourages you to stick with the same handful of talismans, as the resources put into one talisman are non-transferrable, and most of the talismans come in a fairly weak state. You need to buy it and put some upgrade resources into it before you can be assured that it will benefit your game in a meaningful way.  

 

In that same vein, the perks your Nightwings achieve from enlightenment cannot be reselected without an expensive consumable item from the shop, meaning that these are mostly locked in as well. The best Pyre can offer when it comes to exploration is to give the player a binary choice of which of two routes you will take to arrive at your destination, which are given a vague description so as not to give the player too clear a sense of what they will encounter on the way. You will also never get to know what was hiding on the alternate route unless you play through the entire game again, which is no small feat. Later on in the game, you can choose your opponent and location for each match, but you are choosing from a reduced list of the matchups and destinations you’ve already played through. The only thing that I really count as consequence-free experimentation are the practice matches you can run with Sandra in the Beyonder Crystal. 

 

Isaac, on the other hand, saw these elements of mandatory choice as not detracting from the experimentation, but magnifying it. It’s a game that will not let you get away with settling into one train of thought. He specifically mentions the variety in the character abilities and notes that your team, unlike the ones you play against, can never have more than one member from each of the game’s races. This forces you to think about the interactions and possible strategies you might form between several combinations of playstyles. This is also a great time to talk about the way losing a match is handled in the game, and on this front, I have to agree with Isaac. The first time a certain character loses a match; they get a bonus to their Enlightenment that rivals the amount you would’ve gotten for winning. It is by our failures that we learn the most, and this game has no problem with you losing a match here and there! You’re always guaranteed to be eligible for the Liberation Rite, but your wins and losses along the way don’t matter as much, and you often get new and fascinating dialogue options when you lose a match. It is not possible to do the match over again, you have to live with your defeat and move forward towards the stars. The game forcing you to use different players, not only as a result of the illness, but also the Liberation Rites, proves a powerful catalyst for new experiences for the player. 

 

TAGLIT – How well does the game support discovery of new game mechanics or experiences? 

 

Now, in stark contrast to how I felt about curiosity, this game is full to BURSTING with taglit (discovery). You are rewarded at many moments with a page from a legendary tome of history and myth, which is a delightful dive into the world lore. On the choices that I couldn’t experiment with, I was hungry to learn how my actions had turned out. After liberating a teammate, we soon received a letter detailing what they had been up to on the surface, which was a deeply sweet and thoughtful addition to the game. 

 

We mentioned the embedded tutorials above, but they bear noting again here, as the diverse cast of characters and their abilities would be overwhelming to try and learn all at once, but with those bite-sized tutorials, are entirely manageable. Sandra’s Scribe Trials and associated character-unique talismans do a great job of showing the strengths and potential downfalls of a character matchup. New information is always presented with flashing text, a precursor to the highlighted text mentioned earlier, so you will know when you’re learning something new or being reminded of something you were already told.  

 

Each time you face off with an opponent, you have the opportunity to gain new information about their motives, their crime, and their reason for seeking Liberation. These discoveries help inform your knowledge of your own teammates, and they often have things to say to you after fighting against some of their own. Your teammates, in turn, will fill in their biographies when you have communicated with them enough, deepening your understanding of who will be most useful to the cause you are all working towards. 

 

YOU – How does the game stand out to YOU, personally? Did you like it? 

As always, we want to end out by cataloguing some of your thoughts about the game and what made it special for all of you! 

• VERY beautiful game, clear the artists put a lot of time and care into making it 

• Loved the game, but don’t feel a need to finish it 

• Gorgeous music, and the postcards were so cute! 

 

 

Final Score 

On average, Troy rated Pyre a 4, Isaac rated it a 5, and the community (including the Sci-Tech Director team) rated it a 3.83. 

That means the final Sci-Tech score for Pyre is 4.28!  

Thank you so much for reading, and we can’t wait to see your reviews for our upcoming games! See what’s coming up next at 6PointsSciTech.org/GameClub/