The Plucky Squire |OT| What a novel game!

Here's my review in Spanish (10/10) with some 4K screenshots and videos: https://www.pcmrace.com/2024/09/17/the-plucky-squire-analisis-review-pc/

There are more videos on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PCMR_LATAM/search?query=the plucky squire

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Magic Carpet said:
Thank You, It's blocked here at work. :( but I can see the videos on youtube!
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Why blocked? :O

Anyway, just paste this:

[SystemSettings]
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.BloomQuality=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.LensFlareQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0

In Engine.ini found in «C:\Users\-your user-\AppData\Local\Storybook\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\»

That will disable motion blur, depth of field and other post-processing effects.
 
Up on PSN

The Plucky Squire

The Plucky Squire follows the magical adventures of Jot and his friends - storybook characters who discover a three-dimensional world outside the pages of their book. When the malevolent Humgrump realises hes the villain of the book - destined to lose his battle against the forces of good for...
store.playstation.com
 
Biggest complaint seems to be it bogs down significantly at the end, but overall it looks quite good. $30 is steep though for a game like this.
 
IGN : "I find that puzzles never quite reaches Zelda's incredibly lofty bar"

Well I mean what, the last Zeldas that had good puzzles are a long time ago

Then

IGN : "... forced me to zoom out and think bigger about the tools at my disposal, and the plucky squire hit some awesome puzzle solving highs"

...

IGN 🤡
 
This shit is super dope. Great controller feedback and music. Feels really old school and I love that. I don't think I've been so mesmerized with cartoony visuals like this since Cuphead.

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Finished chapter four and I'm not sure I'll play more. It's not bad by any means but it really isn't grabbing me either, at least not mechanically. The concept and presentation are top notch (though I'd have loved to see you leave footprints when walking through the paint trays), but the 2D/3D elements fill stiff and I really didn't care for any of the boss fights.
 
I've played an hour, it's cute. Thrash is the Dude! This is definitely one for the kiddos. It's going to be too kiddy for many I think.
My daughter says she's too old for it. :( I've not gotten to the 3d parts yet.
 
I put about 30 to 45, mins in and I just don't know. The presentation and art style is easily a 10/10. But the game seems to talk wayyyy too much and while I like the concept of it being a book and the page turns, it kind of comes across as mini loading screens. As mentioned, I've barely played and it's already annoying me. Not gonna give up on it because some of the levels were pretty unique but I really hope the pacing gets better.
 
I was all ready to buy this game but it's another pathetically easy game even by modern standards according to reviews. This trend is ruining so many games for me lately. Im not asking for Dark Souls difficulty but give me 'some' challenge at least ...they even have a separate easy mode so why do we have to make normal mode so brain dead too?

There is this notion lately that gamers want accessibility and that also means they shouldn't struggle at any point ...so we see the removal of timers, lives, etv we get enemies that you can close your eyes and kill them in 1 hit (Astrobot) and we get the game giving us "hints" every 5 seconds. Look at Mario games on Switch for another example of this trend: every Switch Mario is easier than the easiest Mario on any other Nintendo system.
 
Definitely a contender for most chill game of the year. I couldn't give a fuck about difficulty. Sometimes you just want a CHILL game to balance out the brain busters and skill checks.
 
Feel Like I'm On 42 said:
I was all ready to buy this game but it's another pathetically easy game even by modern standards according to reviews. This trend is ruining so many games for me lately. Im not asking for Dark Souls difficulty but give me 'some' challenge at least ...they even have a separate easy mode so why do we have to make normal mode so brain dead too?

There is this notion lately that gamers want accessibility and that also means they shouldn't struggle at any point ...so we see the removal of timers, lives, etv we get enemies that you can close your eyes and kill them in 1 hit (Astrobot) and we get the game giving us "hints" every 5 seconds. Look at Mario games on Switch for another example of this trend: every Switch Mario is easier than the easiest Mario on any other Nintendo system.
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Yeah, there's definitely a better way to solve this problem than the way they're doing it

I think they don't want the default/normal mode to be challenging because they don't want people to feel like they had to lower the difficulty at any point. They want people to say "Yay! I'm good at this game!" But the floor is there just in case.

They're definitely more worried about someone feeling left out and reacting emotionally by trashing the game ("this game sucks" said Beavis) than they are worried about someone who wants an engaging experience.

(said Beavis would probably crank it directly to Hard too)

But yeah, just add difficulty levels to a game. Stop either trying to manipulate our "experience" or being lazy and just do it lol.

Still mad Mario RPG remake copies everything directly from the old game, has two difficulty modes, and neither one is as hard as the original which is already babies first rpg. I adore this game but I feel the remake was kinda a failure for this reason, if I want to play it again I'll probably go SNES. Painfully easy to fix this in an RPG, change some numbers.
 
I love the style, but damn it's so slow. Every ten seconds it stops to tell you something, and it takes forever to say the most simple things. Maybe I'd be less aggravated if I watched someone else play through it. Maybe this isn't for me, but again, I love the style and it's not a bad design at all. The only gripe is the pacing and constant stopping. It's like Skyward Sword all over again.
 
Is this a case of style over substance? I'm seeing a fair amount of middling opinion on the game, particularly the game play and pacing.
 
It's definitely a slow start. I'm on chapter 3 now. The controls kinda feel like a less responsive Cat Quest to me. Which might be by design since really responsive would make it even easier. I'm hoping the 3D parts has more to it than stealth and light puzzles.

So far I'm not as blown away as I hoped but I like it enough to see it through.
 
I'm on Chapter 5 and I like it quite a bit. It's not remotely close to Zelda level or even the level of a game like Tunic. But it's a solid adventure. The graphics are gorgeous. My biggest gripe so far is there's quite a bit of dialogue and it hurts the pacing. I just want to play. Knowing my temperament, at some point it's gonna reach a breaking point and I'm just gonna start skipping all the dialogue and just make it a gameplay only experience.
 
DragoonKain said:
I'm on Chapter 5 and I like it quite a bit. It's not remotely close to Zelda level or even the level of a game like Tunic. But it's a solid adventure. The graphics are gorgeous. My biggest gripe so far is there's quite a bit of dialogue and it hurts the pacing. I just want to play. Knowing my temperament, at some point it's gonna reach a breaking point and I'm just gonna start skipping all the dialogue and just make it a gameplay only experience.
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The worst thing about this is that most of this dialogue and explanation could have been done during gameplay, or not necessary at all. They literally had a whole ass conversation about how I needed a key to unlock a gate, when both gate and key were in the same damn frame of the conversation. This isn't rocket science. Just let me play, and save the scenes for things that can't be done during gameplay. The scenes are actually decent, but I'm always so pushed to get to the next gameplay section since they keep taking it away from me every time something pops up.

I'm actually enjoying what's happening right now, and the pacing has become a bit more normal. Hopefully it doesn't regress. For reference, I literally went into this game almost as blind as one could. I had zero idea about the shit that would turn up, but I'm down.

Aaaaand now they are explaining shit I've already done, again 🙄
 
BlackTron said:
Yeah, there's definitely a better way to solve this problem than the way they're doing it

I think they don't want the default/normal mode to be challenging because they don't want people to feel like they had to lower the difficulty at any point. They want people to say "Yay! I'm good at this game!" But the floor is there just in case.

They're definitely more worried about someone feeling left out and reacting emotionally by trashing the game ("this game sucks" said Beavis) than they are worried about someone who wants an engaging experience.

(said Beavis would probably crank it directly to Hard too)

But yeah, just add difficulty levels to a game. Stop either trying to manipulate our "experience" or being lazy and just do it lol.

Still mad Mario RPG remake copies everything directly from the old game, has two difficulty modes, and neither one is as hard as the original which is already babies first rpg. I adore this game but I feel the remake was kinda a failure for this reason, if I want to play it again I'll probably go SNES. Painfully easy to fix this in an RPG, change some numbers.
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This guy gets it^^ and yes, Mario RPG remake was the game that made me see this trend with Nintendo then Mario Wonder really pissed me off because that couldve been a masterpiece otherwise. Mario RPG is pathetic ..."lets make this super faithful to the original ....except for the difficulty of course ...that we have to make easier even tho the original is easy as pie".

They did it again with thousand year door btw making the active battle timers more generous than the original ...these companies are doing this because it's apparently making them more money but it's not how they used to make games, even Nintendo with their "kiddie" reputation used to focus on making great difficulty curves now it's only the last 10% that has any challenge. Literally ruining games in the process.
 
Progress tracker says I'm 43% through so I feel comfortable giving my opinion: it's a charming little game! The Plucky Squire takes inspiration from the likes of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Tearaway and even Scribblenauts. Needless to say it's bursting with creativity. I'm digging the various perspective shifts and vibrant art while unique, one-off gameplay segments keep things fresh.

Speaking of art, the game pays homage to the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, Yayoi Kusama, Banksy, Basquiat and more. If you're an art lover (as I am) these references should amuse you. Presentation is strong throughout, it has a clear identity and sense of style. Overall a cool, chill experience, not blown away and it won't be winning any GOTY awards but I'm happy it exists and hope the devs find success with it.
 
TheDarkPhantom said:
Overall a cool, chill experience, not blown away and it won't be winning any GOTY awards but I'm happy it exists and hope the devs find success with it.
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Exactly how I feel about it and Im halfway through

The seamless transitions between the 2D and 3D is constantly impressive to me

Also the game brings to mind the Teeny Little Super Guy

 
This game was really buggy for me on PS5. I crashed twice already and on my second crash it corrupted my save data too in chapter 6 so im good with this game...
 
Luipadre said:
This game was really buggy for me on PS5. I crashed twice already and on my second crash it corrupted my save data too in chapter 6 so im good with this game.
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There were reports of saves being lost in Astrobot. I'm starting to think PS5 has an issue.
Or maybe user SSD?
 
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Magic Carpet said:
There were reports of saves being lost in Astrobot. I'm starting to think PS5 has an issue.
Or maybe user SSD?
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Good point regarding user SSD. I have a launch PS5 (original SSD), HEAVY use, tons of games played, zero corrupted files. One thing I will say is this dev's previous game on PS4 gave me a corrupted save file not once but twice so it's hard to be certain.
 
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