"...A unique puzzle game with fun mechanics and no shortage of charm!..."
PC | PS5 | SWITCH | XBOX
HOW I PLAYED: I played The Plucky Squire as a part of my PS Plus Extra Subscription. 50% of my 10 hour playtime was on my PS Portal Handheld.
STORY — 15/20
INTRO
You begin this tale as a 2D character in a kids book and you play like you're reading the book, watching everything unfold. The game quickly introduces you to the main gimmick of this adventurous puzzle game, and that's the ability to change a word in a written sentence on the books page to another word found elsewhere in the book! This starts off simple with having the player simple complete a sentence: "The .... swung ...." to 'The GATE swung OPEN". Soon, we gain the ability to jump out the book and become a 3D character... This seemed like a hard thing to pull off, but the developers did a great job to make this flow.
CUTSCENES
The 2D cutscenes completely match the "book reading" feel of the game. They are mainly a narrator talking as pages turn. In the 3D world the cutscenes are generally panning shots showing the 3D world and how it is arranged in this chapter of the game.
WORLD BUILDING
Surprisingly, the world building is great. The game gives a clear picture of what the world is like, then over the course of the game, the world expands as you progress and this is done mainly through cutscenes and dialogue with NPC's.
OVERALL STORY
The story is really quite unique and has interesting twists along the way. However, it was a bit underwhelming overall once you roll credits.
GRAPHICS — 12/15
CHARACTER MODELS
The 2D world in The Plucky Squire has such beauty in it's art direction that sadly doesn't transfer out into the 3D world.
ENVIRONMENTS
The environments in the 2D world are cute and the art direction is nice but leaves the 3D world looking a lot less impressive, just like the character models.
SPECIAL FX
Again, the Special Effects in the 2D world really suit the art direction. In the 3D world they are up to par, with things like the explosions (shown below) being visually impressive, but nothing "memorable" here.
AUDIO — 10/15
AMBIENCE
The music does well to get you going as you work through the puzzles. The ambience is comfortable and relaxing when needed and dark and dreary when things take a turn for the worse. There is a bit lacking at times though, mainly in the 3D world.
BOSS MUSIC
The boss music, during a few of the fights, is great and helps elevate these boss battles.
SOUND DESIGN
The sound design was fine, nothing held anything back. It was all serviceable, but nothing memorable or outstanding. PERFORMANCE — 7/10
FRAME RATE
There is inconsistent frame pacing for this game in the 3D world. It was noticeable, even if the frame rate wasn't dipping much lower than 60.
had no major issues during my playtime. No crashes, but I did have two bugs. The first was a turret spawned on my character and held me in place for about 5 seconds. The second bug was during the start sequence to the final part of the final boss encounter. Luckily this was fixed when I exited and reentered the game.
GAMEPLAY — 32/40
CONTROLS
Controls are responsive in the 2D world but felt a bit off in the 3D world. However, this may have been me adjusting to the two worlds.
MECHANICS
(I'm avoiding spoilers while describing this section) The Plucky Squire does a great job with it's unique puzzle mechanics and kept the gameplay fresh without going too hard on the difficulty. The sentence mechanic scales well throughout the game and manages to add more complex systems and functions without getting tedious.
PACING
There was a good pace to the story, but there was times where I wanted to go back to the 2D world and do some puzzles but was stuck having to do a long section in the 3D world.
UI/UE
The UI and menu really suits well and reflects the worlds charm perfectly.
BOSS QUALITY
The Boss battles are quite unique and change up from the gameplay loop completely. Leaving them feeling fresh. However, they are quite basic and over quite quickly.
ENEMY VARIETY
There are very few enemies in The Plucky Squire, but has enough for the gameplay style.
GAMEPLAY VARIETY
There is little way to play differently, but given how diverse the 2D and 3D worlds are and how each boss battle is compared to the others, there is a surprisingly large amount of variety in such a short game.
"One trick pony" is what I would refer to a puzzle game like this as they are not really designed with replayability in mind, but you may replay to get things you may have missed on your first playthrough.
BONUS — 2/4
The controls are fully remappable and there are multiple options to assist; if needed.
OVERALL — 78/100
The Plucky Squire is a unique puzzle game with fun mechanics and no shortage of charm! The 2D/3D world dynamic worked well, with neither feeling gimmicky or pointless but you may have noticed a common theme with the review in that the 3D world seemed to be holding back the 2D worlds beauty and charm but it was really just the 2D world excelling. If you like a good, short puzzle game with a unique feel, then maybe give The Plucky Squire a chance.
TL;DR 78/100 (GOOD) - A unique puzzle game with fun mechanics and no shortage of charm!
PICK UP THE PLUCKY SQUIRE HERE:
Nintendo: https://amzn.to/3XLQ67V
CHECK OUT OUR VIDEO REVIEW HERE
0 Comments