Reviews
[Review] Turn-Based RPG ‘Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones’ is Full of Repetitive Cosmic Horror
Set in H.P Lovecraft’s unfurling world of treachery, madness and horrors galore, Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is a point and click style RPG with turn-based combat elements. As to be expected, there’s a heavy emphasis on the story in this one from the get-go.
At first, I was charmed with Stygian. The cartoon-style graphics are easy on the eye and becoming of the setting, the attention to detail has not been lost here. Character selection is very straightforward, (as to be expected with a Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing game), there are character presets or for the more experienced you can start from scratch, delicately assigning those precious skill points exactly where you feel you need them. Which is where the hand-holding ends.
If you’ve read any Lovecraft, or played any other alternate universe style title (Sunless Seas being a recent notable example of the latter) then the setting will be enveloping and mysterious yet eerily familiar. The developers have put a lot of love and thought into crafting both story and characters; each one has their own very unique lexicon, for example, which makes them somewhat memorable. And your choices matter. I like choices.
Navigating the world is very easy, left click, go or interact, right-click for more actions. Couldn’t be simpler. It feels nice at first, even if you’re new to Lovecraft the music and atmosphere are intriguing enough to make you forget that in 3 hours you will be bored as hell watching your party meander slowly around. The various locations here are all fairly reminiscent, Arkham, Miskatonic University, etc etc, and they all look good. I’m a huge fan of the art style they’ve used; it lends itself to the weary, run-down aesthetic very well and is a good medium for bringing to life some of the more obscure and unbelievable characters that we find in Lovecraft.
The turn-based combat is where I feel Stygian particularly lets itself down. Instead of being a welcome or exciting break from a very text-heavy game it becomes an absolute chore, with the necessity to drive story progression the only reason to endure it. Turn-based combat has a very split camp, there are those that love it and those that abhor it. I’m a fan of it when done well (XCOM, anybody?) but I can’t quite put my finger on why it doesn’t work in Stygian. It feels, slow, dull and under-explained. I’m sure most have played turn-based combat games before, but there’s always a newcomer and Stygian won’t help you there, with only one page of a tutorial shortly after starting the game.
For example, during combat, there are several shielded spots you can move a character to, in order (I am assuming based on experience in similar games) to reduce incoming damage or increase the chance of an enemy’s shot missing you. Which is it? I have no idea as these spots seemingly did nothing except make my characters unable to find an ice cube in an igloo when it was their turn to rain down hell. Well, the looming madness certainly ran through me and I became a bit disenfranchised, to say the least.
Having said that, and despite the skill tree, it’s quite apparent that the combat isn’t the main focus of the game. Mostly you will be navigating various quests and dialogue options with NPC’s whilst balancing your party. The character design is good, the conversation options far from dull and this is certainly a game where you can fully absorb yourself in your role without feeling that you are only choosing basic dialogue options, ‘this line’s for the baddy, this one’s for the goody’ etc.
As the game and story unfold, your characters can receive various buffs and afflictions. Darkest Dungeon players will be familiar with this, although Stygian is nowhere near as unforgiving. This adds a nice element to the already well crafted role-playing elements; I particularly liked when my main character was afflicted with a ‘verbal diarrhea’ curse that caused some dialogue options to be replaced with, well, an insane load of gumph. Other afflictions cause problems in combat; some with game skills such as stealth, intelligence, etc. Nicely, the characters also have a belief system which adds another element to the game, certain dialogue interactions are rewarded with more experience points when playing your character out, for example, a materialistic character will receive bonuses for correctly cheating an NPC out of money.
Each character has certain skills to develop. There’s the occult skills, the subterfuge skills, all pertaining to relevant story arcs, items, and trainable skill bonuses. There’s a lot here for character building and general RPG fans which is mainly what I have scored the game as.
I spent a good few hours in Stygian, enjoying what it had to offer. However, progress is slow, and this isn’t a criticism; a rushed role-playing game would feel incredibly incomplete, but my own patience only affords so much time watching people walk back and forth across a screen before my interest wanes. This is a game made for Lovecraft fans or those looking to itch the RPG gap that games such as Pillars of Eternity have left.
Stygian is a good role-playing game, particularly if you’re the type who can really get into your character. There’s plenty to read and lots of information to take in, this isn’t a game that will please the adrenaline junkies, but if atmosphere and a feeling of reward through solving mysteries sound good then this is one to pick up.
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones review code provided by the publisher.
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is out now on PC.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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