Stories: Path of Destinies is the perfect hybrid of Bastion and Groundhog Day – or Edge of Tomorrow if you prefer Tom Cruise to Bill Murray. With its whimsical design, furry-centric cast, and intuitive RPG elements, this is a fantastic game for the entire family and a great introduction of the genre to pre-teen gamers.
Stories is a slow burn, barely a spark during the prologue as you begin as Reynardo chasing “the kid” across an isometric landscape learning the basic controls of the game. When you finally catch up to the kid you claim his book and that is where the real adventure begins. The book is the gateway to your very own choose your own adventure style narrative where, prior to each of the five chapters, you get to make a choice on how to proceed. This choice will not only impact where you go next, what you do, and who you do it with, but also dictate future choices further down the story tree.
There are 24 possible outcomes and all 24 are recorded and reviewable in the end-game summary screen along with four core Truths that can be unlocked to uncover the one true ending. A single pass through the story takes about an hour, and while it’s possible to uncover the true ending in about five hours, there is the potential of more than 24 hours for completionists. The real brilliance of Stories isn’t revealed until you’ve completed your first story and the pages start to flip back to the beginning of the book.
Like any good time-looping paradox movie, Reynardo begins each replay armed with the knowledge of all his past adventures through the game as well as any upgrades to his arsenal and personal stats. Think of it as 24 New Game+ replays, but each new pass has you going up against deadlier enemies coming at you in greater numbers in more unique varieties, constantly forcing you to change up your tactics.
Combat is fairly simple at first; basically, you just mashing the X button to swing your sword, but soon enough you start assigning skill points to a variety of combat perks that allow for faster attacks and greater damage. Skill points can also be used to enhance your own health and stamina or power-up your dash and grapple hook abilities. It’s a manageable upgrade tree that slowly evolves the way you play the game over time.
Early on you learn that a Hero Sword is required to open most of the doors in the game, but there are other elemental doors that require special swords such as Fire, Ice, etc. You’ll need to build and upgrade these swords from scratch by finding chests and smashing crates and urns until you have enough resources to visit a workbench and make a new sword. These swords offer powerful attacks, setting creatures on fire, turning them into ice statues, etc. as well as granting you access to special areas locked away behind those elemental doors. It’s behind these doors you’ll start to uncover magical gems; three of which can be slotted into your gauntlet for various stat and skill boosts, and even these gems can be leveled-up.
Admittedly, the game is a button masher, and if you plan on going for all 24 endings things will start to get repetitive over time. The combat does get devious at times, forcing you to prioritize certain enemies and create your own strategies. Early on there are guys with shields and you must grab a non-shield enemy and throw him into the shield guy to make him drop it so you can attack – at least until you get the Shield Breaker attack. Other guys launch fire attacks and wizards lurk in the background creating powerful buffs on normal attackers.
And when I say “guys” I mean ravens mostly. Every character in Stories: Path of Destinies is a critter of some sort. Reynardo is a fox; his love interest from Sword Fu school is a cat who was adopted by a toad who is the evil emperor that controls the armies of giant ravens. All of these animals put a definite storybook spin on the narrative but not nearly as much as the narrator who, much in the tradition of Bastion, narrates your every move while providing valuable insight into the game and even recapping past events. The narrator has hundreds of quips for every situation, and I was impressed at the lack of repeating dialogue, even when replaying from a checkpoint. Best of all, the narrator performs all the character voices much like a dad would reading a bedtime story. It’s totally goofy and totally awesome, giving the whole storybook premise added authenticity. The rest of the audio is fantastic with a magical score (also sold separately) and great sound effects.
The game looks like a storybook come to life with gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations, colorful detailed environments, and smoothly animated characters that had me wishing the camera had a zoom option. You’ll make repeated visits to many levels, but you’ll always be exploring new areas thanks to your sword upgrades, and new events and characters will pop up in old locales. The only level that started to wear thin was the final chapter where you make your way across a fleet of flying ships to the emperor’s command ship. There wasn’t a lot of variety to that level.
By my fifth play-through I had all my swords built and leveled-up and was about halfway through the personal skill tree, so admittedly, you lose a bit of motivation for going after all of those out-of-the-way chests. You’ll also start retreading familiar ground as you start to repeat earlier levels to make your way to a new branch point. Diehard completionists may want to unlock all 24 possible endings, but for less dedicated players, you’ll probably want to uncover the true ending in less than ten passes and there is a handy truth icon you can unlock that will help you navigate the story flow to reach that ending.
Stories: Path of Destinies is quite simply a delightful adventure with some RPG-lite elements lurking beneath its innocent stylized graphical charm. The game is loaded with humor including numerous pop-culture references in the dialogue and even the names of the Achievements. Fans of Star Wars, Tomb Raider, and Sly Cooper are sure to get a chuckle, just to name a few. Perfect for kids of all ages, Stories: Path of Destinies is a fresh and original take on the action-RPG genre, and solid proof that even a fox can learn from his mistakes.
