A promising strategy game filled with poorly-executed ideas, Arcade Distillery’s debut Vita title underwhelms.
| Developer | Arcade Distillery |
| Publisher |
Arcade Distillery; Limited Run Games
|
| Franchise | Plague Universe |
| Genre | Strategy |
| PSTV | Yes |
| Physical English |
Yes – NA only (LRG)
|
World-building & Story
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of people have been eradicated by a deadly outbreak, Plague Road casts you as a Doctor who takes it upon himself to gather up survivors and relocate them to a new settlement outside of the city.
The game excels most in its atmosphere and world-building – I did feel immersed in this land that felt so alien and removed from anywhere I’d been before. Mutated flora and fauna litter the farmland and forests on your way in to the city, which provides an ominous backdrop to constantly remind you of where you’re heading. Character designs too are bizarre and unique, giving Plague Road a very distinct feel.
With that said, there’s very little done in terms of narrative to actually flesh out this nightmarish land. Jim Sterling does a stellar job with the narration but that’s about all you get, save for the occasional conversation with a survivor who might dangle a small amount of information but never elaborate on it. There’s minimalist storytelling but I don’t feel that’s what’s going on here – just a lack of effort to actually explain this world.
Without any real plot in place, the desire to find out more quickly falls away and you’re left with a promising but ultimately hollow adventure – which is a shame, because there’s a lot of potential here.
Presentation & Sound
Luc Bernard’s artstyle is one of those things that you’ll either love or hate and it permeates through practically every element of Plague Road. It’s loud and obtuse yet worked well enough for me to create a memorable aesthetic, but your experience may differ significantly.
It’s an exaggerated computer-drawn artstyle where characters move with big, overt steps and everything has a tonne of minute details – in fact the characters are designed to be fairly grotesque in their appearance, with things like a Platypus wielding a gun full of toxins as one of the enemies you’ll come across. The Doctor is memorably drawn (highlighted by the fact he’s all over the artwork), but the rest of the playable cast are less impressive in design, although feature plenty of detail.
The character design overspills into the environments which are similarly stuffed with objects, mostly mutated trees, pillars and walls. Combined with things like swaying grass it creates an incredibly busy feel – at times this can be very distracting as the combat arenas are directly linked to the surrounding area, although it didn’t bother me too much as I could generally make out what I was doing. What I didn’t enjoy as much was repetition – as a procedurally generated game you can expect to see slightly tweaked zones over and over which gets tiring.
Sound is anchored by the aforementioned brilliant narration from Jim Sterling (told in rhyming fashion too), but this is infrequent and the rest of the package is lacking. I enjoyed the soundtrack up to a point, but it never changes or evolves meaning you’re left hearing it repeatedly. There’s no other voice acting which is a real shame given how little dialogue is actually in the game, while the effects are nothing special.
Gameplay & Content
Mixing exploration elements with grid turn-based combat and a little bit of base-building, Plague Road is an excellent idea on paper that botches the execution thanks to repetition that ultimately frustrates the game’s core. The first few hours are fun, but beyond this it’s not worth seeing through.
You’ll start out in the farm, which is effectively your home base. The idea is that you venture out on expeditions to rescue survivors, who will come back to the farm and will then come with you on further expeditions. Each survivor you rescue will be one of five classes (i.e. Engineer, Nurse, Soldier) and you can upgrade their skills by ‘retiring’ any surplus survivors you don’t need into the corresponding building, which provides a minor element of resource management and is a fairly fun idea.
Out on the expeditions, you’ll move across a series of screens in a 2D manner (but the areas are 3D – think Paper Mario), uncovering them part-by-part like in a Metroidvania (or something like Exist Archive). You’ll find survivors represented as hooded figures as well as treasure chests containing potions, alongside enemies that can be avoided as long as you manage to outrun them (which is more difficult than it seems). If you do get caught, you’ll engage in combat which takes the form of a grid-based TRPG.
Combat is probably the best aspect of Plague Road – each character has a turn based on their speed rating, you can both move and attack with your turn and different characters have a range of different abilities from simple stab attacks to more elaborate runaway trains which hit every enemy on screen. They can be fairly challenging too as enemies are decently smart, summoning allies and striking frontline attackers.
Problems start to appear as soon as you realise the grind involved in progressing. The game does a poor job of explaining its features and one thing I missed is that you need to spend a currency to progress to the next level which is only awarded upon defeating enemies. This wouldn’t be a problem if there weren’t already far too many battles in the game as running away from enemies rarely ever works, leading to a lot of samey combat against familiar groups of foes that never evolves (there’s no levelling or exp, meaning you can only evolve your characters by retiring troops in the base).
There’s a heavy element of chance in so much of Plague Road too – the survivors you rescue will be a random class with random skills and some are far more useful than others – the aoe attacks that hit multiple foes are invaluable but whether you get one of these is pure luck. You can upgrade your buildings to ensure a certain class learns these skills, but there’s no indication what level they’ll gain it and it involves a lot of grinding to retire enough troops for this.
Battles can be irritating too – as a roguelike, any characters who die are gone forever which is fine, but not when it’s luck whether they live. The game has an action bar along the top which shows who is attacking next, but it is indicated by an icon which is the same for multiple creatures in the same class – meaning if you’re up against three of the same foe, it’s pure chance whether you take out the one who is due to move next. Combined with the fact that AI will sometimes gang up on one character and sometimes leave them alone leads to many frustrating moments.
Unfortunately Plague Road is filled with unpolished elements like these, that highlight just what an ultimately rushed project it is. There are a number of good ideas here and I did enjoy myself for the first couple of hours, but beyond this it became a repetitive slog without a satisfying payoff. It’s a real shame, because with some of its ideas expanded and longer in development it could have been something special.
Conclusion
Plague Road squanders its potential with an undercooked story, repetitive gameplay that never evolves beyond its initial challenge and some busy graphics that obscure what’s happening on screen. Underneath this there are some smart ideas set in a unique world and I certainly can say I had fun at points, but my memories will be of a title that didn’t manage to realise its lofty goals.
5.0/10
kresnik258gaming 