Welcome to this casual gamer’s review of A Plague Tale: Innocence, and I’m keeping it completely spoiler-free.
The story is hard to explain without spoiling anything because most of the game is wrapped up in mystery. The game takes place in France during the mid-14th century, and you’re playing as Amicia, a fifteen-year-old French noble during the Hundred Years’ War. There’s a war on one side and a mysterious plague slowly emerging on the other, which is where the rats come in—but I’m leaving it at that regarding the rats.
Amicia lives in a massive castle with all the servants and butlers that come with a noble household. The French Inquisition shows up demanding information about her little brother Hugo, who’s only five years old. What’s interesting is that Amicia is almost estranged from her mom and brother even though they live in the same castle. She barely sees them because Hugo has an illness that keeps him confined with a weak body. Because of that, Amicia’s mom spends all her time trying to find medicinal solutions and a cure for Hugo, locked away in the castle with him. This leaves Amicia alone and resentful—she doesn’t understand why her mom spends all that time with Hugo and not with her.
Things get chaotic from there, but that’s all I’m saying. The game mostly follows Amicia and Hugo on their own, and what makes it unique is that this basic premise builds to absolute chaos, but they’re just kids.
The gameplay is really slow-paced. This isn’t a run-and-gun game—there’s no guns, you’re not shooting arrows non-stop like in Battlefield or Call of Duty. The game has a linear path with no open map, but these paths require you to be subtle. You focus on hiding and timing your distractions with various methods available. If you have to battle an enemy, it’s tough, so you’re better off never being seen if possible.
Then there are the rats that carry the plague. They’re really creepy, and they’ll make you hate rats if you don’t already.
The rats add a unique sense because if they get hold of you, it’s game over—they’ll eat you alive. You can even direct them toward enemies. It’s astonishing that even with the number of rats in certain areas, the framerate never drops.
This game requires patience, and one of the great things about it is how disturbing it is because of the grotesque environments. There’s a war happening, a plague happening, people dying constantly. It’s very depressing and extremely gory—definitely not for the faint of heart. Imagine Game of Thrones style but way beyond that in certain scenes and places. It shows just how difficult this struggle is for Amicia. She has to go through destruction, chaos, death, and suffering while taking care of her brother who has an illness. It’s all this pressure building on your main character, which makes the story harder hitting but also sympathetic toward Amicia and Hugo.
You’re not just following them though. You’ll meet other side characters who play critical roles within the story. The game mechanics and controls are spot-on. You’re not meant to play fast-paced, and the controls are smooth. Yes, Amicia moves slowly because you’re supposed to, and it works well within the game. The mechanics are almost flawless. There were rare times where companions would overstep and get bitten by rats because the AI isn’t always using common sense. This didn’t happen often, but when it did, you had to reset to your checkpoint because allies shouldn’t die in those spots. This happened maybe three times throughout my entire gameplay, which took about ten hours to complete.
The sound design is incredible. The music is eerie and completely adds to the atmosphere like you’re watching a good thriller. The soundtrack is actually one of the best pieces of the entire game. The voice acting is absolutely superb with great emotion from the actors portraying their characters. Combat sounds aren’t frequent, but when they happen, they’re spot-on.
The game studio (Asobo Studio) do have a collection of games under them, but let’s face it, they’re not the most well-known or biggest studio around. I think they only have like 200 to 300 staff members, which is pretty small for a video game studio. But what they’ve accomplished with this game is absolutely phenomenal. With minimal bugs, an amazing soundtrack, a pretty good story, solid game mechanics, and great graphics—graphics don’t define if a game is good in my opinion. It’s all about whether you actually enjoy the interaction and adventure, but the graphics here are phenomenal. I played this on PlayStation 5 with the PlayStation 4 disc, and it’s shocking just how good this game looked.
This is a game I recommend anyone play, though keep in mind it’s slow-paced, so it has to be suited toward you. I recently reviewed Hitman World of Assassination, which is also a slow-paced stealth-based game. If you enjoy something like that, you’ll absolutely enjoy this.
I’ve already played and completed the sequel, Plague Tale Requiem, and I’ll put a review of that on my website shortly.
