Game of the Month #66 (July 2020) - Pyre

Pyre is a party-based RPG from the creators of Bastion and Transistor. Lead your band of exiles to freedom through a series of mystical competitions in the Campaign, or challenge a friend to a fast-paced ritual showdown in the head-to-head Versus Mode.

I guess you weren't a great Observer of your thread title ;)

I guess you weren't a great Observer of your thread title ;)

Ahh FFS again. Okay EverDred can you change the thread title for me

Okay this the second Supergiant game for a GotM and i do highly recommend it. I've already played it and reviewed it so here it is:

Pyre is an excellent and unique game from Supergiant with an awesome story and characters to hold the game together.
Pyre is a mixture of a text based adventure game and sports game. In it you have a pilgrim style quest to gain freedom from the downside and must take 3 of 8 characters into a match against other pilgrims for the chance of freedom.
The game involves taking a star and either throwing or sacrificing a character with the ball into the opponents pyre and the game is won when the other team has lost all there hit points. Players can be banished for a short time by stepping into a other players presence which can be fired at the opponents but cannot be used when the player holds the star and when you sacrifice yourself to the other users pyre you are banished until someone else has scored.
Ultimately this is a fun if simple gameplay which makes up a large portion of the game. Each of the different characters have a different setup and play style although I felt that the characters weren't created equally and usually preferred using the faster characters over the slow ones. Still each character has they uses and the story actively encourages using all your characters.
The biggest straight of this game is the characters. Each has their unique back story, motives and wants and each have their own relationships and clashes with all other characters whom you encounter including other pilgrim teams. The game also has a great reversal of the team sacrifice. Normally when you lose a team mate it is due to death but in this case it is due to the character achieving freedom but it also means losing them. Ultimately it is the character who stay who are making the sacrifice especially when it becomes obvious later on that not everyone is making it out of the downside.
The story is pretty well built but takes second stage to the characters and acts more of a back drop to progress the characters through there development and relationships. That's not a big problem as the characters are the best part of the game. Never the less I wish that they continued with the pilgrimage travelling which you do in the first cycle of the rite where the next few rights were travelled through using a balloon.
As always the artistic style of this game is beautiful with a great mixture of colour and a mesmerizing soundtrack it is well worth a listen to as a separate entity.
Ultimately Pyre is a beautiful and unique game from supergiant which I'd highly recommend anyone to play.

9/10

I intend a replay but i'm not sure I will be able to now that i'm on a forced break from games for a while but I still recommend anyone to play it

Okay this the second Supergiant game for a GotM and i do highly recommend it. I've already played it and reviewed it so here it is:

Pyre is an excellent and unique game from Supergiant with an awesome story and characters to hold the game together.
Pyre is a mixture of a text based adventure game and sports game. In it you have a pilgrim style quest to gain freedom from the downside and must take 3 of 8 characters into a match against other pilgrims for the chance of freedom.
The game involves taking a star and either throwing or sacrificing a character with the ball into the opponents pyre and the game is won when the other team has lost all there hit points. Players can be banished for a short time by stepping into a other players presence which can be fired at the opponents but cannot be used when the player holds the star and when you sacrifice yourself to the other users pyre you are banished until someone else has scored.
Ultimately this is a fun if simple gameplay which makes up a large portion of the game. Each of the different characters have a different setup and play style although I felt that the characters weren't created equally and usually preferred using the faster characters over the slow ones. Still each character has they uses and the story actively encourages using all your characters.
The biggest straight of this game is the characters. Each has their unique back story, motives and wants and each have their own relationships and clashes with all other characters whom you encounter including other pilgrim teams. The game also has a great reversal of the team sacrifice. Normally when you lose a team mate it is due to death but in this case it is due to the character achieving freedom but it also means losing them. Ultimately it is the character who stay who are making the sacrifice especially when it becomes obvious later on that not everyone is making it out of the downside.
The story is pretty well built but takes second stage to the characters and acts more of a back drop to progress the characters through there development and relationships. That's not a big problem as the characters are the best part of the game. Never the less I wish that they continued with the pilgrimage travelling which you do in the first cycle of the rite where the next few rights were travelled through using a balloon.
As always the artistic style of this game is beautiful with a great mixture of colour and a mesmerizing soundtrack it is well worth a listen to as a separate entity.
Ultimately Pyre is a beautiful and unique game from supergiant which I'd highly recommend anyone to play.

9/10

I intend a replay but i'm not sure I will be able to now that i'm on a forced break from games for a while but I still recommend anyone to play it

Wait if you don't intend to replay it does that nullify your vote for it, or am I just scrambling for a 4-way tie in the vain hope that ME wins?

This was a 10/10 for me the first time around and I'm really looking forward to playing it again.

Wait if you don't intend to replay it does that nullify your vote for it, or am I just scrambling for a 4-way tie in the vain hope that ME wins?

Definite reach there, you can hang on til August ;)

Wait if you don't intend to replay it does that nullify your vote for it, or am I just scrambling for a 4-way tie in the vain hope that ME wins?

Nope cause I will play it when i can

x-post from the main Book Club thread:

Okay so it turns out I have a giftable copy of Pyre sat in my steam inventory. Whether or not it wins lemme know if any of you want this. Offer open to anyone who has been a member for >6mo, or less at my discretion (e.g. active but newer users). Either way drop me a PM :)

EDIT: Claimed.

Alright! I got this like a year or two ago and I played it for about an hour or two. I liked it but I forgot about it and haven't touched it since. Maybe I'll join in on this!

This is the only Supergiant game that didn't quite hit me while watching it's trailer, so I ended up skipping it (looking forward to play Hades though).

Oh well, just like with Observer last month, now I have an excuse to play it.

I had not hear of this game before to be honest. Now i'm looking to it this month.

I've been playing Pyre the whole day now. Had to deal with 2 crashes that made me re-battle twice to pass two rites, what was really boring, but besides that everything went pretty much okay. Adding everything else as a spoiler.

Art is 10/10, characters are 10/10, backstory and personalities are great, HOWEVER the game got repetitive after finishing the first 8 "battles" and starting the liberation rites. I've decided to liberate Jodi first (as I didn't really like her personality + play style) and Rukey second (was one of my mains so far). Ti'Zo is the best character and Pamitha is also awesome, so I'm probably not liberating them yet as I'll be using them to carry the others through the game.

Just finished the game. I'll have to add all all my comments with a spoiler tag.

- The art was outstanding
- The soundtrack started fine, but through my progress I started liking it a lot more. The credit's soundtrack was beyond beautiful, definitely the best song of the game.
- The story also started a bit warm but it escalated in a really nice way. I thought that I'd just keep liberating everyone, but it was interesting to see that you could only go through 7 liberation rituals (and you could even liberate other team's members, although I didn't do it). It made me feel bad thinking that I'd have to choose people to stay behind.
My liberation order was: Jodi, Rukey, Hedwyn, Ti'Zo, Pamitha, Volfred & Bertrude. I decided to not liberate Fae (the name I picked) neither Gilman as I felt they'd be just fine staying in the Downside. I couldn't connect to the reader so, in the end, between the reader, Bertrude and Oralech I picked Bertrude, since Oralech wasn't friendly every time I talked to him.

I also felt I should've liberated Dalbert Oldheart (the leader of the Fates) since he's been really kind to me every time I met him, and I felt bad knowing that he passed.

10/10

Just finished this now. It took a while to get used to the gameplay but eventually I found a setup that suited my play style. The last final liberations felt a bit cheap at times, but that was probably my fault for not levelling up every character evenly and being left with the ones I hadn't touched. The story was very engaging to start with, but I felt myself losing interesting nearer the end and began to skip the optional dialouges.
I'd say that this is quite a step up from Transistor, although for me it still doesn't reach the highs of Bastion. Very interested to see how Hades is once it eventually releases.
Final Time: 10hr 42m
Rating: 8/10

About 3 and a half hours into the game, and just got through the first liberation rite. I'm really liking the game so far. Love the aesthetic and the gameplay seems really fresh to me, so it does keep me hooked while I'm playing. However, even though I have a lot of fun while I play it, I find it kind of hard to pick back up again. I don't feel the story has trapped me enough to want to see it through, and the gameplay is fun but seems like you can play a couple matches and be done with it. Not really building up to some major pay-off gameplay wise.

Really like the cast of characters too. Some more than others, obviously, but I have fun with all of them in some way or another. I'll definitely continue playing it, and I'm aiming to beat it by the end of the month, but we shall see what happens.

Also, if the forum could do a poll, I'd really like to create one to see how everyone named "-ae". Just for the fun of it. Also wonder if she has a cannonical name...

Right had my first replay session. I'm playing on the true nightwing difficulty (hardest difficulty) and played two games one with the minimum (3) modifiers and the other with all the modifiers on. I won the minimum and lost the all. I think the needed modifiers will increase per game the longer into true nightwing mode so suspect i'm going to be playing a losing run but i will try and persist throughout the month. My RSI is still not fully injured so i'm limiting my playtime till then as well.

From the modifiers the one which seems to be the worst to me is the increase reaction from your opponents as it increases the action of the AI tremendously where i can't keep up.

Just started this tonight - it's off to a good start because I was thinking "oh I'll just have a quick go before I got to bed" thinking I'll give it like 20 minutes to get a taste... 45 minutes later and I have to force myself to stop.

Suffice to say - loving that Supergiant have continued to make games with such beautiful presentation. The art is phenomenal and that Darren Korb soundtrack really goes a long way to make it feel like a Supergiant game. I've only just touched the beginning of the story, but I'm interested to see where it goes. I wasn't sure if I'd like the "rites" aspect of the game, but after a few "matches" it's actually pretty fun (just playing on normal).

Looking forward to seeing where this game goes - easy to see that it's worth all the acclaim though. This is a wonderfully talented studio.

Started playing this a few days ago and I'm mostly going to echo what has already been said here. The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at and I love the organic form of storytelling. I like slowly uncovering how this world works and really appreciate them not overloading the game with expository details on the intricate world they've created.

The gameplay is super engaging, too. It's one of those easy to learn, hard to master games. For some reason, I bought this game years ago and just never got around to playing it. Really glad this was chosen for the game of the month because I'm now seeing what I was missing.

Right so I've had my second play session. My RSI isn't fully healed but I've got a brace on which helps. Well i lost my 3rd match it was much closer then the 2nd and i only had 3 of the modifiers on. I released during it that i'm paying too much attention to the ball which just makes me more vulnerable to attacks which causes me to get most of my party to be banished. I tried a practice session as they opened up after the 3rd fight and tried my hand. While the modifiers aren't applied it did give me a challenge and i was able to win when i spent more time trying to break the enemies defenses then attack. This game is defiantly no cake walk if you go for the hardest difficulty and you really need to be able to switch and use your characters with ease throughout the game if you want to get victory. I'm still not sure how well i'll do and i'm not optimistic of getting a good ending but we'll have to see what happens

Just finished it right now. Overall, I found it to be a great game. Gave it a 9/10 here. It took me around 9 hours in total to complete, and while I didn't read everything that I got on the book of rites, I think I did pretty much everything else that is to be done on a first playthrough.

Some have said it, and I agree. The strongest point I think are the characters. Even the once I didn't like much or disliked in some way grew on me, or at least found them interesting in some way. Gameplay itself was fun enough, and with the mechanic of liberations and not being able to just stick with one team for the full playthrough helped it from becoming repetitive, which could have easily happened I'd say. I'd also love to play agains another Human player to see how it goes.

Ending was kind of...Weird for me. I got a pretty good ending I'd say from what I saw, and I succeeded in all liberations. But it seems that there is no way to actually be a fully happy ending. Which is fine. Not all games should end happily and some tough choices are interesting. But still, I feel like I'd have liked to see many more interactions between characters that, as the game is laid out, I don't think would be possible to see without many playthroughs.

All in all, great experience. I'm really happy to have joined for this GotM. Noxalas!

I've been playing it on-and-off for the last week. So far I'm around 6 rites into the game. First things first; yes, the art is gorgeous. But that was expected from Supergiant. I'm enjoying the gameplay too, I had no idea how it would play but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I've decided to retire my second playthrough. I found True nightwing mode too hard for myself and i just wasn't having any fun with it. The AI just seemed to react much faster then me and i just couldn't handle it. Perhaps I could improve but honestly I don't see that happening. I could go down to an easier diffculty but as I've already completed this game I don't think i'll get much else out of it. I still recommend this game but if you do decide to play in true nightwing mode make sure you can put up a good fight as it really hampers your enjoyment of the game if you can't replay matches and have to go from defeat to defeat

I've reached the Liberation Rites and I'm a bit confused. I'm mainly doing regular rites and the Liberation ones when they unlock. But I'm not sure when it's that, so I feel like I'm just running around until they are unlocked after a certain time. Am I missing something?

I've reached the Liberation Rites and I'm a bit confused. I'm mainly doing regular rites and the Liberation ones when they unlock. But I'm not sure when it's that, so I feel like I'm just running around until they are unlocked after a certain time. Am I missing something?

No, that's correct. There is a pattern of going for some regular rites and then a liberation one. I wanted to say more but it would probably be a spoiler.