But goodness me can it get tiresome to play.
We’ll come back to the issues with that, because thematically this is all genuinely lovely stuff.
Healing an area, or being, involves clearing ‘tangles’ and untying ‘knots’.
Abilities are appropriately named, as are protagonist Hazel’s weapons, and indeed characters.
It’s worth laying out the structure a bit.
These are, frustratingly, where South of Midnight’s problems start to creep in.
Often you see that thing first and simply follow it to find your reward.
As for that combat, there are again unfortunately a number of issues.
This is all fine, if not particularly new.
The issue comes with the novel system of ‘unravelling’ that I mentioned earlier.
Unravelling them yanks the camera focus to their corpse, which then meansyou’refacing the wall.
All of these problems then start to cascade.
And then there’s the story itself, which perhaps feels secondary to the little sub-stories woven through it.
South of Midnight accessibility options
Thorough suite of accessibility options including: Five difficulty levels.
Viewable objectives and guidance at all times.
Control remapping, sensitivity, alternative inputs.
Dynamic range and separate volume sliders for audio.
Motion blur and stop-motion toggles.
Camera follow option, option to skip gameplay sequences altogether.
Text size, persistent dot, HUD scale and display options.
Menu narration and navigation asisstance.
So, again, the overwhelming sense here really is one of disappointment.
This is a game of just remarkable craft - we’ve not even mentioned the stop-motion style of animation!
It’s lovely - and likewise remarkable attention, thought, and care.
If only just a little more of that care had been afforded to the playing of it.
A copy of South of Midnight was provided for review by Xbox.
