Stories: The Path of Destinies

The concept is not original, nor is Stories: The Path of Destinies‘ mechanics but there’s just something so endearing about it that makes me love the game that much more.

It’s a game that excels at not only being a great action-RPG, but a memorable pulp-narrative experience and because of this, it’s very hard not to recommend Stories: The Path of Destinies to anyone but the most curmudgeonly and cantankerous.

Stories: Path of Destinies is a charming adventure game that succeeds in telling different and interesting stories. There's a lot of replay value here.

If you enjoy action RPGs and seeing the different ways a story can play out based on your experience, Stories: The Path of Destinies is an easy choice.

Overall, this is one action-RPG fans won’t want to miss.

Solid action-RPG gameplay is elevated by the meta-puzzle that is the game’s branching storylines. The entertaining trial and error of trying to find the one “good” ending channels Choose Your Own Adventure books, and lends itself to a story that you’ll love playing again and again.

Stories: The Path of Destinies mixes looping narratives, engaging brawler combat, and beautiful scenery to create a compelling indie adventure that should not be overlooked. Not wholly without fault, but even in the imperfections it’s easy to find a lot to love in Stories.

Spearhead Games’ Stories: The Path of Destinies is a fascinating jaunt through a more mature fairy tale setting that blends serviceable gameplay with remarkable wit.

Stories: Path of Destinies is a whimsical, cartoonish story experience that demands a near-methodical approach to navigating storylines. You learn with each run, but it's harder than you think to avoid making the same mistake twice.

A different take on the choose-your-own-adventure genre, Stories is fantastic breath of fresh air. Though environments will soon become repetitive alongside the general gameplay, there’s no reason why this can’t become a series of it’s own.

Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a charming and colourful game that is well presented with good narration. The number of paths that can be taken allow for a lot of replayability, and there’s some well crafted combat. However, there comes a point where the game does become repetitive, which can make drumming up motivation to unlock all the stories tough.

Despite the tedium of replaying the same areas over and over, Stories: The Path of Destinies is a must-play for anyone looking for a game that is truly altered by choice.

Technical issues aside, Stories: The Path of Destinies is a fantastic outing for Spearhead Games. Whether it’s the exciting combat, beautiful visuals, or branching narrative, there is plenty of value to be had in this low-priced title. It has fun betraying the player’s expectations, and that’s the biggest compliment I can give this gem of a game.

Considering that it's not the most popular genre at the moment, ARPG fans will find in Stories a very interesting game (both visually and gameplay-wise) charming and very enjoyable.

The writing is as tongue-in-cheek as it is serious, the characters are delightful but two-faced, and the world that Spearhead Games has crafted is a complete joy to explore.

Action game fans will wish for a greater challenge, and everything that the game does well will make players wish that there was more of it.

Stories: The Path of Destinies has unique storytelling and good progression, even tough the combat system could have been deeper.

Stories is a charming, but mechanically slightly superficial action roleplaying game, that heavily relies on its charismatic narrator and its open story structure.

The fun combat and worthwhile character progression takes some of the sting out of the repetitious nature of the concept, but it doesn’t completely neutralize it.

It’s like taking part in an anthropomorphic fairytale version of Groundhog Day. Reynaldo is an instantly lovable hero, but the true strength of the game lies in the amazingly witty work of the ever-prevalent narrator. The narration is of such a high quality that even manages to overshadow –for a while- the issues of level repeatability and its utterly simplistic gameplay.

Despite some repetition and a handful of weird glitches, it'd be hard for me not to recommend Stories: The Path of Destinies. The "Goosebumps" kid in me was just too excited to have branching narratives from a developer that had fun with the concept instead of using it as another box to check in its marketing plans.

Stories: The Path of Destinies is quite the compelling curio; a seemingly routine hack and slash affair at first, it soon elevates its calibre with some satisfying ARPG style action, entertaining writing and a wonderfully non-linear multi-faceted narrative. It’s just a shame that a multitude of bugs and performance issues tarnish the experience.

With its interesting fairy tale feel and engaging mix old and modern gameplay mechanics, Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a love letter to action role playing games of years past. The unique narrative style, the choices system and smooth battle system are quite engaging during the first playthroughs, but the limited amount of content eventually makes the game feel a little repetitive. Even with its issues, however, Stories: The Path Of Destinies is a game that's very well worth the time of action role playing game fans

Interesting yet unpolished proposal that falls too flat due to its repetition, despite its charming visuals and enjoyable gameplay.

If the RPG mechanics are your main attraction, you’ll probably be disappointed, but as an experiment in choice-driven narratives, Stories is clever, impressive, and well worth a look.

An action RPG for all ages to enjoy that unfortunately gets muddled down by a mediocre soundtrack and lack of enemy variety.

With a cheeky narrator that doesn’t know when to be quiet, different stories that are told in brief, bite-sized chunks, and a fun and fluid combat system, Stories: The Path of Destinies is worth checking out even if its clearly lacking the amount of polish other games of this nature have.

Stories: The Path of Destinies is a curious narrative experiment, an action-RPG which doesn’t manage to overcome the average of this type of production in term of gameplay still providing, despite everything, a choice-driven plot with some good ideas.

Most of Stories: The Path of Destinies is hinged upon the idea of discovering the best possible outcomes of its story, no matter how nonsensical it may be at first. It’s a clever way to build a narrative, because it’s built around the assumption one will fail multiple times while still retaining useful knowledge to apply in a different run.

That said I absolutely recommend setting aside the five hours it’ll take to unlock the four truths and to seek out the true ending. The narrative and how it’s told is really interesting and is absolutely worth seeing.

Stories: The Path of Destinies offers an interesting narrative, unique plot progression system and often enjoyable gameplay. However, it's held back by unfortunate glitches and quite a bit of repetition.

Stories looks like a unpolished narrative experiment. The main problem here is an ordinary combat system and a set of situations that never challenge the player. Trying to discover every possible ending, though, you'll discover a light and inspired platformer.

It’s like that easy beach reading book that you enjoyed for a few hours on holiday, and then put back on the shelf never to read again.

A story more innovative than the repetitive and often shallow game it's attached to. [June 2016, p.71]

Ultimately, though, the drudgery of actually playing this game outweighs whatever interest its narrative has to offer. I have to admire the ambition of the concept here, but Stories: The Path of Destinies falls short of having systems equal to that aspiration. Like its swashbuckling hero, this game’s reach exceeds its grasp.

While Stories: The Path of Destinies certainly has some unique elements and beautiful levels for people to enjoy, unfortunately it turns out to be a mediocre RPG that truly struggles to provide any meat. This is a hard game to recommend, though if the price is right or is on PS Plus, it's worth a look.

Branching storylines, cool combat, and rewarding RPG elements work in tandem to form a memorable adventure, but one that needlessly stumbles and falls over various technical issues. This certainly isn't the true ending that we were hoping for.

Stories: The Path of Destinies is a clear example that the framework for success can only take you so far; the execution of an awesome idea has to be there for a game to reach its true potential.

An inspired mix of Groundhog Day and Choose Your Own Adventure style decision making, combined with a half-broken action role-player of considerably lesser interest.