By Christopher Hardy

I Recently finished playing South of Midnight on Xbox Game Pass and it was probably one of the best games I’ve played in a while. South of Midnight is a black made game with a female lead character which is rare for most games. The game takes place in the American South where the main character Hazel must embark on a sorrowful journey to save her mother. South of Midnight is an action-adventure game that takes on a parkour aspect like that of Uncharted. In this post, I will be giving my review of the game, by going over what I think of the story and the game mechanics as I was completing my playthrough.

Graphics/ Design

The graphics in the game were phenomenal, the way that they were able to design the world to give it a fantasy feel was amazing. The developers of the game had promised beautiful visuals and they delivered. One of my favorite parts of the game was how the stands looked as you traverse the world. The strands are the most important feature of the game since they show the player where they have to go and what they need to do. Having the strands semi-see-through and having some brief movement was what I found to be the most appealing about the stands.

Story

The story mainly focuses on the main character Hazel trying to save her mother after the flood took her along with the house. While on her journey to save her, Hazel starts to be able to see strands. Later finding out that she is a weaver, which is a magical bender of broken bonds and emotions. While on her journey Hazel crosses paths with many people with tangled strands that she tries to help by learning more about their past and their most troublesome bordons. While following the strands she learns more about her responsibilities as a weaver further developing her powers and abilities.

Combat

The combat in the game is pretty difficult to understand at first. The standard combat in the game starts when trying to untangle the strands that cause the stigma to block the path. The game gives you a multitude of abilities that you can use when in combat. The main weapons that are used in combat are Hazel’s weaving hooks that can be used to hit the monsters within the game, they could also be used to either push. Hazel’s spindle is used to increase her magical abilities, like power-up moves. Lastly, Croton Hazel’s childhood stuffed toy can be used in combat to control enemies for a limited amount of time. These combat mechanics could be upgraded using points collected by finding them in strange places around the world. This could either mean increasing the damage output or new combos and abilities being made available to the player. 

Parkour

Parkour is a major part of how the game was designed to be played. In the game, many obstacles require you to either make difficult jumps, climb, swing to certain areas, glide, and even wall run. Where the parkour in the game takes its extremes is after untangling the strands of someone’s deep and hidden secrets and emotions. This would be when Kooshma the king of nightmares would chase you trying to bottle up the strands on the bottle tree. When you encounter Koomsha this is when you would use all of your newfound Weaver abilities to not be caught by him. These parkour runs in the game are my favorite park in playing the game.

My Experience

When I first started playing I thought that the game would be as good as it was. But as I started to get more into the game I started to realize how good it was. I loved the little stories told in the game, some of which were a rollercoaster of emotions. Showing just how deep some of the secrets in the game world go. I thought that the combat was fairly good, but when it came to making upgrades using the points I found that It was impossible for me to fully max out all of the abilities with the length of the story. I think that it would’ve been a better decision if the developers had decided to lower the amount of points it costs to make a certain upgrade. However, this game was really fun for me to play regardless of my not being able to play with max upgrades.

Closing

As I said above, this had to have been my favorite game that I’ve played in a while. The game uses African folklore as a way to build the story and the character’s abilities. I found it unique compared to other games that I’ve played which don’t build off of it. On top of its amazing visuals and character design, I would recommend everyone and anyone to check out the game.

Comment below your thoughts about the game and if you’ll be playing.