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Review: Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
09.08.2023 - 14:45 / destructoid.com / Laura Bailey / David Gaider
Growing up, musicals were a huge part of my life, from performing Charlie & the Chocolate Factory as an elementary student to co-writing a rendition of Romeo & Juliet as a modern-style musical for the local area. As a huge musical theatre fan, the idea of a musical game in Stray Gods is an exciting idea.
Add on the fact that David Gaider, one of the lead writers for two of my favorite games in Star Wars: Knights of the Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, is working on the project as part of his co-founded rookie indie studio Summerfall Studios, and it’s promising.
Stray Gods’ cinematic indie visual novel-style is unique, complementing gorgeous 2D character designs with solid voice acting, and a sometimes skippable but still noteworthy soundtrack. The result is an incredibly unique adventure game where your choices matter, the storytelling clicks, and the colorful characters carry the game, even if the musical element is a letdown.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (PC [reviewed], Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox)Developer: Summerfall StudiosPublisher: Humble GamesReleased: August 10, 2023MSRP: $29.99
Stray Gods moves at a brisk pace during its opening moments, quickly introducing the protagonist of Grace, played brilliantly by the wonderful Laura Bailey. These opening scenes are arguably a bit too fast, introducing several characters and then showing Grace as the prime suspect in the murder of a modern-day Olympic god.
The crux of this story centers around Grace trying to solve a murder mystery, to save herself from being convicted by gods like Athena and Persephone before it’s too late.
It just so happens, though, that Grace now has the power of a muse and can basically turn any scene into a musical. And that is exactly what this story does over the course of the seven days Grace has to clear her name.
To get it out of the way, while I was excited at playing my first musical video game, the songs and performances don’t offer much to write home about.
To Stray Gods’ credit, there are a lot of songs. Unfortunately, this also means there’s a lot of filler and throwaway songs, especially at the beginning. You can’t skip forward, either, unlike the dialogue, which made the awkward transitions, lack of intriguing music, and often arrhythmic lines all the more noticeable.
A huge part of this comes from the intriguing idea of letting you control the songs. Much like interacting with the characters, you can make choices during musical moments. You could opt to go for the “cool” line in a scene, or be a bit more heartfelt.
Another time, you might choose between a solo or doing a group number. This flexible nature could be the cause of some of the inconsistency in the soundtrack, as the best musical numbers came later in
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