Review: Song of the Myrne: What Lies Beneath

Sometimes I think that people playing PC are drinking the koolaide.  Everyone says it’s not about the graphics it’s about the gameplay.  This line relates to games that are very pretty but have shitty gameplay.  This line was never intended to describe games that has crappy graphics and plays really well, it was always a denouncing cry against really pretty games that don’t offer much.  The line was never intended to be a point where people should really aim for the bottom of graphics.

The game is the ugly side of the 8-bit world, Atari.  The beautiful side of the 8-bit world is, Nintendo.  The clear distinction between the two was that Atari required imagination to think of what you were looking at whereas with the Nintendo it was clear as day.

Here is Atari 1982.

Here is Nintendo, 1991.

Now here is Sony of the Myrne, 2015.

Use your imagination, because a lot of times figuring out objects will be easier said than done.  Sometimes you run into an enemy and it looks kind of friendly.  You walk up to it and punch it first to see whether it takes damage, because that’s the only real way to figure out what’s friend and what’s foe.

But that’s fine because the game has about 80 weapons you can use to test them out with.  Weapons can be found all over the game, but you can also craft them out of materials you can find.  Crafting was a really big sell in the game, but unfortunately it meets a weird balance.

Crafting hardcores want tedious crafting that gives insanely high results that flow into a game that will change over time.  Skyrim is a perfect example.  You level up your alchemy to make more powerful potions to help deal with the new threats. But maybe you choose to go the path of the thief and you get a different set of skills.  This game doesn’t have that sort of depth.  The crafting is casual and doesn’t have to be done.  The game can be completed without it making it almost pointless.

The crafting itself is rather simple.  You combine ingredients that you commonly find on the ground into an item, weapon, armor, or miscellaneous item.  Doing so raising your experience and thus raises your level.

Upon leveling up from combat and crafting you will gain a point that you can invest in one of three trees.  Investing in health gives you more health, magic gives you more mana, and stamina…. well I never did quite figure out what stamina was used for since I never once needed it.  However I did mistakenly invest two points in it, which made me feel silly.  I felt silly because by Level 6 I was finished the game.  That means almost 50% of my points were wasted with no way of refreshing it.

You’re probably thinking Level 6 makes for a short game, and you would be right.  The game has about 3 hours of gameplay.  When asked as to whether or not new content would be added to the game they said this:

“ I might add some content in the future giving the fact people seem to really enjoy the game. It wouldn’t be DLC but free updates because I’m not a big fan of DLC and I’d rather make a whole new game than selling little pieces of an “old” one.

I would be interested to add some co-op elements first (some simple one, like in Deathspank where the player 2 is really different than the first one, doesn’t have inventory, etc…) but I have to add gamepad support first (because aiming without the mouse is a pain) so it might take some time.

Then I’ll see how it goes from there depending on the time it takes and the funds I’ll have left after that.”

So it seems there will be no effort made to add more content to the game, rather add functionality to a game that people very easily finish.  It really does seem like the people who made this game have mixed up priorities.  The reason why DLC is so popular is because it gives people more stuff to do in a game.  Adding controller support only opens up the game to be played on consoles.

The game has a huge problem, it’s very fun… but there isn’t much of a game there.  A typical RPG is going to be between 20-100 hours of gameplay.  A 3 hour gameplay basically introduces you to the RPG elements and then ends the game.  It’s so poorly paced that any mistake you’ve made has a huge effect on the end of the game.