Game review: Plague Road (Nintendo Switch)

What can you expect from a 99¢ game? I decided to give one named Plague Road a try recently, which I discovered in the Nintendo Switch eShop. Needing to take a break from my Enter the Gungeon obsession, I found an interesting-looking title in the store that was normally $9.99, but on sale for just $0.99. With not much to lose, I spent the buck and installed the game.

So was it a fantastic deal or did I get what I paid for?

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Plague Road is the story of a plague doctor fighting off monsters and bandits in his quest to cure a nearby town of the sickness that’s infested it. The main character is obviously modeled from real plague doctors who wore heavy robes and their iconic beak-faced mask when treating the infected. The beak was stuffed with herbs and straw, which was thought that if the doctor breathed through the herbs it would prevent him from getting the plague.

In this game you play as a black robed plague doctor who seems heavily inspired by Solomon Kane, who sets out on a quest to eradicate the plague which has infested a nearby town. The game mixes several genres together to create something unique. Part roguelike, part turn-based strategy game and part town-building sim. You begin at your base of operations, an abandoned farm outside of town. The farm has buildings that serve as buildings like training facilities and crafting stations. You prepare for your expeditions into the dangerous areas outside at this farm before you explore.

Leaving the farm, you find yourself in a side scrolling maze that serves as the game’s ‘dungeons’. In these side scrolling sections, you’ll explore randomly generated sections of the map that may have exits or dead ends on the left, right, top or bottoms of the stage sections. As you explore, you’ll fill out your map. The areas each look nearly identical, so without a map you’d likely get lost a few screens in.

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In these stages, you’ll encounter several things. The first are survivors, who appear as mysterious, hooded figures. Finding them adds them to your party, but you don’t know what class they are until you return to your farm and ‘reveal’ who they are. These survivors can join your party so you can have up to 5 characters on your team. I discovered spell casting witches, rocket-firing engineers, melee fighting villagers, nurses and solders in my adventures.

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The next are friendly characters who send you on quests within the area, which seem to be limited to ‘bring me these two types of characters’ quests. Fulfilling those requests opens a new building on your farm to expand your options. As you discover more survivors, you can ‘retire’ them to assign them to work in buildings on your farm. This lets you research additional attacks for your characters or boost their stats. This is how leveling is handled in this game.

Next, you’ll find chests which contain potions to either replenish your health or your stamina (which is required to carry out actions in the battle scenes.)

Finally, you’ll encounter enemies. You can see them walking around on the map, but they’re faster than you and are very hard to avoid. Touching an enemy will engage a fight encounter.

Fights are carried out in a turn-based fashion on a grid, much like games like Disgaea or X-COM. However, the only thing that seems to matter is your distance to an enemy. There’s the occasional obstruction like trees, but you spend most of your time moving to assure you’re within range of your target. There’s no bonuses for flanking or attacking enemies from behind. The characters are very large, which reduces the grid to pretty tight quarters. The grid seems to be completely unnecessary and would have worked better without it.

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After the first few hours, I started to dread the fights in this game. Fights were incredibly dull, as only the Plague Doctor had more than one ability (he had two). The biggest draw to fighting in games like these is gaining experience to level up your characters and finding items. I found no benefit to fighting enemies in this game — you don’t gain anything by fighting (which in my time with the game was limited to just 3 enemies — wolf, bandit and scarecrow). That was it. I found myself trying as hard as I could to dodge the enemies on the map so I could escape another boring and pointless fight. What’s worse is that enemies stay in the same spot when you leave an area, so if you have to backtrack you’ll hit an enemy that was chasing you on a previous screen as soon as the damn screen loads.

If a character on your team dies, they’re gone for good. What’s worse is that if the doctor dies, you lose all of the characters in your party (and survivors you’ve rescued)! They don’t wander back to your farm, they’re just gone. Therefore, the desire to venture too far into the wild is contrasted by the need to keep the doctor alive.

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The game features a dark, gothic and “steempunky” atmosphere, with nicely-drawn and large characters on colorful stages. The characters are animated by articulating the joints, giving them a cheap “puppet” feel. The levels go for a hand-painted look that seems to be inspired by Vanillaware games like Muramasa and Dragon's Crown and are mostly successful at that, though some of the graphics look a bit amateur, particularly some of the UI elements like arrows.

Sound and music are adequate, but nothing really stands out aside from some well-done voiceovers that play as you enter a new area, but these are pretty rare.

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I eventually gave up after reaching the second area, which looked nearly identical to the first and featured the same three enemies. After a few hours with the game, I had to come to terms with the fact that the game was simply not fun. The presentation and setting were fresh and mostly well-done, but in the end the game felt like a chore rather than entertainment. It wasn’t worth the reward to slog through more pointless battles to see what I might find next.

So while the game put forth a good first impression, it quickly became obvious that there were too many design missteps. With so much of the game being spent in fights that have zero benefit, I decided I had experienced enough of this game. At 99¢, I feel that in the first hour I got my money’s worth, but knowing what I know now I would have opted to just save that dollar knowing where the Plague Road leads.

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

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