Today we are going to take a look at Pyre. This new game from Supergiant Games an indie game studio well known for Bastion and Transistor promises to deliver an amazing story in a great looking package with amazing music. On top of that it claims to have interesting and fun gameplay. Can Pyre deliver on all its promises and continue the trend of awesome games this developer? That is the question we will try to answer today. You can get Pyre of Steam for 19 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.

With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

Pyre has been a game I have been looking forward to playing since it was first revealed. I will admit that I haven’t played that much of Bastion, but I did absolutely love Transistor and I specially loved it’s music. It’s actually one of the few game soundtracks I have bought and to which I listen to regularly. So obviously my hopes have been very high for Pyre and I will try to relinquish the hype that exists in my head and review this objectively.

Gameplay

So as always, let’s begin with talking about the games mechanics. And I would separate them into two big categories – First we have the combat mechanics and secondly we have everything that is happening outside of the combat. And we will begin with the combat today.
The easiest and probably best way I can describe the combat in Pyre is by saying it is fantasy basketball. Wait, everyone who hates sports games – stop right there! This is just the simplest explanation I can give. Now it’s time to tell you about it in more detail and you might discover that it isn't as simple as you might think.
So the more extended explanation – the combat in Pyre is conducted by two teams of three characters being controlled by the Reader – you – and the very basic goal of the game is to take the orb that spawns in the middle and plunge in repeatedly into the opponents pyre until you extinguish it. Okay, now I feel like I’ve just made the game sound even more like 3 on 3 basketball.

Anyways, the difference here is: each of the characters has an aura around him that allows him to banish his opponents for an amount of time. Some of the characters have huge auras, some have small ones but most of them share one common feature – the ability the cast their auras to banish enemies at a distance. There are three characters that use their auras very differently as one of them essentially implodes his aura, creating a huge explosion that kills all the enemies within range, but also kills him, the other character with a significantly different way of using aura essentially leaves a his aura as a trail behind him and if he casts it, he returns to the end of the trail and the trail also explodes killing all the enemies close to it and the last one can essentially take a piece of his aura and place it a point creating a defensive structure.
Apart from this aura the characters also have different abilities. Some of them can fly, some can jump really far or other can jump stunning the nearby enemies and all the characters have also some sort of ability to move quickly. Whether it’s just your regular sprint or whether it’s a short teleport everybody has one.
And you use all of these abilities of your team to make sure you extinguish the pyre of your opponents and to make sure your pyre doesn't get extinguish. And the one important thing you need to realize soon is that you are actually playing with a whole team, not just a single character and using each of their strengths is the key to victory. And luckily there are mechanics that make you realize that pretty soon. The first is the fact that the character who plunged the orb into the pyre is banished for the following round. So you can’t just get used to using a single character and git gud with him. The second is the fact that over time you will just be forced to use different characters because of story reasons I don’t really want to go into because I would just spoil the story for you guys.

So.. that’s essentially the combat of Pyre. It much quicker then you might expect and also somewhat simpler then you might expect even at the normal difficulty. If you are looking for a challenge I highly suggest you switch the game to a higher difficulty at least for the beginning. I haven’t really felt like I was being extremely challenged until the very last match while playing on normal difficulty, yet I still felt a lot of satisfaction when winning a match, because of the banter between your characters and your opponents.

Now lets take a look at the mechanics that take place outside of the game combat and we will start with one that does take place outside, yet is still highly connected to it. The leveling system. As this is a modern game it has to have a leveling system. Luckily, the system isn't just forcefully strapped on to the rest of the games mechanics – it does make sense in here. So, how exactly does it work? After each match your team gains enlightenment (which is just another way of saying experience) and you have 5 levels you can gain in total. With every level you get a chance to pick a talent that improves the character in someway. Sometime it makes them more mobile, sometimes it improves one of the abilities and sometimes it’s even a party wide buff for all of the characters that are in battle.

Apart from the leveling system, there is one more way to make your characters more powerful and that is through the usage of talismans – the only pieces of gear you will find in Pyre. These magical talismans work in a very similar way to the talents as they again improve the character. And again, sometimes they can improve various different stats or even your abilities. The nice thing about the talismans is the fact that each character can get a talisman tailored specifically towards the character in a special piece of combat where he (or she) needs to show they are worthy of the talisman.
The little events are also a great way to familiarize yourself with characters you haven’t been using as much, because you need to use the characters strengths while being wary of their weaknesses to even have a chance to win these.
And there is one last mechanic that can sometimes make your characters better, but it can also make them worse. As this is a very story heavy game, you will be talking and interacting with your characters quite often. And you will often be given a chance to branch the conversation in a various different ways. And based on your choices, your characters can get inspired – getting a bit of a stat bonus for the next fight or they can get depressed, getting their stats reduced for the next fight.

And that’s pretty much it for the mechanics of Pyre. And I gotta say, I’m quite impressed. You again need to keep in mind that this game is essentially basketball set in a fantasy universe. But as you play more and more of it, it feel less and less like an another crappy sports game and more like a thing of its own. The combat feel quick and satisfying, though I will admit that even the normal difficultly doesn't really feel that challenging.
And the character improvement system feel smooth and really fitting towards the game themes.

Story

That’s pretty much all I have to say about the games mechanics and now it’s time to take a look at another big feature of the game – the story.
I will try to avoid spoilers, at least big ones for sure, but I lets just say that Pyre story is one of getting freedom after being exiled into the wastelands.
But there are some thing I can talk about when it comes to the story telling. So, how is the story told? Mainly through dialogs with your companions – the characters you then use in the combat part of the game. To some degree it even resembles a visual novel as during your conversations with your companions you will see them being somewhat animated – changing from one pose to another, signaling their emotions. And the thing I really liked in this system was the usage of color to show what emotion are the characters you are talking to currently feeling.

The second large part of the story in Pyre is the world-building. And here I've been impressed to such a degree I never even imagined. Supergiant Games created a fully functional fictional world that has its own social, economic and political struggles. There are racial tensions, power struggles and even historical events being mentioned all throughout the game and they just make you feel more and more invested into your characters and I love that. Wish more developers would care this much about creating worlds that are fully fledged out.
The world building is again mainly done through conversations with your companions, but there is also another tool used for this. The Book of Rites. This central point around a large portion of the games story revolves around is also used to show you pieces of history of the world.

So when it comes to the story and story telling I can honestly say that I am more then impressed how well Supergiant Games managed to create a world that has everything a world needs to feel real and immersive. The one issue is that a lot of this is hidden behind a lot of text and if you aren't a person who likes the read about the lore you might miss a lot of it. But if you are this sort of person you are unlikely to pick up Pyre anyways in my opinion. It would have been nice to have at least all the conversations fully voice acted, but I understand that this would add a lot of costs to the project and would only make the development take longer

Graphics

Okay, we talked about the games mechanics and it’s story and now it’s time to look at how the game presents itself on the visual side of things.
And again, I’m more then glad to say to you guys “Pyre looks amazing.” The attention to detail, the use of colors, the unique characters all create a world just teeming with emotion. I’m unsure on how exactly to categorize the visuals as they are somewhere in the middle of the line between European and Asian styles. I’d say the backgrounds are done mainly in a European style but the characters (or at least some of them) have more an Asian vibe to them.
I don’t think I can say much about the graphics as I feel the footage of the video or just the images you can easily find online will tell you more then me trying to describe this. I’ll just say – I love them.

Music

Now it’s time to talk about the thing Supergiant Games are famous for. The music in their games. And luckily Pyre continues this tradition. Music is again done primarily by Darren Kobb and it is just as atmospheric as it was in Bastion or Transistor.
This time the music takes on a bit more of a subtle role compared to Transistor where it was probably the main tool to build atmosphere withing the game. But wait, I’m not saying that Pyre doesn't use music to build atmosphere, but it rather uses it a bit more in the background, this time giving more focus to the story being presented through the text. I’ll give you a bit of an example of the music right here
If you want to listen to an example of the music click the link here – it will take you directly to the time of the video review where I showcase the music Listen to the music

Performance

Now let’s look at the performance of Pyre. And here I’m happy to report I haven't seen a single issue throughout my gameplay. The game is not that demanding so it will run on most devices, I have seen no bugs and experienced no crashes either. So – everything is great here!

Conclusion

So, in conclusion: Pyre is another amazing game from Supergiant Games just showing how talented these guys are. The gameplay is fun, the atmosphere is amazing, you get great visual presentation and awesome music in a single package. The game took me about 12 hours to finish and I will be probably playing it again to experience different branches of the story then I did previously so the value proposition for this game is pretty good as well. I 100 % recommend this game to ANYONE!

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider up-voting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page