Pyre is a game in which you play matches of Orb-ball in order to escape from magic Australia.

I enjoyed Pyre, and I definitely recommend it, because it works for the price. However, I must say that as an overall experience, it might be my least favorite Supergiant game to date.

In depth review of individual categories to follow after the break, but the TLDR version is: The lore feels incredibly rich, but actual gameplay and main storyline didn't, and the soundtrack felt like the weakest of the three games.

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Art: Rich and distinctive, when it's not being covered by dialogue boxes or particle effects. It lent itself well to the world's distinct feel, but served primarily as a background rather than something to be interacted with in most cases.

Lore: Along with the characters, easily my favorite aspect of the game. Not only was the world genuinely interesting, its history played a big part in art, gameplay, music, and main story of the game. The use of meta-text in the dialogue and the fact that you unlocked lore based on your interaction with the world and storyline made it feel very organic and immersive to learn as your character learned.

Characters: Genuinely interesting characters I could empathize with. More than once in the game I found myself trying to make decisions based on what was best for my characters, rather than any strategic benefit. You’ll even start to develop strong feelings towards some the groups you’re forced to compete against, rather than just seeing them as color coded factions.

Gameplay: Each match, in the moment, is fun and well-paced. Over the course of the game though, the act of just playing so many similar matches back to back becomes tedious. The game itself is aware of this, and does its best to pace the story around that weakness. The only real problem lies in the replayability. Due to the nature of the choices you have to make in the game, it begs to be played through more than once. The prospect of replaying through another 30 or so fairly similar matches for each new play-through makes me in no hurry to do so.

Main Storyline: Its main strength is that it ties well into the world’s fantastic lore. As a plot itself though, it’s pretty predictable once it gets going and not terribly interesting. The nature of the game means that the ending feels more like an 80’s movie “Where are they now” credits montage than a satisfying ending.

Music: This one is incredibly subjective given it’s based on personal taste, but I just didn’t get nearly the same emotional impact from Pyre’s soundtrack that I did from Transistor or Bastion. And what the hell was up with that piecemeal, dull, and drawn out song over the credits? It’s still a better soundtrack than the average game, but it earns a solid “meh” in comparison to Supergiant’s previous work.