A Plague Tale: Innocence

Play this game for its gorgeous visual design, music, art direction, attention to detail, voice acting, and touching characterization. The gameplay is just OK, and the story is mostly predictable, but these should not detract from a wonderful experience as long as you know that they are not the focal points.

Gameplay is primarily stealth-oriented, though as the game progresses it shifts towards combat. Combat is based on a time-sensitive mechanic, which is usually fairly cool, but can get frustrating due to oversimplified controls. It's like a mediocre first-person shooter. There's an RPG-style subsystem to upgrade your weapon, but I found it utterly unnecessary and distracting. There are also environmental puzzles, which should really have been the central gameplay element, but alas they are at best disappointing, at worst stretched out and tiresome.

All of that might not seem very exciting, but it's really fine and does the job of moving you through the story. The only serious complaint I have is that there is no manual save. Checkpoints are sometimes placed right before un-skippable cut-scenes, which got so annoying that at some point I stopped wanting to experiment and explore.

My advice is: don't fret too much about winning fights or getting that exra weapon upgrade. You'll be better off not getting bogged down with the game's weakest points. So, make sure to disable the HUD ("immersive" mode) when you start the game and let yourself get lost in its milieu.

Finally, a wish: the game is aching for HDR and yet doesn't support it on a PC. Console versions do have it, but apparently it's poorly done there. Can we get an HDR remaster?