Now Playing: South Of Midnight

In South of Midnight you play as the appropriately named Hazel Flood, a young woman who discovers her true calling as a ‘Weaver’ – someone gifted with magical abilities that allow them to see and manipulate the ‘Grand Tapestry’ of reality. When Hazel’s mother is lost in a storm, she must use her newly discovered abilities to try to rescue her – and along the way, uncover the dark secrets of her own family history.

But she also, as a weaver, has the power to heal open wounds in the Tapestry by stitching together tears caused by powerful outbursts of grief, loss, guilt or shame. Throughout her journey to find and save her mother, Hazel encounters various characters and mythical creatures burdened by their own past traumas and by collecting the pieces of their pain, Hazel can find a way to help them.

From a story, character and lore point of view, South of Midnight is great. I don’t know how much of the game is based on actual folklore, but it certainly provides a refreshing, unique and engaging setting and mythos to explore. And Hazel is certainly a lot of fun as a protagonist. It’s the setting, story and characters of South of Midnight that keep you engaged and make you want to see it through – which is a good thing, because the gameplay, sadly, does not.

I didn’t have the highest of expectations with regard to the gameplay of South of Midnight and I still came away disappointed. You traverse each chapter through a combination of basic platforming and puzzle solving. The platforming isn’t challenging and the puzzles aren’t difficult – frankly, calling them ‘puzzles’ at all is a bit generous.

It’s not bad. I actually, at least early on, quite enjoyed myself as I explored each chapter. Your main path is fairly linear, but there’s plenty of optional trails to investigate, usually ending with one type of collectible or another. The problem is, the platforming and puzzles never really evolve, grow more complex or more challenging.

Which is also a problem for the combat – the third and by far weakest pillar supporting South of Midnight’s gameplay. Like platforming and puzzles, the combat is very simple and it never really evolves or grows more complex. Every fight takes place in the same circular arena. Every fight sees the same 4-5 enemy types spawn in, and every fight sees you simply run up and bash them until they ‘unravel’.

It’s tedious, repetitive and incredibly easy – bumping up the difficulty just gives enemies more health which makes things take longer. I actually lowered the difficulty mid-way through South of Midnight in order to rush through the fights as quickly as I could. And a few chapters before the end, I enabled the option to skip them entirely – yes, that’s how bad they are.

The game does give you a few new skills as you progress but nothing that truly evolves the combat beyond ‘run up to enemy and bash them’. The most interesting skill is the ability to toss your cute companion – Crouton – at an enemy to turn them into a temporary ally.

It’s a real shame, because I feel like Hazel’s weaver skills could have formed the basis for a more unique and engaging form of combat – maybe something where she doesn’t fight directly, but can cast strands across the arena to turn enemies into puppets she controls – or you, the player controls – each with their own move sets. Maybe she could weave strands to bind enemies, or maybe Crouton could grow in size and do the bashing.

Just . . . give me something more than just ‘bash, bash, bash’. If combat is going to be a fairly frequent and key part of your experience then you need to make it engaging and fun and progressively more complex as you go. But South of Midnight doesn’t do that – aside from a couple of new enemy types and rather basic Weaver abilities (like pulling enemies towards you or pushing them away) the combat is exactly the same from the first chapter to the last.

I feel like South of Midnight really would have benefited by forgetting combat entirely and instead focusing purely on platform and puzzle challenges. That would also feel more fitting for the game as a whole because Hazel is a weaver and a weaver’s powers are focused on healing – not bashing. But the game has a lot of boring bashing, so much boring bashing that I soon got sick of it and began to skip it entirely.

But having to skip a key part of the game isn’t a good thing. Yes, it’s great the option is there for accessibility reasons, but it also feels more like an acknowledgment that the combat is kind of shit. And it didn’t have to be! Maybe it’s just a lack of experience. But as I see it, if you can’t deliver a decent combat experience, then maybe it would have been better to focus on and really beef up the puzzle and platforming aspects?

The only ‘combat’ in the game I actually enjoyed were the handful of boss fights – but that’s because the fights play more like a simple puzzle with a patten to solve. You don’t actually do a lot of bashing – well, not until the final boss fight which is a very tedious series of arena fights. I didn’t skip those because I wanted to see if the game would offer something more unique like the previous bosses – but it doesn’t. It’s like they just ran out of ideas.

In terms of visuals, South of Midnight looks fantastic. I love the style and animation. I love the creatures you encounter and Crouton is adorable – even if you only ever use him to run through very short, very linear little hollows to collect or activate something.

It’s funny the first time you toss the little fella to somewhere you can’t reach on foot, but there’s only a handful of situations where that’s necessary. Crouton and how you utilise him to progress – opening new paths or solving puzzles – could have been another mechanic that grew more complex and clever. But like everything else, it just doesn’t evolve at all. Its another (very) annoying missed opportunity.

I found South of Midnight incredibly frustrating to play – not so much disappointing – just frustrating. Because there’s some really great stuff in here. Story, visuals, characters, setting, lore – and some great music that ties cleverly into the gameplay during the handful of boss fights. And the basic gameplay mechanics are here – platforming, puzzles (plus Crouton) and even combat (if the game really embraced the ‘weaver’ aspect) – but it doesn’t do anything engaging with them. They all work, they’re all functional. They let you move from A to B but that’s all they do. And I need more than just ‘functional’ to my gameplay, despite how great all the other aspects might be.

Overall, South of Midnight delivers a great experience in terms of story, characters and setting, but a very poor gameplay experience. It’s so frustrating because the building blocks are here, they just don’t get utilised in a way that the game needs. As a result, it’s really hard to recommend South of Midnight and I really hate saying that because the story and character stuff deserves a wider audience. Maybe get it on sale and just skip all the combat. It’s not ideal, but you’ll probably have a better time.

6/10