South of Midnight Review – Boring Combat Drags Down A Beautiful And Emotional Story

Since December, or more accurately, since the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, there’s been a feeling that Xbox has turned a corner for the better. Following up MachineGames' excellent Indiana Jones adventure was Obsidian, with a more than solid outing in Avowed. Which, in a few days from the time of publishing, will be followed up by Compulsion Games’ latest, South of Midnight, which hopes to keep that momentum going.

South of Midnight is the third game in the studio’s history since its founding in 2009 and the first full game the team has made primarily under the Xbox banner after it was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. After the studio’s last batch of DLC for We Happy Few, the six years since have been spent crafting Hazel and her mother Lacey’s story, complete with stop-motion animation. The Southern gothic tale begins with a hurricane far worse than anyone in her small fictional town of Prospero could have predicted and a fight between Hazel and Lacey.

After storming out of the house, Hazel looks on in horror as she watches the hurricane take her home, with her Mom in it, down the river. While chasing after the floating house to try and save her Mom, Hazel is chosen to become a new Weaver. A Weaver is a person who is able to see the strings and strands that make up what the game calls the Grand Tapestry. Basically, it is the fabric of life and the world, and it’s now Hazel’s job to help untangle the knots caused by the tragedy and pain we experience in life, either by choices of our own making or at the hands of evil people.

The story in South of Midnight is a bit of an odd thing. Hazel’s journey toward understanding her Mom better and how their story plays out is kind of the least interesting part. At the same time, the game’s story is one of its strengths, and that all comes from the people you meet along Hazel’s journey to finding her Mom. South of Midnight’s story constantly surprised me because, from the outside, you wouldn’t guess that this game is nearly as dark or serious as it is. In each chapter, you’ll be charged with helping someone put the pain of their worst memories to rest by untangling the knot the bad parts of their lives caused.

And in each chapter, I was taken aback with just how intense and tragic all of these memories were. It was actually what helped to keep the story grounded, especially in the moments where Hazel is wall-running on a floating wall that looks like it’s been ripped off the side of a building.

That’s not to say the relationship between Hazel and her Mom was boring or entirely uninteresting, just that it was out-shined by every other story told, whether in a short scene of a memory you witness or an old journal entry you find along the path. It also didn’t help that, more often than not, Hazel’s first words just after witnessing the memory of an extremely tragic event rarely fit the moment, with too many of her lines sounding like generic barks you might hear in any video game where the protagonist is constantly commenting on the world around them.

But there are a few moments of real, excellent storytelling with strong performances from the entire voice cast, including the voice behind Hazel, Adriyan Rae. This only made it all the more upsetting when Hazel would have a line that felt like she wasn’t paying attention to the events she just witnessed. Still, even with those disappointing moments, South of Midnight delivers an emotional story that packs a heavier punch than its bright visuals and stop-motion animation might have you expect.

Speaking of its visuals, the art design and the look of South of Midnight is arguably the best part of this game. I don’t mean that as a slight towards other aspects, or that it’s not worth playing. It often feels like if the best thing you have to say about a game is that it looks nice, then it probably has little to offer beyond that. Not the case with South of Midnight, as it definitely brings more to the table, but the design of this game and the detail poured into every corner is absolutely spectacular.

Unfortunately, the stop-motion animation effect did not agree with my eyes, and I did have to turn it off after playing the opening few chapters with it. I think your mileage with that effect may vary since my issues with it could also be traced to the number of stuttering bugs I witnessed during my playthrough. I was playing an early build of the game on my Xbox Series X that did not include the day-one patch, so I can only hope that the issues I have will be sorted by the time everyone else can jump in for themselves.

Speaking of jumping, good as the story and performances are, the main gameplay of South of Midnight is what’s unfortunately lacking. The platforming isn’t bad. But it also isn’t great, and even though it evolves somewhat throughout the 14 chapters of the game’s story, particularly with the sections that have you running from a dark fog, it only starts to get interesting by the time you’re on the last couple of chapters. And by that point, these sections had been so repetitive that I was more peeved than excited to go through another one. Even if the design of these sections was starting to get good, which shouldn’t be the case in chapter 12 of a 14-chapter game.

The combat is, unfortunately, the worst part of the gameplay. Put simply, it’s boring and repetitive, and it wouldn’t detract from the game so much if you weren’t thrust into a combat arena every five minutes. The small skill tree you work through never adds to the combat in interesting ways; the best part about upgrading your skills is that it can help you move through these sections faster. A key issue is that there’s no flow to combat. Hazel doesn’t have a parry or a block mechanic, so all you can do is dash and dodge away from incoming attacks, which means you’re constantly pulling yourself out of the action in order to stay alive. And whether you’re locked on to a single enemy or not, the camera is awful at keeping pace with the combat, so you’re almost surely going to take a few hits that you just couldn’t prepare for because you didn’t see them coming.

Even when an enemy is in front of you, some attacks are more telegraphed than others, and you can only knock an enemy out of an animation by performing a ground-pound attack. It also doesn’t help that when you do take a hit, the knock-back effect makes Hazel so slow to react that you’re likely to take another hit before you can dodge to safety. That’s also where all the ‘challenge’ in the combat lies, not dying from hits you can’t see coming. Which makes any deaths you suffer frustrating for the wrong reasons. Even when you are performing well and not dying, the feedback on your attacks doesn’t feel satisfying, as you repeat the same set of animations again and again. And while the look of each enemy is interesting, what each of them adds to combat doesn’t evolve it in interesting ways or make you change your approach. This then feeds into the other issue that you don’t really get many different ways to approach combat. You’re mashing attack and dodge ad-nauseam, and when it’s over, you get a tragic, emotional scene about something awful that happened in a character’s life. The actions couldn’t feel more disconnected if they tried, which adds to combat feeling like a slog.

South of Midnight would be a tighter, more interesting game if the combat sections were instead replaced with gameplay akin to that of an adventure game or puzzle game, where you’re piecing together the past events to properly untangle what has become knotted. The gameplay there would also more easily weave into the game’s narrative instead of feeling like it’s trying to be an entirely different kind of game the moment combat starts.

If there are any combat sections I could call out as good, it would be the few boss fights scattered throughout the game. But those sections aren’t good because the combat suddenly becomes fun, they’re good because of the scale of the bosses you’re fighting, and how well executed the presentation of each set piece is. So even though getting through to the end of a chapter isn’t all that fun with how many combat sections you have to get through, at least the set piece at the end was always visually stunning and a fun spectacle.

That’s also why I’d say the best of these chapter-ending set-pieces is actually one that members of the press, including Wccftech’s own Kai Tatsumoto, got to experience in previews. How the music tied in with the story you had just witnessed, and the complete understanding you have about this giant tree that you’re climbing, still sticks out in my mind, days after seeing the credits roll. It was really beautiful, and I wish more of the game was able to weave gameplay and narrative as strongly as it was done there.

Lastly, speaking of the music, that is the final aspect of the storytelling that really makes South of Midnight special. The original songs written for each of the key characters from Prospero that you meet and help out are all so well done. It’s something you really have to experience for yourself, and it’s a big part of why I’d still recommend that you play South of Midnight. On top of the other visual and storytelling aspects I’ve already talked about, the music wraps it all together so beautifully.

Overall, South of Midnight has excellent storytelling, excellent artistic and visual design, a wonderful cast of characters and voice actors, and an original soundtrack that punctuates each big narrative beat in a way that will stay with you long after you put the controller down. Unfortunately, the same creativity that went into the rest of the game is missing in its combat and platforming, and Compulsion Games does itself no favors by launching you into the same boring combat scenarios again and again in each level.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X (code provided by the publisher).

7.0

WCCFTECH RATING

South of Midnight

South of Midnight has some incredibly strong storytelling chops, brought together by its stunning visual design and excellent soundtrack. Unfortunately, the experience is bogged down by boring, repetitive combat and lackluster platforming, but it's worth rushing through those parts to experience everything else South of Midnight has to offer.

Pros

• Amazing visual design
• Strong storytelling with a solid cast of characters
• Great performances from the voice actors
• Original music that punctuates the storytelling in a unique way that stays with you

Cons

• Boring and repetitive combat
• Lackluster platforming that doesn’t begin to get interesting until the very end
• A number of bugs that may or may not be ironed out in the day-one patch

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