South of Midnight Review – Folklore and Frustration Collide

South of Midnight Review

In the course of playing games over the past 25+ years, I don’t know how many dragons, knights, goblins, mages, and monsters I’ve slain. It must be in the tens of thousands. While I’m always hopeful that the next game will be the best ever, things can start to feel a little stale when your first task is choosing to be an armor-wearing warrior, stealthy rogue, or mage. Or the setting is a “medieval fantasy kingdom,” WW2, or an alien planet. So, it wasn’t hard to be excited by South of Midnight. It’s a new action adventure game set in America’s Deep South. There’s not an Orc anywhere to be found. Whew!

Like a Folksong Come to Life

Every epic tale needs a hero. In the case of South of Midnight, it’s Hazel, an athletic, smart, and sassy teen who lives with her mom in a mobile home somewhere in the South. A hurricane comes and takes the mobile home- and Hazel’s mother- with it. Hazel sets off to find her mother, the premise for an archetypal tale if ever there was one. It also immediately brings to mind The Wizard of Oz. While Hazel might not be in Kansas, she’s also not in her usual landscape. Instead, she’s in a magical reality filled with giant talking catfish and legendary alligators the size of 18-wheelers.

Of course, tales of heroic journeys are also the stuff of musical ballads and folk tales. South of Midnight uses Hazel’s quest to spin off into a number of other stories and legends from Southern American folklore. As Hazel searches for her mother, she meets a cast of colorful characters. She’s tasked with bringing to closure both invented and traditional folk myths. Without any doubt, it’s this aspect of South of Midnight that really stands out. Very few games have used this setting or treasure trove of folklore.

As Hazel moves closer to finding her mother, each step is blocked by some sort of unresolved story that still exists in a supernatural reality. Her task is to bring the stories to conclusion, freeing the characters from their situation. Sometimes these stories are comic, but most often they’re poignant and often disturbing. Wrapping up one story allows her to move on to the next stage of her journey. However, each story also gives her some sort of insight into her mother and their relationship.

A Tale of Two Games

Playing South of Midnight, I couldn’t help feeling like it was two uncomfortably cohabitating experiences. The setting, characters and narrative are just this side of brilliant. On the other hand, many aspects of game play are unrefined, frustrating or misguided. Unfortunately, the action mechanics are given more than equal time and their defects are hard to ignore.

South of Midnight is surprisingly combat-heavy, using a typical third-person action style as a template. This means that Hazel has the usual repertoire of light and heavy attacks, dodges, and a quartet of special abilities. On paper, all well and good. In practice, though, it doesn’t work well at all. Mostly, this is the result of issues with the camera, the lock-on mechanic, and the game’s approach to animation (more on this later).

Ultimately, the combat feels rote and tacked on, like an element the developers felt compelled to include. What makes it even less appealing is that most of the combat takes place in small arenas with a repetitive cast of enemy types. Hazel’s story and the game’s premise is original, so why bring every story to conclusion via clunky action combat? Why not trickery, or stealth or wordplay? The game has created a smart and capable hero, but saddled her with tepid Souls-lite encounters.

Not Entirely Poor Parkour

Faring a bit better than the game’s combat is Hazel’s ability to move through the world. She can jump, double jump, wall run, and use a grappling hook. She can use a Force push mechanic to move or break objects. Generally, the environments are well designed to make use of these talents. She can also use them to find secret areas in the world, too. While they’re more refined than the combat, that’s not too say they’re perfectly tuned, either.

South of Midnight features challenge sequences at the end of several sections, where Hazel has to use her parkour moves to move quickly through an on-rails supernatural landscape filled with hazards. Like the game’s combat, these sequences felt repetitive, imprecise, and out of place. The feeling of disconnect was amplified by generic-sounding action music that clashed wildly with the game’s otherwise excellent score.

But Then the Sun Comes out Again

Although it uses an older iteration of the Unreal Engine, South of Midnight makes up for somewhat dated technology with stellar art and environmental design. Rarely has the American South, with its swampy bayous and elegant mansions, been so perfectly captured. The game’s lighting is beautiful, and its fanciful creatures and cast have a lot of character. It’s an odd choice, but the developers have chosen to use a stop-motion effect by default. I’m guessing this is to enhance the otherworldly aspect of the narrative. You can turn it off, and I did, almost immediately. There were already enough issues with framerate stutters.

South of Midnight’s voice acting and performance capture are uniformly excellent, without a dud in the cast. It’s musical score is exceptionally eclectic, with tracks suggesting folk songs, hymns, rural blues and cinematic backgrounds. Now and then it stumbles, like using a narrative folk song to accompany an extended climbing sequence. But mostly, South of Midnight’s audio landscape is well done.

A Tragic Tale

South of Midnight pares a refreshingly different narrative and setting with artistic visuals that bring to life folklore from the American Deep South. It’s captivating, and there’s almost nothing like it. Unfortunately, South of Midnight is saddled with frustrating, unpolished combat and action sequences that become repetitive long before the game’s midpoint. Even with its glaring faults, South of Midnight is mostly worth playing just for the orc-free story and uniquely American characters.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***