Omensight review for PS4, PC

I like the idea of Omensight a lot more than I actually like Omensight itself. It describes itself as an “action adventure murder mystery”, and, surprisingly, it mostly delivers on that promise. Playing as a mysterious mystical warrior named The Harbinger, you work your way through a branching narrative in order to prevent the apocalypse. The twist? You keep getting pulled out of reality just before the end comes, so you can go back and relive the day from another perspective.

As I said, I love that idea. As was the case with the likes of Tacoma or The Invisible Hours, I think it?s fun to see games play around with time in a way that only they can.

The problem is that for it to really work, you need a compelling story. And quite frankly, I don?t think that can be said for Omensight.

Don?t get me wrong, it?s definitely a complex story, which is necessary if you want to tell a story like Omensight aims to tell. It?s got loads of characters, and you can tell that a lot of thought has gone into the game?s world-building. But, as any sci-fi or fantasy reader could tell you, there?s a difference between world-building and storytelling, and I don?t think Omensight crosses that divide. It?s the same issue that plagues lots of visual novels — they spend lots of time telling you the lore via monologues and exposition dumps, but they never make a good case for why you should care in the first place.

It certainly doesn?t help that you?re essentially seeing the same story play out multiple times from multiple angles. If you aren?t drawn in by the story one time, hearing it several more times with more details probably isn?t going to do the trick.

The feeling of repetition also isn?t helped by the gameplay itself — hack & slash action games can feel repetitive even at the best of times, so hacking and slashing your way through the same story time and again definitely won?t do much to shake that feeling.

On a related note, playing the same stories time and again means you visit the same locations time and again, which in turn means reminding you again and again that the camera here is occasionally atrocious. It mostly follows your character, but every so often you?ll go around a corner or you?ll want a better sense of where you?re jumping, but the fixed camera means neither of those things are possible.

Having written all that…by no means is Omensight a bad game. If you?re into the story and the lore, in fact, I can see being able to overlook the action and the camera — neither is great, but nor are they the worst things ever. Personally, I?m not going to stay awake at night wondering how to uncover a few pieces of the story I may have missed, but there are certainly worse games you could agonize over.

Spearhead Games provided us with an Omensight PS4 code for review purposes.