The Plucky Squire review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch

The Plucky Squire, recently released for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch is certainly going to be one of the more memorable indie releases for me this year. That’s almost entirely due to how charming the game can be, and how well it nails its whole storybook style. It’s hard not to smile at the beautifully rendered artwork, both in The Plucky Squire’s 2D and 3D modes. The voiceover narration as the controllable hero Jot and his friends make their way through the adventure helps sell the overall storybook effect really well, the music is light and whimsical, and the writing can often be humorous and well-written. However, it’s also a game that’s not without some flaws, which unfortunately brings the overall experience down a bit.

When you start The Plucky Squire, it doesn’t seem too dissimilar from other The Legend of Zelda-inspired indie titles. Cute characters, top-down 2D presentation, basic sword-swinging mechanics, and even a sword spin attack are present. Combat is relatively breezy, most enemies don’t present a huge challenge, and there’s even some light puzzle-solving elements present. However, once the villainous Humgrump ejects Jot from his storybook world, The Plucky Squire’s overall scope certainly changes and becomes far more inventive than it initially appears to be.

One of the major mechanics in The Plucky Squire involves moving between Jot’s 2D storybook world, and the 3D world that exists within a young child’s room, in a sort of Toy Story-esque way that feels seamless and works really well. When Jot transitions to the 3D plane, it’s usually to either explore the 3D environment looking for items needed in his 2D world, or it’s to work around puzzles present in the 2D world that require a new perspective or approach to solve. Jot can manipulate the storybook by turning and tilting pages, manipulating objects in the 2D space in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. It’s a cool effect used extremely well, and it’s easily one of my favorite things about The Plucky Squire. The moment you first transition to the 3D world is just really cool in general and makes you realize there’s a lot more to the game than you initially thought.

On the unfortunate side, The Plucky Squire doesn’t trust you to figure a lot of things out on your own. The game loves to tell you what to do and where to go, and despite giving you the illusion of an optional hint system for puzzles, it still seems to want to overexplain things and interrupt the flow of gameplay pretty often. This is compounded by the fact that the puzzles aren’t particularly challenging to begin with, which just makes the whole thing a little more frustrating. I was able to overlook this for the most part based on the strength of the writing and presentation, but your tolerance for it might vary from mine.

Still, there’s a lot to enjoy about The Plucky Squire. It really is a gorgeous game, the art design is stellar, the voiceover work for the narrator is well done, and again it just nails the storybook presentation so well. While the puzzles aren’t particularly hard, they are inventive, making use of the 2D to 3D space extremely well. There’s certainly room for improvement in The Plucky Squire, but at the same time I think it’s a game worth checking out when you get the chance.

Note: Devolver Digital provided us with a The Plucky Squire PC code for review purposes.

The Plucky Squire [Devolver Deluxe] - PlayStation 5

Price: $46.54

8 used & new available from $41.24

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