Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 review for PC

Boy oh boy, where do I start with this one? Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 was… fine. It was fine, there is nothing to fervently praise and nothing to vehemently criticize. It felt like another mostly safe and relatively boring foray into the depths of Playtime Co, which at this point doesn’t feel like enough. For those who have followed this franchise since the beginning, you can clearly see the leaps forward between the other entries as Mob Entertainment has grown as a company and Poppy Playtime as a brand, but it feels like they stalled out on Chapter 5.

Chapter 1 was little more than a proof-of-concept mini-game, able to be completed in well under an hour with some light puzzles and a well-designed chase with the primary horrific mascot Huggy Wuggy to cap things off. Chapter 2 leaps ahead and gives players a ton more story to dig into, as well as numerous additional characters and a much longer gameplay experience. Chapter 3 pushes that envelope even further, with more mini-games, proper worldbuilding and lore, and much more intricate and engaging puzzles, as well as the longest runtime to date. Chapter 4 was the first entry that started to feel like maybe it was losing steam. While boasting a ton of new story bits, the actual gameplay started to feel a touch stale, and change would most likely be needed going forward if the franchise wanted to grow. I felt like, in addition to the gameplay, this iteration of the Playtime story was coming to a close. Each chapter ended with some new cliffhanger revelation, which is great for building hype between chapters, but not suitable for ending a story. Chapter 5 felt like it could be a proper endpoint, but instead serves as little more than a filler episode, keeping fans strung along for a conclusion that MOB feels incapable of delivering at this point.

Clocking in at 3-5 hours (depending on how much you struggle with the puzzles and chase sequences + how quickly you move through the game), Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 seems to once again end just as it is really getting started. Another opening hour recovering from the events at the end of the previous chapter, some light puzzle solving, a few chase sequences, some new companion characters, a new single-use villain, then BOOM – final fight sequence with the real villain of the chapter, and yet another cliffhanger ending. To top it all off, this is another $20 chapter, bringing the grand total for the entire Poppy Playtime experience to $65. If the inevitable next chapter is priced the same or more, we are looking at $85-$90 for the entire game, which goes beyond what feels reasonable for what you are getting.

Poppy Playtime is, at the core, a game made for kids. This is not intended to patronize adult fans or disrespect the folks who love these games; it’s simply the reality. If my kids hadn’t come home from school excitedly talking about Huggy, “A giant blue stuffed animal that eats you”, this series might not have ended up on my radar. With that being the target audience, I find myself frustrated by the obtuse nature of the puzzles and platforming in this most recent chapter. These are not puzzles designed to get you to sit and think, or to look for environmental clues on how to solve; they are simply the same “route the power” puzzles from previous entries, just with an artificially inflated difficulty level to make them seem more advanced. Couple that with the fact that all of the chase sequences are the “get caught and you’re immediately dead” variety, and you have a game that is frustrating for the target child audience while being too basic and repetitive for any older/adult audience you have.

The new bits of story here are great, I just wish they had more gameplay substance to accompany them. The sequence in the middle where you get to experience the world *as* Huggy is a standout, but falls victim to the same issue the rest of the game has. It is too short, it is not fully realized, and it feels like little more than a taste of what *could* be. The non-verbal storytelling in the reunion of Huggy and Kissy is excellent, but such moments are few and far between. A generally bland new area to explore does very little to help boost this chapter up to the heights of something like Chapter 3, which felt fresh and varied.

At the end of the day, I feel like the diehard fans will pick Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 up and play it, but this might be the last time. My kids all sat and watched me work through this one for review, and even they walked away disappointed. They want to see a proper conclusion to this story, but grow tired of having the rug pulled out from under them with each successive chapter in this saga. Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 is just fine, but “just fine” is only going to continue to carry this series for so long. Some substantial changes need to be made in the development of Chapter 6 if Mob Entertainment wants to have any hope of propelling Poppy Playtime into the future.

Note: Mob Entertainment provided us with a Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 code for review purposes.