First thing worth pointing out when it comes to Stories: The Path of Destinies is you shouldn't be off put because it features anthropomorphic animals. I feel like that's a ridiculous disclaimer to put up, but I only do so because it would be a shame to eliminate the game based on something so superficial when there may be actual reasons to give it a skip.

Getting the story down to essentials results in the following – we play as Reynardo, a lovable fox rogue with a sky ship to his name who finds himself embroiled in a civil war between the seemingly mad toad Emperor using his villainous legions of Eavens in order to subjugate the land and Rebels fighting against his oppression with everything they have, from rabbit spies to renegade scientists. Things are not looking too good for our underdogs, though. Singular event that could possibly tip the odds in Rebels' favor may be Reynardo failing to protect a child survivor who just so happens to carry a mysterious book he was supposed to be safeguarding. With his last breath kid hands the book over to our self-proclaimed hero and said tome turns out to be a sort of book destiny shaped by the reader's own choices. After our sly fox gets himself killed soon after and the book rewinds time to a peculiar three-way choice he realizes this is the opportunity to make all the right calls and save the nation. Maybe even become a hero along the way and win the heart of his childhood friend from way back when in Sword Fu academy... before he knew she was the Emperor's adopted daughter.

The way all the above synergises with one part of the game so you have this marriage of narrative and mechanics is handled staggeringly well, and is in the fact the main selling point of the title. Stories is build for many, many replays. By which I mean “there are 24 endings and they are actually different”. Getting to those is mindblowing for the first few times as it should be. Branching off from those three initial choices, to which the book always rewinds, you embark on mini-journeys with subsequent decisions to make. Each “playthrough” is short because devs designed the structure where each has four or five levels aka choices to make and the final level always ends up as more or less identical climax from gameplay point of view. Just because you decided, for example, to go after the dangerous Iblis stone doesn't mean you'll always end up with the same outcome. Do you become the tyrannical madman who brings about the end of the world? Do you get betrayed by someone you considered a close friend? Do you realize the folly of this endless war? I absolutely loved the permutations of GAME OVER screens that Stories presents to the player seeing as there is only one True Ending and to unlock that particular route you need to play through the game at least four times unlocking Secrets that will help you make the informed decisions working towards that True Ending. At its shortest this means you'll get about two, two and a half hours out of the game for five playthroughs because they're individually short as hell. If you've kept track, though, you must have realized you've only unlocked FOUR + True Ending out of potential 24 so yeah, you have a lot of play time ahead of you if you want to get all of them as game keeps track in the Story screen with neat summaries and artwork.

Major strike against the game is sadly the other side of the same coin – to experience all the endings, and journeys to said endings, means going through it over and over and over again. And there's only half dozen levels. Yes, you read that correctly. By the time you embark on your True Ending you will have already seen everything the game has to offer in terms of assets like levels and enemies. You will go through these same levels numerous times to unlock the narratives on offer and that's a goddamn shame. There are certain variations like alternate paths within levels, which require you to have magical swords and I'll get to those, but this repetition is the core issue at hand and while I was absolutely interested in playing for as long as I could, after unocking ten endings I was worn out and I quit. I imagine this is one of those unfortunate outcomes where just googling the endings may be faster. Even if you're invested consider each run will generally take you around 25-30 minutes to get through.

I brought up some magical sword shenanigans and that brings me to Stories' second major facet – it is an action RPG when you're not making CYOA decisions affecting the fate of floating islands and various people.

Saying it's a competent one as it draws from Arkham games' pedigree of having freeflowing combat system based on getting your combo meter high would be reasonably accurate. At this point it may be somewhat overused and looked down upon when you observe the video games landscape, but I would say it works as such. You level up based on combat performance and you end up with points to improve Reynardo's abilities. From a hook you absolutely need and use to navigate levels as well as pull enemies towards yourself to myriad of abilities lifted straight from Arkham games like timing attacks for double combos gain, taking enemies out instantly after a certain count has been reached, etc. Not to be left out devs also included a pretty basic crafting system. Gathering ore and various essences from chests across levels comes into play right here. You use these resources to craft and upgrade four available swords, each with its own unique spell. Amusingly enough they don't really affect damage and their primary use is to act as keys for magical sealing doors. This feeds into alternate routes I talked about. Most will simply lead you to a nice fat chest, though. Finishing with crafting and RPG stats we also get a magical socketed gauntlet which will fit three gems. You eventually come across superior versions of these gems as you would expect to add progression. These are pretty useful with effects ranging from “wreck enemy shields on regular attack” to letting you steal energy with every slash. Unlike magical swords this is a way you can customize your Reynardo to your specific liking, but is in no way a game changer.

Speaking of enemies... eh. You're fighting Ravens throughout the entire game and that means about four or five enemy types. There is some variety eventually once you begin working on additional endings as game changes it up with time. Real danger lies in combinations, lads. Nothing like having buffers and exploding type alongside shield-wearing Ravens blocking your way. Or it would be annoying if the game wasn't so dreadfully easy. Once you understand throwing enemies into other enemies knocks them down and allows essentially free kills you're golden. Afterwards it mostly boils down to knowing how to evade explosions and prioritizing annoying types like the aforementioned buffers which just needlessly prolong fights. On repeat playthroughs you'll grow to dread set fights because you'll know the levels inside and out.

Last aspect worth commenting on would be the game's overall production.

From the pulled back perspective game employs during its action segment it all definitely looks charming, but when camera zooms in you can see those models aren't exactly impressive. Thankfully, I think the guys behind Stories were well aware of this so practice is kept to a minimum and instead almost all relevant story bits get delivered via appealingly drawn CYOA sections absolutely oozing charm. This goes hand-in-hand with ever present humor and various references game is not above making. I don't think writers struck that equilibrium between a serious story this appears to be, with potential towards some damn dark stuff in certain endings, and whimsical humor protagonist seems to be inclined towards. This may be one of those subjective things alongside swell VA on narrator's part who tackles, well, all the voices due to a fairy tale-like approach. Hearing him continually throw out little snippets of dialog depending on what's going on the screen reminded me of Bastion in a good way.

Final Thoughts and Rating?

Mechanically-enforced narrative skeleton of the game is quite strong and its main feature yet also its Achilles' heel depending on your tolerance for grinding necessary in order to consume more story. I like those written and brilliantly voice acted parts, but limited scope leading to asset recycling gets in the way of showing those very same stories leading up to such impressively varied endings. Beneath endlessly replaying very few levels to tell a story you want, you also have a simple albeit competent action RPG-lite with all the trappings you're familiar with like leveling up, basic crafting, etc bolted on top of Batman Arkham's series free-flowing combat. Once you get your feet wet and unlock some ground level moves you're pretty much set to go. Expanding this idea further would make for a great sequel.