South of Midnight review: A beautiful adventure with one major flaw

It’s frustrating that a game like South of Midnight, which is clearly packed with so much creativity, is let down by one major element that is creatively bankrupt.

In many ways, it’s a success. By setting the game in the American Deep South, developer Compulsion Games has plunged its narrative bucket into a well that has been oddly underutilised in video games, and ended up with a game that looks visually unique as a result.

Players step into the role of Hazel Flood, a young woman whose trailer is swept downriver in a giant storm, with her mother inside it. It soon becomes clear that there’s more to the storm that meets the eye, and that Hazel’s hometown of Prospero is teeming with dark secrets that are coming to the fore.

Hazel discovers that she’s a Weaver, which means she has the ability to use magic to mend broken bonds. She does this by confronting the evil spirits she finds around Prospero, and weaving them out of existence. The problem is, she has to do this quite a lot, but we’ll get to that.

First, it’s important to note what South of Midnight does well, because it’s a lot. This is a beautiful game, with some truly impressive landscapes. On occasion, when the sun hits the trees just right, I had to just stop for a while and take it in. Compulsion Games has specialised in more abstract art styles in the past, but this proves that when it comes to realism, it’s no slouch either.

That’s not to say it’s completely abandoned its surrealist streak. Hazel and the rest of the characters in the game move in a stop-motion animation style, and when viewed closely during cutscenes they appear to be made of a highly polished wood. The effect isn’t as distracting as you may think – you barely notice it during gameplay, meaning it only really comes to the fore during cinematic sections. And if it really does stick in your craw, you can turn it off during gameplay if you wish.

Despite the deliberately reduced fluidity, the characters’ personalities don’t suffer as a result. Adriyan Rae – who previously starred in NBC drama Chicago Fire – performed both the voice and motion capture for Hazel and is superb in the role – if we don’t see her name listed when The Game Awards rolls round at the end of the year it’ll be a serious injustice.

Even as what’s essentially an extremely detailed puppet, the nuances in Rae’s performance play out perfectly in Hazel’s face, making each cutscene genuinely enthralling to watch. This also extends to her voicework in general – her delivery is superb and believable, as is that of the rest of the cast.

The audio quality extends to the soundtrack too. French composer Olivier Deriviere (who composed both A Plague Tale games) has delivered a wonderful score, throwing in elements of blues, jazz and country for a perfect melting pot of all things Southern culture.

Deriviere said last month that “this game is singing with the player”, and thanks to him this is literal at times. The game is divided into around six or seven separate tales, each telling the dark story of one of Prospero’s residents. As Hazel finds more about each tale, the music starts to add layers, with occasional lyrical snippets mixed in. By the time you reach the final part of that tale, your gameplay is accompanied by a full song. The lyrics aren’t going to give Ivor Novello award nominees any sleepless nights, but it’s an effective gimmick.

It’s these tales that both highlight South of Midnight’s strengths, and are home to its greatest weakness. The general gameplay loop, for the most part, has each tale starting with Hazel armed with an empty bottle. As she clears each section of the blight that’s infecting it, she’ll witness part of the character’s backstory, after which she collects the memory in her bottle. Once the bottle is full, she’s chased by a dark shadow – cue a platforming section – until she reaches a bottle tree, where she can free the dark memory and restore part of Prospero.

On its own there’s nothing particularly wrong with this set-up, and the stories themselves are pretty hard-hitting. This is a game that deals with death, and often in its most tragic sense with many of the cases involving the deaths of children, parents, domestic abusers or those with mental health conditions. But it’s also a game that tries to bring hope to those who have to continue living with the aftermath of these deaths, and in that sense it’s a plot that – while rightly introduced with multiple trigger warnings – is handled in a relatively tactful way.

The issue isn’t the tales themselves, then, but the predictable way in which they’re navigated. It’s almost always the same situation – run here, kill some enemies, fill the bottle, run there, kill more enemies, fill the bottle, run away from the shadow, boss fight – and by the fourth or fifth time it’s far outstayed its welcome.

“It’s almost always the same situation – run here, kill some enemies, fill the bottle, run there, kill more enemies, fill the bottle, run away from the shadow, boss fight – and by the fourth or fifth time it’s far outstayed its welcome.”

It also doesn’t help that the combat is by far the weakest aspect of the game. Hazel is armed with a handful of Weaver powers which enable her to use magic to stun enemies, pull them towards her, push them away or possess them with her creepy little doll Crouton (which has come to life, because sure). It’s perfectly serviceable but never thrilling.

More annoying is that this combat never happens spontaneously as you’re exploring the world – it’s always strictly limited to specific areas. It’s always blatantly obvious when you’re about to enter a fight because it’s always introduced with an open, circular patch of land ahead of you (even if you’ve been walking through narrow lanes beforehand).

You know for a fact that as soon as you walk into this area, the circle will be closed off and you’ll have to defeat all the enemies in there before you can continue. These enemies only come in around four or five types, and the only difference as you progress through the game is that you face off against progressively more of them each time.

I don’t like trying to second-guess developers, but it almost feels like Compulsion didn’t really want to put combat in South of Midnight at all, but added a few of these circular mini-arenas into each stage to extend the game’s duration to around 8-10 hours. Even the skill tree is underwhelming, as none of the upgrades we applied felt like they were making a major difference to Hazel’s abilities.

It’s infuriating, because the game is wonderful in practically every other aspect, but these combat sections arrive with such frequent regularity that they’re constantly interjecting when they’re not wanted, a recurring third wheel in the relationship between the player and the plot. That the game has some genuinely impressive boss battles throughout but decides that the game should end (without spoiling the story) with one more batch of standard enemies to defeat feels almost like a knowing joke.

I really do recommend you try out South of Midnight regardless of this. It presents a setting, characters and subject matter that aren’t frequently explored in this medium, and everything is presented so wonderfully that it absolutely deserves your attention. Much as I loathe the term “a great Game Pass game”, it truly is worthy of a few nights of your life if you’re subscribed to Microsoft‘s service. It won’t go down as a classic, however, because while its style can’t be questioned, its insubstantial substance certainly can.