Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical Reviews
A genuinely thrilling, occasionally heartbreaking tale that shines a new light on well-known Greek gods. The musical aspect makes it one of the most unique visual novels you'll play, but its inconsistency in quality lets it down.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical's murder mystery is predictable, but worth playing through a couple of times for its strong voice cast and customizable songs.
A fascinating but flawed experimental musical game that fails to live up to some heavenly potential.
An intriguingly whimsical mix of choose your own adventure book and musical, whose lacklustre songs and limited interactions don't manage to live up to the promise of its name.
While a murder mystery drives the story forward in Stray Gods, Grace, and the role you have in shaping her, is at the heart of the experience.
Overall, Stray Gods rocks. Between the cast's fantastic performances, a fun twist on Greek mythology, and a genuinely novel game mechanic, it's a game I didn't know I needed, but one I'm happy to give a standing ovation to.
Stray Gods is ambitious in its goals, and while the road Summerfall and co. take to reach them is rough and uneven, I won’t be forgetting Grace’s tale anytime soon. It’s a clever format, and the unfulfilled potential makes me excited for future attempts to meld games and theater.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a visual and auditory delight filled with superb musical performances.
I’m enamored by Stray Gods’ writing and art, but the thing that makes it unique is the worst part about it. Whenever I was enjoying the writing, acting, or art, the music would kick in and I’d mutter “oh, okay, here we go again” until it was time to pick my choices and direct the song one way or another. It’s such a cool idea, but the foundation is so shaky that I sometimes wish it was just a standard adventure game so its best parts could shine through. It wouldn’t have been as eye-catching or original without its gimmick, but it would’ve been a better game.
Solid and definitely has an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
When I first heard of Stray Gods, I was intrigued. A video game musical might not totally work, but at least it would be interesting to play, I thought. How wrong I was. The concept of Stray Gods is the most interesting thing about it, but the execution is boring to the extreme. If you want a fun musical video game experience, you're better off watching Singing in the Rain whilst repeatedly changing the volume on the remote. That way you'll have better songs, a more enjoyable story, more interactivity, and a greater sense of player control than Stray Gods provides.
With a multitude of choices and possibilities, Stray Gods gives players plenty of reasons to stick around for an encore. The show doesn't always have to end when the curtain goes down.
An interesting musical role-playing game, well written and excellently acted but with a little too much carelessness on the aesthetic side and songs not always memorabe.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is full of charming gods and funky songs, and some issues with sound levels aren't enough to ruin that.
Stray Gods is at times a heartwarming and expertly crafted musical experience. However, certain narrative choices, along with some minor audio and performance issues, leave the game feeling like it could have spend a little more time in the oven.
Filling a game based on dialogue trees with mythological musical numbers turns out to be an inspired idea in Stray Gods, as it has the quality of writing, composing and character design to pull it off. Its bulges with both comedy and tragedy, and while some of the songs lack punch, overall Stray Gods puts on one hell of a show.
Stray Gods is an interesting and mostly successful experiment in creating a new gaming genre, one that I am ultimately hoping leads to more refined experiences in the future. Despite a few grievances, I enjoyed my time unraveling Calliope's death and diving into the lives of these diverse Idols, all while tapping my feet along to some well-constructed songs.
There isn't really anything like Stray Gods out there right now, and while it falls short of hitting the highs of some of the musicals that served as inspiration for the game, its narrative design and the unique way in which player choice affects the story make for a refreshing and enjoyable ride.
Part murder mystery, part visual novel, Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is an audacious experiment. Happily, it pays off in a unique video game experience. There aren’t many games that use songs in a theatrical way. Being able to direct the flow of the music in real time is exciting and engaging. Pacing issues aside, it’s a concept that’s definitely worthy of continued development. I hope Wintory and Gaider continue to iterate on this new IP.
The story twists and turns, and the company Grace keeps over time is a joy to spend a few hours with. Given that Stray Gods is the child of some of the folks behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Dragon Age series, the game’s strengths shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s hard not to be disappointed at how much it fails to teach the old gods some new tricks.