Pyre Review

What is Pyre?

Pyre is an action RPG game that came out in 2017 developed by Supergiant Games. Pyre is available on PS4, Windows, MacOS, and Linux. In this game, you lead a group of exiles through the Downside, a purgatory-like area that criminals are sent to for life, and perform Rites to try to earn their freedom to come back to the Commonwealth. These Rites take the form of sports events. Between Rites you will make choices about which paths to take, buffs/debuffs to take on, items to buy or sell, and characters to talk to or side with. All decisions and results are lasting and have an effect on the outcome of the story.

Game Review:

For transparency I played Pyre on PS4 and it took me 15 hours to play. This is the second game from Supergiant Games that I have played, my first being 2020’s Hades. I had heard that this game was pretty good from a few podcasts I’d listened to but it never garnered as much attention as Hades. I expected Pyre to speak to me as I love sports in all forms, being a PE teacher by trade. I also trusted the track record of Supergiant with the quality of Hades and the word of mouth praise for their other games. Even with these high expectations I was not disappointed by Pyre.

Pyre has a beautiful art style that masterfully blends 3D environments and figures into a 2D plane. I love the 2D character art that showed when characters were talking but then they also had great looking 3D models during the Rites that were the main meat and potatoes of the game. Supergiant had a distinct art style that carries over from game to game and has only gotten better with time. Their art is a far cry from the photorealistic characters and environments of a modern day AAA game but in all the right ways. I personally much prefer a stylized 2D game than the generic (albeit high fidelity) picture that you find in modern AAA games.

Music hasn’t been something I have mentioned in many of my previous reviews. Partly because for some of the games I didn’t find the music that engrossing or meaningful; and because I do a lot of my gaming during my son’s nap time I’ve played with the game on mute or too quiet to really hear. Pyre is one of the exceptions to this. I loved the music that was played throughout the whole game. Most of the music is somber and quiet as the journey through the Downside is one of struggle and exhaustion. The music really paints the picture that where you reside is not a place you want to be, but it is the bonds you make with your party that carry you through. The music does ramp up during the Rites, as any good sports soundtrack does, but it doesn’t ever get loud like rock n’ roll. Rather it maintains its somberness through the musical accompaniment by NPCs during the Rites. The music pushes you to play harder, but never overwhelms you, and keeps you grounded in the reality of what is happening in the Rites.

As I mentioned before, the action of this game takes place in the Rites, sports events where exiles compete to earn their freedom. These Rites are played between 2 opposing triumvirates (3-person teams) and take the form of an invasion game (I get to use PE vocabulary woo!). An invasion game is one where you enter an opponent's territory to accomplish some task, like football or soccer. In the Rites, the task is to pick up an orb and either carry or throw it into the opponents’ pyre, a flame that acts as the goal with a certain amount of “health” that gets reduced after every goal. Every character has a way to defend their pyre and obtain the orb. They have what is called an Aura, which is essentially a ring (although the shape differs between characters) around a character that when another character touches they get banished for an allotted number of seconds before they can return to play. The way this works is that when a character picks up the orb, their aura disappears and they become vulnerable to opponents banishing them. But the game plays out in a battle for who can put out the other team’s pyre first. There are a few quirks to the game that at first feel a little clunky but add to the strategy of the games. First is that you can only move one character at a time, meaning that if you just want to pick up and run with the orb you can, but the other 2 teammates will remain in the back while your controlled character runs around. And second is that when a character runs the orb into the other team's pyre they remain banished until the next goal is scored, meaning you play 2 versus 3 until the next goal. This does not apply to throwing the orb into the goal which incentivises that although it is more challenging. Overall this sport is a really intriguing way to progress the story and almost gives the exiles a sense that they are like gladiators, having to compete in sport to earn their freedom. As someone who loves sports and sports games, Pyre provided a strong core sports game that held my attention and can compete with AAA sports games, even if less intricate and advanced.

I’ve mentioned that there are many different characters. These characters all can affect your strategy and playstyle in the rites. Each character has different stats and abilities that can make them more or less useful against particular opponents. These stats take the form of 4 different categories: Glory, Quickness, Presence, and Hope. Glory is the amount of damage that a character can do to the opponent’s pyre, Quickness is how quickly a character can move, Presence is how large a character's aura is, and Hope determines the amount of time a character has to wait before returning to the Rite after being banished. Each character is presented with these 4 stats that make them unique in addition to character abilities that really change up the gameplay and are earned through a progression system in the game. Throughout the game you will add multiple characters to your party, more than the required 3 needed to perform the rites, so the game lets you pick which characters you want to use for a particular match. Some characters may be more adept against a particular opponent than others so may be more useful for a particular rite. Competing in the rites is the most effective way for characters to progress and unlock new abilities, though, so you may not want to completely neglect certain characters.

The story of Pyre is what really hooked me on this game. The character writing and lore of the world is what kept me coming back wanting to learn more about how it works. There is an intricate geopolitical conflict in the background of the entire world and takes place in the Commonwealth that we never get to see. We only get to read about and hear what characters' perspectives are on it, whether a character supports the Commonwealth or not. You also get to learn more about the characters and dig deeper into their backgrounds, including things like what they did to get sent to Downside or if there are other characters they don’t tolerate. As you learn more about a character you learn their motivations which end up being important in decisions you will make concerning the overarching story that I won’t discuss here to avoid spoilers. But let’s just say that certain characters may or may not have more virtuous reasons to earn their freedom than others.

The developers of Pyre also implemented a glossary and lore system in the form of a book stored in the party’s travel wagon. This book is only readable by a few characters and contains important knowledge pertinent to the operation of the rites, details on the lore of the world, and a glossary of terms and definitions. This book is gradually unlocked as you gather more pages to read. It contains the history of the Downside and the first exiles who created the Rites as a pathway to escaping.

Overall this game kept me engaged more than many of the other games I’ve reviewed here. The story here is deeper and more philosophically interesting than most of the other games I’ve played and reviewed. The action of the rites is also entertaining for a sports fan like myself, despite being inherently clunkier than other sports titles.

Family Friendliness:

Pyre is a pretty family friendly game. The action takes the form of a sports game and when a character gets banished they just disappear, so there is no concern on the issue of violence. Dialogue in general is intelligent and clean, it never devolves into cursing. There are a few characters whose designs could be frightening for a little one, but it is never graphic. And sometimes characters allude to being promiscuous but it’s the type of thing that a young child wouldn’t pick up on. Pyre also features a multiplayer versus mode where you can play the sport part of the game with the family.

Features for Parents:

Pyre has a number of features that can make it a good game to play as a parent. First all dialogue, except for an announcer during rites, is written and is read at the players pace. Meaning if you have to be a responsible parent in the middle of a dialogue, the dialogue won’t move ahead without a button press from the player. Because it is all written dialogue, it also makes it possible to play while your child is napping, as you won’t have to worry about characters yelling and waking them up. Pyre also features a really good pause button: you can pause during anything and resume when you’re ready; and a great autosave feature: it saves essentially after every screen or encounter, that way you don’t have to worry about having to redo tons of game time. This has been one of the best games in terms of playability during naptime that I’ve reviewed so far.

Final Verdict:

Pyre is a relatively unknown gem in the gaming world. Developer Supergiant Games became acclaimed due to 2020’s Hades but Pyre is my personal favorite game I’ve played from them. It makes me want to check out the other two games in their catalog. I cannot recommend this game any higher as a parent, especially one who enjoys an intellectually stimulating narrative paired with smart and engaging gameplay. Pyre is not only one of my favorite games I’ve played this year but also one of my favorite games of all time.