Groundhog Day With Murder!

Omensight is a world where you play as The Harbinger, a wraith like mythical warrior that only appears in times of great strife. A mysterious murder occurs, and it’s your job to find out what happened to set it right. But if you don’t, the days play out and then you get sent back to the beginning when the murder occurred. Having a time loop in a game that’s not part of the mechanics, but actually part of the story is something that hasn’t been done much, but that’s the aim of Spearhead Games new adventure.

Check out my stream of Omensight embedded below:

Fantasy worlds with humanized animals in traditional fantasy roles like knights and wizards usually comes off as “kiddish” or goofy, but in this case, with all the serous topics of war, murder, betrayal happening everywhere, it somehow still works to fit the flow of the story and the game. Playing an ancient wraith like being that only appears in horrible times is a good way to both separate yourself from all the animal kingdom factions, but make it so that it feels natural to help one side to keep these dark days from continuing. The graphics only help to set the fantastical mood with its very stylized look that are similar to cell shaded games of the past. While the characters are well defined and are all interesting in their own right, the story itself is burdened by being too deep too soon, as the player is bombarded with too much exposition about the lore of the entire world.

While the lore is too much to handle, the best part of his whole game is by far the combat. Similar to the Arkham series of Batman games, the combat is all about flow of combat, and moving from one chain of attacks to the next without stopping. Each chain is additive, and only increases the movement speed and attack power based on a larger chain of attacks. Also, the use of dodging at the last second will start a bullet time like effect allowing for a quick counter attack.  There of course additional powers and moves that you gain from having different partners along the way, but the core combat is so smooth and fun that you might even forget to use them, except maybe outside of battle to finish a puzzle. There are some puzzles to be had, but they have the bad habit of being based around a power or in this case a new friend that has the exact power that you need to complete the next puzzle. I wish that more games used these new powers more organically and let it be up to the player as to when to use them, but this is not the case here.

With an interesting art style, smooth combat, and an interesting storyline start its easy to recommend Omensight.  It’s a bit rough with its exposition, and its backgrounds come out a bit to dark, but those are small problems on what is a solid game to checkout.

Also available on PS4.