SCORE: ★★ - Disliked It
THE BREAKDOWN
+Gorgeous art and environmental design with a unique stop motion animation style
+Hazel is a fantastic lead, with a likeable personality and fitting flaws for a teenager
+The story attempts an ambitious look at the trauma and mythology of the Southern US, an underserved setting
+Cinematic and visually arresting boss fights
-Combat is awkward, poorly paced, and overly basic
-Writing is clumsy and important themes are frequently rushed through and not given the nuance they deserve
-Many of the story's crucial elements are wielded as a blunt instrument
I so desperately wish I loved South of Midnight as much as I love what it's trying to do.
Born and raised in Gulf Coast Texas, I'm well-acquainted with the stereotypes - some founded in fact, others not - about the deep south. I've joined neighbors who refused to evacuate from deadly hurricanes at their pre-storm barbeques, had two-faced family members put on the perfect face of southern hospitality while espousing the most rancid beliefs possible in private, and been taught that the Civil War was about 'States' Rights' from a middle school teacher who wore confederate flags whenever possible. I'm well-acquainted with the ugliness and the beauty alike, from a queer cousin who adopted racist views to fit in to a grandfather who spent his retirement doing free carpentry work across town because that was what it meant to be a good Christian. All of this is to say that South of Midnight's spotlighting of southern culture and mythology immediately appealed to me, and was a big part of why I purchased the game. An underserved setting in media, the deep south is host to rich stories and terrible trauma, and Compulsion Games' action-adventure makes a sincere effort to dive deep into both. Unfortunately, it's beset by so many problems in the process that I was never able to quite click with it.
The premise is compelling enough: when a devastating flood sweeps away her home with her mother still inside, protagonist Hazel desperately attempts to chase her down, only to be confronted with a strange corruption, manifesting as twisted strands, that is slowly consuming her entire town. Discovering a set of enchanted tools in her estranged grandmother's house after the latter tries to restrain her, Hazel finds out - from a giant talking catfish, obviously - that she's a Weaver, someone who can see the Tapestry that binds creation. With her newfound powers, she sets out to not only rescue her mother, but battle the Haint spirits that are spreading and find the source of the corruption.
Between the strong opening sequence and the graphics, my first impression of the game was very positive. South of Midnight is utterly GORGEOUS, with both gameplay and cutscenes boasting a stop-motion inspired animation style that works especially well for supernatural beings like the aforementioned giant catfish. It's a joy to look at and I don't have a single complaint about the aesthetic or visuals from start to finish. The creative talent is on display from both developers and cast, with the voice actors doing stellar work to bring their characters to life. The soundtrack is vibrant and fitting, blending orchestral work with banjos, flutes, and southern choirs for a very authentic sound.
Unfortunately, the fantastic presentation wound up setting me up for serious disappointment. My earliest point of unpleasant friction was with the gameplay. I was halfway through the combat tutorial when I realized that attacking enemies as Hazel simply felt terrible. Despite exaggerated animations, there was no sense of impact to my blows, and enemies were difficult to read due to their often inhuman shape. Hazel does get some activated abilities to propel herself around and crowd control foes, but it's seasoning on a combat system that just doesn't feel good. The game itself isn't too challenging, and various difficulty options - including one to remove combat entirely - ensure the experience is customizable, but while I appreciate the option, there's something to be said for the fact it even had to be presented - and that it was tempting enough that I considered enabling it before long. Still, I'm one of the biggest suckers for narrative-based games in the world; some of my favorite games of all time - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and more - have middling combat or worse, and that didn't stop me from loving them. But as much as I tried to meet South of Midnight on its own terms, I wound up no happier with the writing than I was with the gameplay.
It took me a little while to piece together exactly why I bounced so hard off South of Midnight's storytelling, but by the end of the game, I had figured it out: there's simply too many plot threads, and the narrative suffers immensely for it. See, while the framing of the story is Hazel trying to find her mother, she actually spends most of her time addressing smaller mysteries - mysteries often rooted in the generational trauma of the deep south. Part of being a Weaver is guiding the spirits of the lost and troubled to rest, and Hazel wastes little time in doing her duty, both because that's simply the kind of person she is and because these spirits often hold clues to her mother's location.
There's an admirable effort to weave (heh) the primary narrative together with these side stories, but South of Midnight simply rushes through them so quickly and approaches them so bluntly that I never found myself able to get attached. For example, early in the game, that catfish I mentioned earlier is being held in the air by an enormous tree possessed by the spirit of a young man who suffered a betrayal I won't spoil here. The tale of what happened to him, discovered through a blues song that adds more lyrics as the player progresses and ghostly images of the past, is undeniably tragic...but it wound up simply not hitting for me due to a combination of the song lyrics being almost comically blunt about what had occurred and there only being a handful of flashbacks before Hazel resolved his issue. After I had freed his spirit, I felt like I'd been rushed through a rollercoaster version of a Grimm Brothers story. From start to finish the entire sequence was maybe twenty minutes - most of that spent climbing and fighting - and this just kept happening. I'd enter a new area, find out about some horrible past trauma that left a troubled spirit behind, then fix it so quickly that I had barely processed what had happened. If these were the side quests in an RPG, I'd consider them shallow but interesting, but they're effectively what strings the main plot along in South of Midnight, and the substance just isn't there.
This isn't to say that South of Midnight's story is entirely bad - it has a strong final couple of chapters and some downright wonderful set pieces including a battle against a gigantic eldritch owl and a musical dance number in the underworld - but it's just too diluted and unfocused for how short the game is, trying to tell a half-dozen meaningful stories in as many hours (and that's if you don't skip the padded combat encounters). As much as I wanted to love it, I walked away dissatisfied, like I'd sampled a variety platter without ever actually having a meal to fill me up. Constantly gorgeous and occasionally brilliant, South of Midnight is a wonderful attempt at an artistic endeavor in an underserved setting, but as both a game and a story, it unfortunately disappointed me.
