Story
With the best intention not to spoil too much, I try to outline the story only roughly. The player takes on the role of 15-year-old Amicia de Rune, daughter of a noble family living in the Kingdom of France at the time of the Black Death. As if plague and rat plague were not enough punishment, the inquisition is also behind Amicia's younger brother Hugo, who has been suffering from a strange disease since birth. Restless and constantly on the run, the children are desperately searching for a cure for Hugo's suffering after an attack on their parents' estate. Again and again the children are forced by the rats and the knights of the Inquisition into seemingly hopeless situations. On her journey, Amicia is supported by various people, but also suffers severe setbacks and tragic losses. After some unexpected twists, we end up in an exciting finale against a seemingly overpowering opponent. I don't want to reveal more about the story.
Gameplay
The game starts in the fall of 1348. In an idyllic forest full of brown leaves, Amicia and her father make a hunting trip. Armed with a stone slingshot that accompanies us along with other tossing objects throughout the game, Amicia is supposed to slay a wild boar. Thus, the game introduces you to the basic operation and then seamlessly transitions into the action.
The player is only safe from the rats in the light, because they are afraid of it. With fire bowls, torches or short-term burning sticks, one makes its way through the animal. Especially at the beginning of the game I had a lot of respect for the viechers and cursed again and again when it got dark. But as the game progresses, that changes…
There is no doubt that A Plague Tale is an action-adventure with many sneaky passages, because again and again the children have to pass guards unseen or turn them off deftly. Almost all situations can be solved in several ways. Do I sneak past this guard or do I put it out of action with my narcotics for a short time? Or do we simply extinguish the torch of the guard with a targeted use of the stone slingshots and let the rats solve the problem?
The game mechanics remain virtually true to the entire game and are limited to sneaking, shooting and doping rats. You really don't have to think too much about it, but this has the advantage that you get through the game relatively frustrated and stay in a continuous "flow" – I could well imagine that this is even so wanted by the developer. In between, it is also necessary to solve one or the other small combination puzzle, in which I let the siblings in the team, for example, use various levers to overcome obstacles. In these situations you can then switch between the characters and play with Hugo or other companions.
With collected materials such as fabric or leather, equipment can be improved and ammunition can be produced at various workbenches. Here you have obviously got to the typical inventory of classic action adventures like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Co. Oriented.
In general, the game seemed to me to be cleanly programmed and almost free of bugs. There were no crashes or other technical problems. But I doubted myself in two places: There are always small scripted sequences when Amicia has to climb or you reach a target point. During these sequences, of course, once triggered, one no longer has any influence on the events. In two cases, however, the rats ate me in exactly such a scripted sequence, because a mechanism (burning stick extinguished, automatically driving fire cage back) no longer cast light. I couldn't find out if there was a programming error at these points or if my solution might not have been planned. A technique learned in the endgame is also a bit bulky, which I can't describe in more detail at this point without spoilern. However, if the mouse moves incorrectly or too quickly, it often leads to the premature death of the protagonists. This can be a bit frustrating, because this ability is used quite often in the end. In fact, apart from the final fight – which I thought was temporarily insoluble, but later caught on my forehead – there are only a few "trial and error" situations.
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