The Plucky Squire review: Jack of all trades, master of some

The first time that you leap from the pages of A Plucky Squire’s 2D world and into the 3D ‘real world’ feels like a revelation of what’s to come - a genre-bending concoction of platforms and puzzles in a world that’s bursting with colour and charm.

While the art direction and concepts behind All Possible Futures' latest game do a lot of heavy lifting, the execution is sadly one that I found to be serviceable for younger audiences and deeply disappointing for mature ones.

We’re going on an adventure!

As you’ll likely know from Devolver and Sony’s non-stop promotion of The Plucky Squire, you play as Jot, the titular squire himself. Clad in a red tunic, he’s about as an adorable protagonist as you can get, with the narrative he finds himself in equally twee.

Jot and his merry band set out on a journey to take down the evil wizard Humgrump, who has his sights set on taking control of the kingdom of Mojo. In an early skirmish, Jot is imbued with magic, which allows him to use hidden portals to leap from the pages of the storybook in which this story takes place.

In a fourth-wall-breaking meta-narrative, The Plucky Squire is a book written and illustrated in a childhood bedroom and is left sitting on a desk in the 3D world. As such, Jot can hop between 2D and 3D dimensions, finding power-ups on the desk which can help him overcome obstacles in the book.

This cycle sets up a good rhythmic pace to the gameplay and story. New power-ups might include the ability to freeze certain items in time or place bombs to destroy walls, objects and tough enemies. Jot can also manipulate the pages of the book to solve puzzles, whether it’s to jump back a few pages to pick up an item, or to til the book entirely to manipulate the world within.

These are mostly engaging gameplay mechanics and a welcome way to break up the game’s monotony, even if solutions to these puzzles are usually obvious from the start.

Brimming with colour

The creativity behind A Plucky Squire shines through in its art style, which has to encompass several different facets as you swap between 2D, 3D, and various mini-games. In the book's pages, the characters and world take on a hand-drawn aesthetic, with the lighting from the 3D world offering a realistic sheen to the paper as each page turns.

Hopping out into the real world, Jot takes on an almost plasticine resemblance, while the world around him retains a photo-realistic appearance. Generally, this is a stunning game to look at, with Unreal Engine doing plenty of heavy lifting when it comes to environmental effects like fire and sparks.

The colourful nature of the visuals extends to the characters of this story, who are generally eccentric and endearing. Take Moonbeard, for example - the wizard (moonlighting as a DJ) who guides you on much of this adventure. His dialogue is often delightful to read, with the book pages flicking through like panels of a comic book. I generally looked forward to catching up with my party, and the game does a fantastic job of building a world that feels real and tactile.

Lost focus

The main appeal of The Plucky Squire is its variety, with several mini-games along the way serving as boss fights. These are generally all well-designed, even if their ideas often resemble something of a mobile game. My favourite of the bunch has you launching bubbles at a descending wave in a Tetris-style match-three game. Another has you timing button presses to fling items back at an enemy, while another blatantly borrows the gameplay from Crypt of the Necrodancer.

These serve as a great way to vary up the gameplay, but they rarely stick around long enough to make you feel fully satisfied. That’s exacerbated by what I felt to be extremely easy and dull gameplay while you’re in the 2D world of the book, which takes up around 70% of your total playtime.

As you progress through the realm of Mojo, you’ll engage in basic combat with simple enemy archetypes. While there are two difficulty options, combat encounters were a complete breeze on the hardest available, with a flurry of basic attacks swiftly taking out most enemies with ease.

You’re able to upgrade your combat abilities at regular intervals, but honestly, I rarely felt the need to. Adding a spin, throw, and jump attack into the mix purely served to vary up my button presses, but in reality, they never felt necessary. I could always spam my way through encounters without giving them a second thought thanks to generous attack windows and health resupplys.

This easy ride continued to the puzzles, which often felt like more of a chore to complete than anything. Solutions were often immediately apparent from the moment I entered a new area, with executing it the only thing left to do. Frustratingly, these solutions often involved several bouts of backtracking and plenty of hopping in and out of dimensions, which quickly became more of a chore than a fun way to spend an evening.

The further I got through The Plucky Squire, the more I began to think that this wasn’t a game for me. While Devolver Digital is known for publishing games with hints of mature themes, this certainly isn’t one of them. A few fourth-wall breaks here and there give you the impression that a fun twist might be around the corner, but it never happens.

From start to finish, The Plucky Squire remains a super wholesome affair. If you’ve got a child in the 7-10 age bracket that this game is clearly going for, then they’ll likely have a blast - but it’s severely lacking the sauce that could potentially entertain more mature audiences.

I also need to mention the several bugs and crashes that plagued much of my playthrough. In the ten hours it took me to roll credits, I encountered four hard crashes which closed the game. There were also two times when the camera got stuck in place and I had to reload a save. On several occasions, 2D assets ended up blinking in and out of existence, with subtitles occasionally completely obscured, resulting in missing out on crucial story beats.

For a game that’s been marketed so prominently by Sony and Devolver, it’s disappointing to see such a lack of polish in the final product.

The Verdict

The Plucky Squire certainly lives up to its name in its approach from a small development team. The ideas presented are often ambitious, merging countless genres that occasionally offer glimpses of heartfelt enjoyment, and its world is tactile, varied, and presented thoughtfully.

Sadly, the execution of many of its gameplay mechanics falls short of the team’s ambition. Puzzling feels monotonous and one-note, and the combat is tuned to be so simple that it almost feels like an afterthought. When its best moments are aped from other games, it’s hard to recommend A Plucky Squire unless you’re looking for something charming to entertain a child with.

3/5

Reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher.