Pine Review

This is a game that’s very rough around the edges, but I enjoyed it, anyway. Pine is a bite-sized, open-world adventure that probably drew a lot of inspiration from Breath of the Wild. It feels like a case where an ambitious indie studio bit off just a tad more than they could chew, though, and didn’t have the technical prowess to iron out some of the kinks. This game is a buggy mess at times. Frequently, my character got stuck in a wall, and the only way out was to quicksave and reload. Combat is also pretty clunky and got a little frustrating near the end. Fortunately, there are only a few instances where you are forced to fight. Most of the time, you can easily run away from danger or pay off the other tribes to leave you alone.

That gets into the cool part about Pine: its world building. The world is inhabited by several intelligent species who rarely get along. They especially hate humans, and so you have to win them over by donating to their villages. But as you befriend one species, it’ll cause other species to hate you again. Sadly, you can never make peace with everyone at once, but it’s still a neat mechanic that makes the game more dynamic and interesting. Like, is it worth allying with this particular species so you can safely complete the quest in that area, or are you better off holding onto your resources to craft better armor? I really liked having to weigh these options, though I almost always regretted giving up my resources. Some items are just really hard to find again.

The world is fun to explore, though. Er… when the platforming mechanics behave, that is. But there’s a lot to uncover, and no resource or reward feels pointless, because you can always donate or trade it if it serves no purpose to you. There are also three dungeons/vaults that unlock special abilities, and you can do these in any order. The caveat is that you can only do one per story beat, and the wait time between Vaults 1 and 2 is pretty long. That means a good chunk of the game plays very differently depending on which ability you unlocked first. Being able to tame wild animals is a fun and useful skill, so it would suck if that was the last one you got, and you didn’t get to actually use it much. All that said, Pine gets an A+ for what it tries to do. The execution, however, is disappointing but still mostly enjoyable.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.