This rite is a wrong
Originally released in 2018, A Rite From The Stars is a hybrid of the Point & Click and Puzzle Platformer genres in the vein of Zack & Wiki on the Wii. It’s now being released on all platforms and has been reworked to no longer be limited to just the mouse, while also adding behind-the-scenes extras like bonus art and cinematics. But does any of that matter if the game itself is bad on almost every level?
While one could say the story has potential (inspired by Hawaiian culture and beliefs, and even using a fully constructed fictional language) such a thought quickly evaporates thanks to an annoying sidekick and overly long discussions with NPCs whose text bubbles bounce across the screen at lightning speed. As someone who has had an interest in Hawaiian culture since hearing my grandma speak of her trips there and hours of binge watching Hawaii Five-O, even I grew tired of the story of our protagonist Kirn undertaking his tribe’s rites of passage. I was so happy to discover I could fast forward conversations and cinematics just by holding the trigger button.
The puzzles in A Rite From The Stars themselves serve no better. I never come across an intelligent one and instead they’re either obtuse or needlessly frustrating due to janky controls, and oftentimes both at once. An annoying maze, finicky platform segment, awful stealth segment with a coconut-throwing monkey; the game has all these issues and more.
While by no means the weakest element of the game, both the graphical fidelity and visual aesthetics on display are both lackluster, and the same can be said for the audio. It never captures the feeling of the culture it is inspired by, and if that’s due to artistic designs or low budget I can’t really say, but it’s a shame regardless because their heart was in the right place.
I hate having to be so harsh to a game, especially when the concept is geared towards me, but A Rite From the Stars irritated me to no end and I was so glad for it to be over. But then again, maybe that’s the real rite of passage.
This review is based on a PS5 code sent to SideQuesting by the Publisher.
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