Test-South of Midnight: Test: Breathtakingly beautiful action adventure with southern flair

South of Midnight earned an asterisk for the setting alone. Instead of the buried fantasy agent or generic sci-fi worlds, take it to you to the deepest south of the United States. Admittedly, in a dramatized fairy tale version, but still with a love letter coming from the heart to the culture and folklore. So is there time to immerse yourself in the steaming swamps, to wrestle with alligators and to see which deadly sad story South of Midnight spins for you ... Or should I say "web"?

South of Midnight is an outstanding action adventure in terms of atmosphere, history, music and graphic design. Only there are unfortunately a few unsightly threads in the otherwise beautiful hand -clipped gobelin to play that the developers delivered there. But before I get involved, I better dismantle the story ball.

In front of me the flood

Hazel Flood lives with her mother Lacey in the small town of Prospero far in the south of the USA in a small wooden hut right on the river. Apart from a few disputes between mother and daughter via Lacey's exhausting overtime as a social worker, the world is actually okay. At least until a heavy storm breaks over the area.

While her mother still grabs the most necessary things to then look for shelter in an emergency accommodation and hazel checks whether everything is in order for the neighbors, the increasing current of the river tears the hut with itself, including Lacey. As a former athlete, Hazel is very quick, but it does not manage to catch up with her mother and has to watch helplessly how the hut is driven downstream.

When she is looking for help with her grandmother, she finds two large needles in her villa, as used to weave carpets. They seem to call for her in a magical way. It turns out that Hazel is a weaver, a sorceress who can heal both mind and soul and hopefully help her mother.

In order to explain the a little less vague, it is now becoming esoteric. The world of South of Midnight is held together by a kind of invisible tissue. If a person suffers severe grief, there may be cracks in this tissue. From there, evil spirits arise and it can even happen that those overwhelmed by the grief lose their humanity and become monsters.

Weber women are able to see the tissue, repair broken areas and thus also free people from their pain. Apparently this happens primarily by regularly beating a dozen opponents in a closed arena. Sometimes healing can be very simple.

Take care of it, otherwise there are scars

As far as the gameplay is concerned, South of Midnight always follows the same knitting pattern: First Parkourt you through a beautiful landscape, then an arena fight occurs and alternating until the chapter is over. With a little luck (or bad luck), only a boss fight is waiting for you.

Conveniently, most of the weaver's forces can be used both in combat and in exploration of the world. For example, you can pull opponents like on threads across the room or push away. But this also works with boxes or other objects and thus helps with otherwise impossible jumping passages.

However, my absolute highlight among the skills is crouton. Hazel finds her old favorite fabric animal from childhood on the way. Thanks to the power of the weaver, Crouton awakens and supports Hazel on her trip. If you find a hole in the ground or a gap in a wall that is too small for Hazel, the sweet soft toy is used and cheerfully waddles through any danger that he offers. In fighting, he even takes over your opponents for a short time and makes them allies. Crouton is not only incredibly sweet, but also extremely useful!

The oversized web needles also serve as weapons. However, it never happens. Apart from a few branches for additional experience points, the areas are very linear and the arenas have always been recognized from afar. You have to actively step through the obvious barrier yourself to start the encounter. A bit like the fog walls in the games of from software.

However, when crossing after a few struggles, the similarly flap feeling begins in the stomach, but not because the fights would be challenging, but because they are tremendous repetitives. The selection of opponents is extremely limited and the arenas are practically always the same round area, which only adapts to the current environment.

If you are on the challenge, you may still have a little fun out of it by screwing up the level of difficulty. Everyone else is advised to switch to the lowest level and just get the fights behind quickly. Even the biggest action junkie will lose pleasure in the long run if he has to compete for the sixth time. Only the boss fights stand out positively and let it flash through what would have been possible.

It is interesting that at some point the developers probably noticed that the combat system is not particularly fulfilling. At least that would explain why you can simply decide in the options to completely skip the fights (and thus practically half the game). Officially, this attitude serves to access children, but if your children play South of Midnight, then the fights are their slightest problem.

Instead, you should get a piggy bank to finance the future therapy costs for the offspring. South of Midnight may look fairytale and harmless in screenshots and videos, but the stories that you experience by the way are absolutely not for children!

And now: “You are beautiful” by Alligator!

With every knot we solve, there is a new puzzle part in the history of a central character in the form of a vision. And these stories have it all. There are parents who hate their children and let them feel it, brutal murders, childhood drafts, escalating family dispute and shocking tragic fates.

It is often the story of the surrounding area and the ambience. South of Midnight is not only graphically beautiful, but also as far as the design of the world and creatures are concerned. The south of the United States has more to offer than just insulating swamps (although even they look really good). Especially in the more open areas such as near the tip of a mountain with an insane view of the surroundings or the somewhat light forest areas, in which the light falls picturesque through the leaves, one is amazed. Here has been here since oursstill done a lot.

Stylistically, the developers have chosen an unusual stop-motion look. Hazel and other characters should give the impression that each movement has been modeled and photographed individually by hand. Unfortunately, this was not consistently implemented. Apart from a few situations and cutscenes, the deliberate stuttering does not even notice, in others the movements just look chopped off like a program error. So do not knock you around, but of course still contributes to the unique look of South of Midnight.

However, the secret hero of the game is composer Olivier Derivière, who also for the music in,,orwas responsible. Already their soundtracks rose from their unique compositions and, above all, instrumentation from the orchestral video game one, but at the latest after South of Midnight, he should become the undisputed stars in this discipline.

On the one hand, the music reacts to Hazel and its surroundings at any time. Every (double) jump is accompanied by a small and quiet answer of a choir. This is so subtle that it is almost not noticeable, but illustrates the very special connection between gameplay and background music that South of Midnight strives for. It is also worth listening to the fights. Many attacks by the opponents are acoustically announced. Sometimes this is even your only way to avoid the attacks in good time.

But none of this is anything against the real music in the game. Each mystical being has its own song, which is already building across the chapter, but is only complete in the final of the section. In the chapter on the Alligator Two-Tot Tom, for example, the choir whispered the name of the giant reptile all the time. This also makes the threat to you permanently in mind (or ears) musically. After all, he could appear out of the water at any time and snack away if you are not on your hat.

Gradually, the music becomes more and more prominent and more instruments are added until the solo singing finally starts and the story of Two-Toed Tom summarizes again musically. If the vocals disturb you too much, at least the solo part can also be turned off individually, but this will escape one of the greatest strengths of the game.

The music is not able to save the Drögen Arena fights, but it does its best. I can't remember ever beating up monsters to the finest New Orleans jazz, but from now on I never really want to experience it differently. The fight feels almost like a choreography or a performance. At one point, Hazel even asks immediately after a fight whether she should now bow.

Total lost in Translation

There is still a small point of criticism that many will not even notice, but because it is so strange, I still want to go into it. Games without German voice output are no longer uncommon these days. If in doubt, subtitles can usually be switched on in your own language. It is exactly the same with South of Midnight.

However, it was probably responsible for the translation from English into German from the rum cake of drunk elementary school students who only had a Dictionary of Polish-Philippine. In some places, the translation is not only bad, but simply wrong. In some cases, even the pronouns were swapped for subject and object, which gives the sentence the exact opposite meaning.

If you are not powerful or cannot cope with the southern slang, you don't get what has just been said despite the subtitle. And even if you understand the speakers, the subtitles just draw your face in the face. This does not occur very often, but it is in crucial places.

In addition, the central, interpreted terms are chosen in a strangely uncomfortable manner. A concept that occurs again and again is the tissue already mentioned above. For the term “tissue” I decided to realize what it is about. In the original it is called “Tapestry”, the game makes the “tapiss series”. According to Duden, this is a German word, but I can't remember ever heard. As a precaution, I would like to apologize to all hardcore tapiserie fans, but at least I had to look up the term first.

By the way, my other favorite example is the translation of “trailer”. This is how Hazel denotes the dwelling of her and her mother. This means a non -firmly anchored (technically a mobile but actually not floating) home. As in "Trailer Park", a caravan settlement. According to German subtitles, they live in a chalet. Wow!

I only see two options for this. Perhaps the translator wanted to capture the feeling in the state of Louisiana, because it was originally founded by and named after the French solar king Louis XIV. He actually makes the “tapestry” (according to your own research), but the “chalet” doesn't even come. Even the Google translator has its pride.