Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical Reviews
"Mediocre virtual musical can't be saved with quality voice talents."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
When I first heard of Stray Gods, I was intrigued. A video game musical might not totally work, but at least it would be interesting to play, I thought. How wrong I was. The concept of Stray Gods is the most interesting thing about it, but the execution is boring to the extreme. If you want a fun musical video game experience, you're better off watching Singing in the Rain whilst repeatedly changing the volume on the remote. That way you'll have better songs, a more enjoyable story, more interactivity, and a greater sense of player control than Stray Gods provides.
An intriguingly whimsical mix of choose your own adventure book and musical, whose lacklustre songs and limited interactions don't manage to live up to the promise of its name.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical consists of a visual novel (despite what its name suggests) based around music and its main characters are modern interpretations of Greek gods. All of this, plus its visually appealing graphics and art style, is very much worthy of praise. Where Stray Gods strays from its qualities is when players who are less keen on visual novels find themselves limited by the available choices, as the plot allows for little deviation from the main story. As far as its execution is concerned, some of the singing moments feel inconsistent, due to the voice actors' different renditions.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is one of the most creative, original and interesting games to come along in a long time. The voice acting is world class, and its cast are clearly having the time of their lives. The comic book artstyle is beautiful, the story is compelling enough to keep you hooked, but unfortunately it is hindered somewhat by its limited gameplay and simplified mechanics. Beyond its save issues on Xbox, however, if you’re looking for a different kind of gaming experience from anything else out there, this one won’t lead you astray.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical has a sharp eye for aesthetics and a kind heart but its ambitious concept buckles under uneven implementation and a lacklustre sound.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a novel attempt at offering something new to the video game space. But while it has a strong cast and a well-realized setting, the uneven songs, lack of meaningful player choice and a dull narrative bring down the curtain too soon.
While Stray Gods is subtitled The "Roleplaying" Musical, it plays much more akin to a visual novel or adventure game than what one might call an RPG, though the musical part still applies. The music is especially fun and some tracks definitely would have a place in theatre.
Stray Gods is truly a mixed bag, full of strong actors, average singers, clever storytelling and weak songs. There are points of brilliance mixed with cringe-worthy presentations, making this one hard to recommend because of its inconsistencies. If you’re itching to play regardless, I’d strongly suggest those players pick it up on either PC or Switch because of the one-two punch of visual and interface issues. I can certainly vouch for the issues plaguing the Xbox version, and I’d wager the PlayStation version would be similar.
This role-player in which you have to solve the murder of a Muse by battling Gods through song presents a new form of storytelling and all the charm of the Buffy musical episode
A fascinating but flawed experimental musical game that fails to live up to some heavenly potential.
Stray Gods might be a well-written, narrative-driven murder mystery that drags us to Olympus and back again, but it fails to deliver anything remotely close to an earworm after hours of forgettable melodies. Though Bailey and Baker do enough to earn their flowers, the production itself does little to land Stray Gods a place among the musical pantheon.
"Stray Gods: The Roleplay Musical" invites you into a magical world filled with music, strong characters, and a thrilling plot.
What Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is not is a video game with innovative game design or creative game elements. Instead, the title shines with a gripping story, great images, high-quality music and an interesting implementation of the Greek god mythology. So if you like to influence a beautiful story, create your own little musical, and are cool with experiencing a rather passive gaming experience as a text adventure, you won't go wrong here and will have a good time.
Review in German | Read full review
Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical offers an enjoyable murder mystery visual novel musical.
The story twists and turns, and the company Grace keeps over time is a joy to spend a few hours with. Given that Stray Gods is the child of some of the folks behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Dragon Age series, the game’s strengths shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s hard not to be disappointed at how much it fails to teach the old gods some new tricks.
It’s a shame that the animation and songwriting can’t match the quality of the other elements, but Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is still well worth checking out.
Stray Gods is at times a heartwarming and expertly crafted musical experience. However, certain narrative choices, along with some minor audio and performance issues, leave the game feeling like it could have spend a little more time in the oven.
An interesting musical role-playing game, well written and excellently acted but with a little too much carelessness on the aesthetic side and songs not always memorabe.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical's murder mystery is predictable, but worth playing through a couple of times for its strong voice cast and customizable songs.