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Song of the Deep Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
It’s been a while since I’ve played a game as enchanting and engrossing as Song of the Deep. It’s the type of game that you start to play and then before you know it hours have passed; every intention to turn it off met with an “I’ll just go there” or “I’ll just get that one treasure that’s close by”. It’s just a shame the experience is rather brief, as by the time the credits roll you’ll just be left wanting more. Whilst it will undoubtedly stand in the shadow of Ori and the Blind Forest for Xbox One and PC owners, it’s a wonderful title with enough of its own unique charm and scintillating g...
Enchanting and charming, Song of the Deep is a children’s-fairy-tale-turned-video-game that’s full of wonder and vibrant beauty. The gameplay is both solid and enjoyable, but not without hiccups and hindrances.
If you’ve played Ubisoft’s Child of Light, you can expect a few similarities. The protagonist is a young girl looking for her family in a strange land, except this time you’re underwater in a submarine, and it’s not a turn-based RPG. Instead, you’ll find yourself slowly uncovering the vast labyrinth of caves and shipwrecks, upgrading as you go.
Annoying puzzles aside, Song of the Deep is an excellently put together Metroidvania with a sweet tale to tell.
The overall package provided by Song of the Deep is a good one. The presentation is enjoyable and the puzzles and discovery of new powers are genuinely exciting. If you can look past repetitive combat and backtracking and are willing to live with a few technical hiccups along the way, Song of the Deep is enjoyable but flawed, with some unrealised potential around the narrative meaning it was a missed opportunity.
Looking pass the average combat system Song of the Deep delivers a solid experience. Merryn’s journey to save her father while exploring sunken ships, finding hidden treasure, and uncovering lost cities overshadows a lot of the issues.The sense of wonder and excitement of diving deeper into the ocean as tranquil music plays in the background helped me forget about firing missiles are the same generic enemies over and over. Overall Song of the Deep is an epicundersea odyssey.
Insomniac Games has certainly been keeping itself busy lately. The studio has been launching game after game over the last couple of years, all of them of the quality you'd expect, and it seems it's prepared to tackle almost anything – big or small. Nestled in-between its successful re-imagining of the first Ratchet & Clank and its forthcoming Spider-Man title is Song of the Deep. While it may not have the bombast and the humour of Insomniac's other games, this 2D Metroidvania more than makes up for it with bucket-loads of charm.
But it’s the combat system that’s well-developed but under-utilized that lets it down. The puzzles that are easy to solve but frustrating to complete due to poor controls. The beautifully realized ambience of the deep sea marred by the poor performance of the engine it’s running on. Without a doubt, Song of the Deep is not a bad game, it’s just one that had limitless potential that it squandered. What Insomniac has offered instead is a fun little adventure, but one that’s got some smaller flaws along the way.
A different take on the usual Metroidvania formula, but while the story and setting are charming the puzzles are rarely anything other than frustrating.
Song of the Deep's story is touching, its art is beautiful, and its soundtrack is lovely, all of which come together to make a visual treat. Then I had to actually play it and I found it frustrating at some times, boring at others, and quite glitchy. Some may be able to forgive it, but I can't see many doing so.
“Song of the Deep has too many bugs and design flaws to stay afloat.”
It's also really strange that this is a game by Insomniac. It seems to demonstrate none of the beautiful finesse found in the Ratchet & Clank games, nor the slick power of the Resistance series. In fact, it doesn't use their own in-house engine, but Unity. And they don't appear to have been entirely comfortable with it - it's twitchy, blippy, and when there's lots happening on screen, it slows down on a top-spec PC.