South of Midnight XSX Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Value

Summary: South of Midnight is one tall tale you wont want to miss.

4.5

Born On The Bayou

South of Midnight is a masterfully crafted love letter to the music, folklore, and history of America’s Deep South.

It’s also one of this year’s best games by a Louisiana Mile that effortlessly blends a unique visual style, solid gameplay, and a soundtrack that will leave you with goosebumps.

Players step into the expensive track shoes of Hazel Wood, a collegiate track star from the left-behind town of Prospero. After Hazel’s trailer park home is swept away in a hurricane along with her mother, Lydia. Hazel then sets off down river to find her ma in the bijous and backwaters of her home county that’s crawling with magical cryptids.

The first thing that strikes you about South of Midnight is how gorgeous the visuals are. Its clever faux stop-motion art style sees creatures and critters constructed from craft materials move with a jerky jaunt. This helps enhance the otherworldly feel of the sumptuous, often foreboding environments where patchwork catfish brush against a Danish biscuit box worth of spectral lace and embroidered rougarou.

The more oppressive parts of the environment, however, are mazes of deadly brambles with spikes like rusted nails, twisting and contorting around the swamps and shanty towns. Hazel jumps, dashes, and twirls through the challenging environment as she hunts for her mamma.

Armed with a pair of enchanted crochet hooks, Hazel can pick away at the threads of reality that tie the physical and spiritual world together in the hopes of healing the colourful collection of tortured souls and monsters found in her backyard.

Most of the time, you’ll be fighting the hideous haints, an ever-expanding collection of bad feelings and painful memories made manifest – a living embodiment of generational trauma born of the collective scars of the region’s violent past.

There are uncanny, floating horned beasts with huge claws that spring forward and slash at Hazel ( often at the most inopportune of moments), bloated hives full of exploding flies to harass you, and hunched wretches that spit balls of dark energy. These are later accompanied by even more powerful beasts like the annoying overseer, a spidery thing made mostly of claws that creates shields for the other creatures, as well as massive lumbering beasts that roll and lung at Hazel, capable of hitting like a truck if she’s unfortunate enough to get in their way.

Thankfully, Hazel is far from defenseless and uses an upgradable suite of combos and special powers that let her push, pull, and wrap the beasts in delicate threads before pulling them apart in one final flourish as they crumble into ash.

She’s also accompanied on her journey and in combat by Crouton. A doll Hazel’s mum made for her when she was little that has sprung to life. A cross between a minion and Oogie boogie, he’s an adorable little weirdo who not only goes on little adventures of his own, squeezing into the warrens and gaps in fences Hazel cant fit through, but is also a godsend during a fight as he can possess heints so they fight on your side for a brief while.

He helps you get some breathing room in the more chaotic battles, especially in the game’s backend because you need to stay on your toes at the best of times, but when there’s half a dozen angry creatures baring down on you, its a real help to have one of them turn on the the others.

Overall, though, combat is a kinetic and fairly satisfying affair. You need to make ample use of the dash button and all your powers to get anywhere because it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you stay in the same place for too long, and the heints have a wonderful habit of hitting you in the back.

That being said, the brawls with the Heints are probably the weakest part of the package, but with a world this rich, it’s a minor issue at best.

It’s also improved once Hazel has unlocked a few upgrades to her fighting abilities. This is done by gathering Floofs, glowing strands of thread strewn about the environment that are Hazel’s reward for going off the beaten path, solving some fun platforming puzzles, and being observant of her surroundings.

Once she’s finished unraveling Heints, Hazel receives another piece of a lace pattern, which reveals a chapter in a series of tragic tales that show how the monstrous creatures that rule each of the game’s gorgeous and diverse areas came to be. Each is touching and melancholic and, at times, hits you right in the feels.

They’re also incredibly dark, and for all of the fantasy trappings, South of Midnight deals with some heavy subjects, including child abuse, infanticide, ableism, and slavery. It’s mostly handled respectfully and delicately, however, there is some tonal whiplash when you’ve just heard about some heinous act, and then Hazel continues to mumble to herself about how pretty the scenery is.

The tone and action are bolstered by a superb soundtrack comprised of a smorgasbord of southern sounds. From delta blues and New Orleans jazz to blue grass and gospel, each of South of Midnights’ many monsters has a theme recanting their tragic origins that builds as you explore each area. It starts with simple, often discordant riffs and stings that build to the creepiest children’s choir I’ve ever heard and then finally to a crescendo with vocals and a full band.

In a lovely twist, all of the performers on the soundtrack are from Nashville, which gives each track an element of authenticity.

The performances from the main cast are also superb. Walt Roberts as Catfish was a personal favourite as the rascally old fish who knows far more than he lets on and acts as Hazel’s guide early in the game.

At the end of each chapter once the tragic backstroy of the poor monster ruling over it has been revealed and their pain captured in a bottle, you’ll be attacked by Roux, the right hand of the god of dreams and nightmares who pursues Hazel in some fantastic platforming set pieces which sees her using all of the tricks she’s unlocked up until that point as she dashee, jumps, wall runs grapples, and eventually flies through the environment in a desperate scramble to reach the safety of the bottle tree.

Once there, it’s time to tie up the loose ends and move onto the next part of the story; this usually results in a boss fight. These are grand, multi-tiered battles, reminiscent of a Zelda boss, since none of them are as straightforward as hitting them until they die and include a brawl with an angry rougarou, avoiding the carnage caused by a grieving swamp monster, and one hell of a gator fight.

Final Thoughts

South of Midnight is a powerful and charming adventure about the healing power of empathy.

Its well-written and thoughtful narrative is backed up by a beautiful art style and a tactile sense of place that makes it impossible not to be drawn into its fantastical, though often harrowing, world.

Though the combat isn’t quite as slick as it could be, especially compared to the tight platforming and level design that encourages exploration at almost every turn, it’s still well worth the price of admission, especially considering it will be on Game Pass at launch.

The only baffling omission from the package is the lack of New Game+ to mop up the floofs and journal entries you’ll inevitably miss.

What I’m trying to say is that I already want an excuse to play through South of Midnight again, and that’s probably the highest praise I can give it.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

South of Midnight XSX Review