The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology (PC Review)
Summary: The Scout Anthology’, despite a few bugs, is a joy to play and I cannot recommend it enough to other fans of the Redwall series.
4.5
Warrior Mice!
I can’t quite remember how I discovered the Redwall novels, but I do remember the first time I read one and how formative that experience was. Like many kids who checked out the fantasy-adventure series while growing up, Brian Jacques’ Redwall anthology pushed me to read bigger books than I had previously read, it had an expanded vocabulary compared to most of the children’s novels popular at the time, and it really paved the way for me and many young readers alike to become avid readers right into adulthood.
There hasn’t been a new Redwall adventure since 2011’s ‘The Rogue Crew’, which was released posthumously after Jacques’ death, and with a Netflix movie adaptation stuck in development hell, it seemed like we’d have to wait forever to return to Mossflower Wood. However, Soma Games is letting us experience a whole new Redwall story right now with their newly released ‘The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology’.
Set six months before the first, self-titled Redwall novel, we meet two recruits of the Lilygrove Scout Corps, a group of warrior mice who protect their village from anyone who would seek to destroy their home. When a band of evil searat pirates attack, you must protect your friends and set off on a journey to seek help from Redwall Abbey.
‘The Scout Anthology’ has been a passion project for Soma Games, with development initially starting around 2012. The first version of the game was released in early access in 2017. But after a few tweaks and updates, the full and finished version is now finally out.
Our main characters are Liam and Sophia, and you have the choice of playing as either of them. This choice doesn’t impact the game too much, but you do get unique dialogue options based on who you pick. Both characters feel like they’d fit into Jacques’ novels seamlessly. They have heart, you enjoy spending time with them and seeing Lilygrove through their eyes.
All the characters in this would fit into the world of the novels well. In the story as well, you can tell that the team behind this game are big fans of the books and have done everything they can to make this feel as Redwall as possible. This includes everything from the dialogue, to the collectible notes you find that are filled with interesting worldbuilding, to the voice-acting that sounds like they’ve hired some of the cast of the late 90s animated TV show, and especially the music. The soundtrack to this game is incredible, there were many moments when I found myself pausing whatever I was doing in the game to listen to the soundtrack for a few minutes.
The graphics are nice too, and at many moments, look like the illustrations from the novels brought to life. I had a few framerate issues during the opening moments of the game, but they quickly disappeared after a few minutes. There are a lot of graphics options too, to make this game run as well as possible on whatever setup you have. It is great to see the developers make ‘The Scout Anthology’ as accessible as possible, as I feel like that fits the spirit of the world from Brian Jacques’ novels. Everyone can enjoy this.
The gameplay here is pretty simple and easy to pick up, but contains a lot of unexpected depth. As a new mouse recruit, you don’t have any weapons yet so ‘The Scout’ does not contain any combat mechanics. All you have are your wits, your nose (more on this later), and your slingshot. On your journey, you’ll encounter a lot of puzzles where you’ll need to sneak around, use your slingshot to distract enemies, or traverse environmental obstacles.
There is one gameplay mechanic that is very unique to the Redwall game, and one that I loved playing around with. That is the scent mechanic. While hiding from pirates, you have to keep track of the wind and where it is blowing your scent, because if those rats get even a whiff of a mouse, they’ll be onto you. You can also use the scent mechanic to track down collectibles, friends, or which vegetable you need to pull out of the garden.
There are also a bunch of minigames, ranging from dialogue-based interactions, or moments where the game turns into a platformer as you run away from one of the game’s big bosses.
While there is a lot to explore in this game, I did encounter quite a few bugs during my time with it. The worst was a simple traversal bug that saw me jump over a bunch of barrels that you shouldn’t be able to get over, and getting stuck behind them, leading to me reloading the latest checkpoint and replaying a pretty decent portion of the level. Some enemies would become alert randomly despite me not doing anything to tip them off, there was quite a bit of clipping through the environments, and some quests not being registered as “complete” even though I did complete the objective. The team seems to be pretty on top of these bugs though, and are always replying to bug submissions, as well as reviews on Steam that mention some things that could be fixed.
There is some strange level design in the middle portion of this game too, particularly with side-quests not being super clear about what you need to do. While I do like figuring out objectives in games myself and not having my hand held the entire time, there were a few frustrating moments where I was sure that I had explored every possible option to complete a side quest, only to see that I had missed something and needed to restart the section to get the ideal outcome.
With that said, though, ‘The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology’ is a joy to play and I cannot recommend it enough to other fans of the original novels. While it is a bit rough around the edges, I’m confident that these will be smoothed out in no time. Saying that, none of the issues I encountered held me back from loving this game. I would recommend going out and getting this game, whether you are a seasoned Redwall fan like myself, someone looking to get into this world, or you just think the animals are cute.
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