Holy shit what an atmosphere! This games vibe is something special, bastion and transistor did less for me than I expected but this seems to be hitting all the right spots.

Bastion was my favourite game 2011, loved everything about it. I really liked transitor, the story, style, music, all great. But the gameplay did wear thin for me after a while, though i might need to replay it again to really remember.

But after having just finished pyre i think i like it just as much as bastion it's probably my 2nd, if not my no. 1 game of the year so far. While I really enjoy the gameplay, art etc, the music is incredible, they have created some excellent music and they do a fabulous job with their placement and when it hits, so good. I don't know if ill ever playthrough it again, kinda like undertale, but who knows.

I'd be curious to see a % of how difficult people felt normal was, as i've read varying accounts, the only trouble i ever had was when i used modifiers, (If thats considerd a spolier) but i still won every rite.

Anyway, I know there'll be a long wait for whatever supergiant does next but i really can't wait to find out.

Just finished it. Ended up caring far more about these characters than I have with any other Supergiant game. It reminded me a bit of YAWHG in how the story played out, only with a better execution. Might just be that I got lucky but there were some surprisingly satisfying twists and turns due to my victories and losses that created an incredibly memorable narrative. I recommend playing it on the harder difficulty and just rolling with the wins and losses.

I played it for 5 hours yesterday. I haven't done that since high school. Jodi is Very Good.

If that's the "Standard" difficulty, I have had very little trouble myself, even I'm still far from perfect in regards to handling my team. Think I might actually crank the difficulty up when I continue playing, since I probably still have a decent chunk of the game left, just to see how it changes the story. Despite not having had much trouble in any of the Rites, though, I've still liked playing a whole lot!

Pyre's got a good chance at climbing on my GOTY Top-5 list.

Also Rukey's great.

I just finished Pyre and was pretty disappointed. But that's my own fault.

I deliberatly did not watch any trailers beforehand. I did the same with Transistor and loved it, played through it multiple times. With Pyre I just barely knew that it had some type of weird, basketball-ish gameplay. What I didn't know was just how much of a visual novel this game is. It's no exaggeration to say that 80-90% of the game consists of reading dialogue. Nothing wrong with that in itself, just not my cup of tea. Also: Play the game on the highest difficulty, I found the default settings to be very easy.

It's a beatiful and well made game. Just be aware that it's much, much less focused on action than Transistor or Bastion was.

@bluntmcgee: as someone who is probably ~5 Hours in, I have found the somewhat easy difficulty in the Rites almost welcomed as the shear thought of losing one without being able to re-play added stress to every "dunk" by the opposing team. My one loss so far did not result in much of anything meaningful, so I presume that ensues. Though, as someone who doesn't seek a great challenge out of my video games I am enjoying it extensively thus far so I may be in the minority here admittedly.

@ig3tnasty: The problem I have with the easy difficulty is that this results in a weak payoff. I'm talking with my team, get to know them and build up my stats and then a rite happens and I win in sub 30 seconds. I never felt like I had a rivalry or like there was something at stake for my team. Just pass the ball to Rukey, Tabitha or Ti'zi (? forgot his name) and walk it in. Flying or jumping characters have an unfair advantage to the AI, I felt like. Never did I have to combine any of my teams skills. It was always one person who did the scoring by simply walking or jumping it in quickly.

I will try it on a higher difficulty setting and see if that helps. But I don't know...it feels like there's a deeper issue (like character balancing or AI behavior) that sucks the depth out of the game. And that in turn prevents me to have fun with the overarching story as the payoff becomes boring and predictable.

Characterization and world building are still amazing though.

Xae is totally Cowboy Bebop's Ed.

It's weird/cool how I'm already adoring these characters.

Oof, the AI wrecked me in the next two Rites after I turned up the difficulty. That asshole demon got his freedom and poor Rukey lost his chance at Commonwealth, felt bad about that. Fortunately I beat Barker again afterwards, that made me feel a bit better!

I definitely began to struggle after that change, won't change the difficulty to hardest so that I won't start hating this game. Might even lower it back to Standard, in case I lose the last Rite again, whenever that'll occur.

I've also encountered some chopping up during a few Rites (though I can't blame my lose on those, sadly!), likely similiar to what Alex mentioned in the QL. Playing on Pro here, so that was little disappointing. Hopefully it's something they can patch together.

Extremely awkward pc controls, enjoying it otherwise.

Minor niggle I'm having is how certain storytelling moments are handled. When it comes to the character's "backstory" they have so far tended to just kind of wander in and tell you about it, feels a little forced. Only complaint though.

I'm enjoying it. The atmosphere and music are great. The Rites are starting to get tougher, but that's a good thing. The one thing that bums me out is how everyone keeps saying it's fantasy basketball. The Rites are obviously fantasy rugby.

Just finished it and spotted Dave Snider in the special thanks -section of the credits!

@mynthon: Adam Boyes is also in there!

Pyre was my first SuperGiant game and i thoroughly enjoyed it. My recommendation is to play the game in the hard difficulty and accept the defeats. That made me feel very emotionally invested (sweating and swearing) in the rites.

I am really interested in this game, but the comparisons to Banner Saga and king od requiring a gamepad really puts a damper on that. Probably will be taking a wait and see approach.

The baseline difficulty of this game was so low that I turned it up to heightened and have been getting regularly creamed since. Pretty sure I won't be getting whatever good ending awaits others who make less frustrating decisions in life and gaming, but hey, it is purgatory after all! It's been a good reminder that I am naturally terrible at all strategic decisions in gaming, including how to match up specific Pyre archetypes. I think I've had one successful match-up during my entire playthrough. (Not as in I've only one match, just that I've had one match where I seem to have selected the perfect team against my adversaries)

Wow, I found an unlikely dream team of Chae, Gertrude, and Tamitha

From a story standpoint, easily Supergiant's best work to date, what a world and characters, and just the core themes throughout this game, are really fascinating. (first game, where i almost felt the need to lose a few matches because of my opponents storylines)

Gameplay wise, i enjoyed what was here and there is definitely depth, but still prefer bastion.

but no question one of the best games of the year, they kind of did a lot, with very little, and had more impact than most games this year

I just finished this, and I actually did purposely loose matches so that a couple of my opponents could gain their freedom. I felt moved by their stories and so I just sat there and let them beat me. While it was tough to do so, denying some of the other great characters on my team. I felt justified in a shelfish way knowing I could use them longer and learn more about them.

I will most likely go back and play this again to see how the ending changes if at all based on how many of your own you free. Really liked it. Top 5 game for me for sure so far this year.

Finished this earlier today, played through on standard difficulty with all available modifiers active. It was pretty smooth sailing until the tenth modifier, after that the stronger teams were kicking my ass all day, so much so that I stumbled upon a bit of a cheese in the process. I kept restarting matches until I won, that might've sucked some fun out of it, but none of these other fools deserve their freedom, goddamnit! Except the second liberation, lost that one on purpose. I turned off the modifiers after my crew was maxed and the rest of the game was a bit too easy from there.

The writing is good and the gameplay is pretty fun, but the visual novel-iness was kind of a bummer, no matter how pretty the art is.

This soundtrack though!

Stiff competition this year with Persona 5, Yakuza 0 and Pyre.

This was by far my favorite Supergiant game. (I really liked Bastion but did not enjoy Transistor as much and never finished it even because of that.)

The story/narrative is really really well crafted to the point where I had a hard time making a few decisions and the game gave me the "feels" a couple of times towards the end. Not only that but the amount of permutations they must have put in the game regarding how things can play out between characters is really impressive.

And the gameplay I felt like struck a really good balance by being a bit innovative while still being quite focused, contrasting to a very traditional style of Bastion and a bit up it's ass combat system of Transistor. I did encounter a couple of bugs in the matches but nothing too major.

This is a definite top 5 of the year for me so far at the very least.