Indietail – Omensight

In today’s review, I’m talking about Omensight – a stylish third-person murder mystery action-adventure game with platforming elements and RPG aspects like “leveling, an interactive story, and character upgrades”. Dive into a story about intrigue, murder and treason as the Harbinger, a mythological creature that appears when the end of worlds is nigh!

Developer: Spearhead Games
Publisher: Spearhead Games
Genres: Action, RPG
Release Date: May 15, 2018
Reviewed on: PC
Available on:  PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One
Copy was purchased

But let’s talk about the story first. Omensight is the spiritual successor of Spearhead Games‘ Stories: The Path of Destinies and tells you the story of the murder of the Godless-Priestess Vera and the destruction of the world Urallia by the hands of the dark god Voden. In the beginning, you witness the destruction of the world and are then teleported to the Tree of Life where you encounter the Witch. The Witch then explains to you that you need to relive this final day of Urallia and accompany four key-characters to find the culprit behind the summoning of Voden and the murder of Vera.

This leads to a lot of time travelling as you’re about to solve this murder by reliving the same day over and over again. By experiencing the story from different angles, you’re able to find out about the murder and get hints at possible motives, alibis and suspects. This kind of reminded me of Ghost Trick – Phantom Detective where you hinder a group of killers from killing further victims after you already ended up as a ghost. Lovely!

As for combat, a controller is recommended as you’re using a combination of heavy, slow attacks that can’t be blocked and light, fast attacks, as well as abilities and dashes. There’re a few combos that can be used as well as counter-attacks that empower your next attack when you’re successful in blocking enemy attacks and/or breaking through their lines. Every attack can be cancelled with your dodge-roll so that you’re not locked in any sort of attack-animation, which is a great feature. After not getting hit for a while, you’re gaining energy that can be used for special abilities. On top of that, you’re able to use enemies and objects in the area around you to destroy enemy hordes, which I found insanely fun.

It’s wicked fun to just combo your way through hordes of enemies, reaping through them with fast attacks, switching targets when they’re blocking, dashing around, dodging projectiles and other incoming attacks before you use some heavy attacks to finish off enemies or just grab and throw explodable barrels into enemies or into pillars that then fall onto enemies!

It all feels very fluid and intuitive combat-wise, although there’s still a learning curve as you need to time your attacks well and as you can get attacked from outside of your semi-locked camera-view. This often feels unfair but after a little bit of practice, you feel god-like which is quite fitting for your role as the Harbinger, the eyes and sword of Urallia. Sometimes enemies also use blocks or focus you instead of your companion but usually, you get the hang of it after a few tries, and you usually are able to find health potions in destructible objects scattered around the map.

The story is intense since you’re always getting new clues on the mystery of Vera‘s murder. Not every hint leads you into the right direction and since there’s a wide cast of characters from the emperor Indrik to the leader of the rebellion, Ratika, who’s receiving her powers from the might of music, you never know who it really could be! You have suspicions as the story proceeds but those get debunked eventually, leaving you clue-less from time to time so that you need to try out the same day from a different perspective, try out other dialogue-options and then find out more about the case. Sometimes the game feels like a TellTale game since you’re left with choices that have consequences, but since you’re able to start every day again from a different point of time, this feeling is kind of faint. The cast of characters is very interesting, as not even Indrik’s most loyal general, Draga, seems to be that loyal, as she wants to end the war with as few losses as possible, on both sides.

What I didn’t like about the game, was mostly the fact that you’re not able to save a mission, leave the game, and continue from that point in time when returning. Some missions took me ten to fifteen minutes while others took me a lot longer due to unknown enemy-patterns and the fact that I sometimes just struggled with the game. I often died and then had to start anew from the checkpoints that are spread through the mission but when something comes up IRL, I had to quit, only to find out that you can’t continue a mission from the last checkpoint you reached. This kind of feels weird since you’re the mighty Harbinger who’s able to travel through time, but you’re not allowed to return to a checkpoint…

Another thing that I noticed is the fact that the camera-movement feels odd every now and then. You can move it a little on your own (hence it’s semi-locked) but sometimes pillars and other objects might get in your way. This is kind of solved in some areas where walls turn invisible but often it also happens that your view is blocked by some objects.

Other than that, I didn’t notice any other major flaws. The devs focused on the elegant presentation, a fabulous soundtrack, fluid and entertaining combat, and a great story with interesting characters. Hence, I recommend this game.

Anyways, cheers!

Note: This review is actually part of a series of shorter reviews at about half the size of my usual reviews. I’m trying out this style and compare its stats to another long review that comes out soon, to test out whether or not I should stick to longer more detailed reviews or shorter ones that are not only faster to produce but also faster to read.

Another Note: On Frostilyte‘s blog, I saw that little section with the infos about the dev studio, the publisher, the platforms, etc. and I found it quite neat, so I’m going to do that from now on as well. Check him out since he also publishes Indie Game Reviews, as well as other content! :)

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!