First impressions are undoubtedly important in, well, any form of media, really. You can try your best to not let it influence your opinion, and some people are certainly more successful at doing so. I mention this, because The Plucky Squire somehow manages to make two different first impressions at once. I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but I’ll get to it eventually.

The Plucky Squire has you play as Jot, the aforementioned squire of pluckiness. Jot is the starring character in a series of children’s picture books sharing the name of this game. All these books share a trait in that Jot goes on adventures to defeat the evil wizard, Humgrump. Unfortunately, Humgrump has become aware of the nature of his existence and is very upset by the knowledge that he’ll never be successful in his villainy. So, he decides to take matters into his own hands and uses “Metamagic” to forcefully eject Jot from the book.

That leads to one of the many mechanics this game has. Jot inadvertently gets the ability to traverse between the 2D world of the storybook he comes from, and the real, 3D world of the child’s desk the book is on. Kinda like a reverse version of the wall merging thing from A Link Between Worlds. At various points throughout the game, you will need to go and explore this real-world desk, but each time you must do this, the kid that lives in that house experiences quite the creative streak, and will tend to build quite impressive arts and crafts projects which aid in traversal.

This kid has good taste in toys

This is just one mechanic, mind you. That’s probably the greatest strength of The Plucky Squire, for a game that lasts about 8 hours, the amount of different gameplay shifts is impressive. I don’t really want to go into details on those, but the sudden shift to a Punch-Out homage is just the tip of the iceberg. They ended up being my favourite bits.

It’s not exactly challenging, but it is varied enough to not drag. Although, that might depend on how much tolerance you have for cutscenes. It’s quite wordy, but given the setting of the game, this shouldn’t be too surprising.

Honestly, if that was it, then I’d be telling you all that this is a game that should be worth considering. But unfortunately, that’s not it, not by a long shot.

I know it’s kind of silly to point this out on this website, but I played the Switch version, which was stated to run at 30 frames per second. This is less than other versions, but I could have coped with that if it was stable. Unfortunately, the framerate can absolutely crater, especially during the 3D sections. It’s really distracting, and makes it feel like optimising the game for the console was a bit of an afterthought.

It gets worse though, because the game is also very glitchy. I wasn’t trying to break the game, but there were two times where the camera got stuck on something, and I couldn’t continue without reloading. I also managed to get completely wedged in a wall when I tried to change dimensions. Characters vanished completely, which made the game skip some cutscenes, weirdly enough. Great for speedrunners, not so good for a first time playthrough.

I'd be confused too, if I was her.

It's also worth mentioning that the “Chapter Replay” feature doesn’t work as intended. Which is a bit of an issue when the game has numerous hidden collectibles to find. Get them all in one playthrough, or don’t get them at all. Now, this can be fixed with patches and such, but it’s a real shame, because it’s yet another example of a good game ruined by not having enough time to iron out issues. I mentioned first impressions at the start of this review, and this would be the second instance of such. For all I know, this game could eventually run fantastically, but I’ve played it at launch, and that will stick in my mind, especially when I can recognise that a game is good underneath all the technical problems.

Because, make no mistake, this game has lot of love put into it, you can easily see this through the visuals. The Plucky Squire has a gorgeous art style, especially in the 2D sections, the animations are an actual joy to look at. The game has a narrator that reads the story as you explore its pages, which the game has a bit of fun with at one point. There’s also loads of nice little easter eggs that won’t help you progress, but are fun to find.

Hoy, small fr... y...

The soundtrack is fine. It doesn’t really stand out, though. A strangely bland aspect of the game, considering everything else about it.

It's a real shame, because I know that, if I took the actual gameplay and ideas of The Plucky Squire on their own merit, this would be a game that would deserve a high score. But this would be a pretty rubbish review if I did that, so I won’t.