Omensight is a time loop mystery trapped between its investigation and combat

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Omensight begins at the end. The world has come to calamity, the sacred priestess is dead, and a terrifying beast has come to consume to the world in her absence. Now, as the Harbringer, you must revisit the final days of several characters, learning about them and trying to influence their final moments enough to learn new connections that will slowly lead to revelations. 

And I do mean slowly. Omensight is built on the branching path structure of Spearhead Games’ previous title, Stories: The Path of Destinies. Much like Omensight, Stories relied on its serviceable combat, art direction, and the promise of new narrative details to keep you playing. It was straightforward, but worked well enough. Omensight complicates this, but it doesn’t quite work out. 

Instead of simply rewinding and playing alternative paths like a choose-your-own-adventure game, Omensight ties each loop through time to a certain character. By fighting alongside them you learn new info, and influence the outcome of the events of the last day. New information will reveal possible alternative paths in the other characters’ loops, and you’ll have to return to them multiple times to put together a full picture. Sometimes this means you’ll get a key that unlocks new areas, sometimes it means beaming that info into a character’s head to convince them to take a different action or act quicker. Soon there are a lot of details to keep track of, but thankfully an investigation board lets you quickly recount details and sequences of events. 

It doesn’t always feel like you’re making much progress, however. The details you gain from repeating a sequence can be small–the location of a character at a certain point, the relationship between two characters–that it feels like your ability to affect the world is limited. And when you later get the ability to plant premonitions within others it mostly gives you another button to press to change the current outcome. It feels less like a mystery game and more like the same kind of choose-your-own-adventure style progression that Stories employed, but with the paths obfuscated so that if you return to a path without new information you get nothing more than 15 minutes of repeated combat. 

At times its feels like the combat itself is a bigger focus than the mystery it’s trying to sell. There’s an emphasis on collecting trinkets which raise you combat level, giving you new moves and allowing you to make incremental improvements to existing ones. There are so many more options in those skill trees it sometimes feels like Omensight gives you more meaningful choices there than during the story. 

Interaction with environments is limited to unlocking doors, platforming, and plenty of combat, which is then broken up by long scenes of voice acted dialogue. The performances range from good to slightly off, but it is telling you lack the ability to scroll text–you can only skip dialogue. It never stood out as a problem in Stories, but here its absence is felt as it leaves you without the ability to control the pace of a very narrative driven game. 

Combat also drags down the pace. Battles rarely vary between each loop, and while the new moves might add variety, the basics never change and the repetition of those encounters reveal fundamental problems with their rhythm. There’s a fast and strong attack, some area of effect attacks set on cooldowns, a few special attacks that you can get off if you attack without getting hit, and–most importantly–a dodge that can cancel any attack animation.

You’ll want to cancel out of attacks frequently. Even the fast attack animations take a while to resolve, so while I was tempted to retaliate against an attacking enemy before they could get me, it was always better to cut my current attack short and dodge. This gives combat an, inconsistent, staccato feeling. I’d get in a few hits then have to abruptly cut one short. This might work in another game, but the chain counter and momentum based special moves make it clear Omensight wants you to keep a continued rhythm going, making every button press into a hit, so it feels wrong when an attack doesn’t connect. 

This doesn’t ruin the combat, but it does make it feel messy and disconnected in a system that aims to build a strong sense of momentum. Taken alongside the repetition of the investigation side, it made Omensight into a game I stumbled through. Despite the urgency and importance imparted on the actions of Harbringer, playing as her felt more like tagging along and giving a little input every once in a while. The story would resolve regardless, I only had to push it a little bit when it got stuck on the tracks. If Omensight focused stronger on either its investigation or combat, this might have worked out, but as it stands its an awkward balance, teetering on the edge of something interesting. 

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