The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology Review

The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is a series of books I, unfortunately, never got into when I was younger. Despite reading and enjoying Lord Brocktree as a child, I never stuck with the series. But now, as a 30-something-year-old adult, I decided to give The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology a go in the hopes that it might ignite a flame inside me to give this book series another chance. Coming to us from developer Soma Games, does this puzzle adventure capture the essence of Brian Jacques’ fantasy novels?

Despite my very limited knowledge of Redwall, I found that the story was easy to follow and was accessible to both fans and newcomers alike. The Scout Anthology follows two main characters — Liam and Sophia — the newest members of the Lilygrove Scout Corps. Players will opt to control one of the duo, with the other acting as a supporting character throughout the adventure.

Shortly after their inauguration into the Corps, a gang of pirate rats attack Lilygrove, forcing the pair to take up arms to defend their home. Thus begins the roughly five-hour journey that, whilst never truly gripping me, clearly had a lot of love for the source material poured into it. It’s a narrative absolutely aimed at a younger audience and full of charm, with some great backstory into both the main characters and the world they inhabit. It definitely feels right at home in the Redwall universe, but it just doesn’t quite live up to Jacques’ works.

The Scout is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to talking about aesthetics. On the one hand, environments are bland and fairly uninteresting, but do feature some nice lighting effects which are most notable during nighttime stealth sections. Then, the characters (particularly Liam and Sophia) look like they’ve been ripped straight from the front cover of one of the novels and transformed into full 3D models. They’re wonderfully designed and very detailed, and the inclusion of the beautifully illustrated static cutscenes creates a sense of looking at artwork from the book series.

Voice acting is pretty great, too! Again, with Liam and Sophia’s voice actors being the stars of the show, the cast features a range of accents that give the sense of this being a huge, sprawling world with different populations. This, combined with some great musical scores that are thematically very well done and relaxing ambient sounds, makes The Scout feel like a grander adventure than it actually is.

I did come across a few minor issues during my playthrough, though nothing that was game-breaking. Pop-in was relatively frequent, with background environmental assets and the occasional bit of foliage that took a second too long to load. Then there was one character who was meant to be in a mine cart that needed a push but was instead A-Posing next to it, clipping through the environment as the cart proceeded down the rails. An amusing visual at the very least, and, like I said, nothing that caused any game-breaking issues.

The majority of The Scout’s gameplay is made up of stealth and platforming sections, with a few light puzzle elements sprinkled in for good measure. The game's opening sections act as a sort of tutorial to introduce each of these elements whilst you play. Though the hopeful recruits are both in training — meaning this lengthy section makes sense in-game — it just drags on for far too long.

Still, for the most part, each gameplay mechanic works relatively well. Platforming, whilst not always precise, is never as hair-pullingly frustrating as say, Crash 4, for example (remember, this is aimed at a younger audience!). Stealth sections can be a little more irksome, unfortunately. While I liked the use of sniffing out enemies and items, and each section where you must avoid the villainous rodents becoming its own sort of mini-puzzle, the enemy AI would often discover me despite having no clear line of sight, and it became a constant string of restarts as I figured just how exactly to avoid them. You are equipped with a slingshot to distract enemies, but there was more than one occasion when those mangy pirate rats just disregarded any attempts at distraction.

The most challenging portion of the game is the constant battle with the camera. Attempting to peer around corners, scan for any nearby dangers, or just try to line up for the next jump, and you’ll more than likely find yourself staring straight at the back of your character's head or at the inside of a wall. This, coupled with the previously mentioned rogue AI stealth mechanics, and The Scout quickly becomes a bit of a slog in certain sections.

Despite all that, I did have a rather decent time with the game. It certainly picks up steam after the overly long opening section, and despite the issues I had with the stealth and camera, it was never so egregious that I ended up closing the game in anger. That said, this certainly won’t be a game for everyone, perhaps not even fans of the book series. There just isn’t enough variety in the gameplay and a lacklustre story, meaning players are likely to give up long before the conclusion of Liam and Sophia’s journey. For children, though? I think they would certainly get more enjoyment out of it!