REVIEW – One of the prettiest video games of the year, but I wish we could talk about it with the same passion as an actual game. Compulsion Games absolutely delivered on visuals and sound, but the gameplay sadly cannot rise to that same level. We also tested the PS5 review code and updated the article accordingly.

I think South of Midnight will end up being the most beautiful disappointment of the year for me. I was not expecting a new The Last of Us, but I was hoping for at least some of the same playful, inventive spirit that Psychonauts 2 had. For all its breathtaking visuals, it simply does not feel like a game built around the kind of thoughtful gameplay design that, together with its bigger budget, could have truly lifted it above the pack. South of Midnight is visually stunning. It is one of the most distinctive, most artistic games of the year. It is a shame that the gameplay feels like little more than a shadow of that achievement.

The root of the problem lies in the structure and the execution. South of Midnight‘s core design feels as if it has been teleported here from three console generations ago – which, in itself, would not necessarily be a problem. A game can be simple and still be brilliant. Here, though, the weak link is the level design: neither exploration nor the gameplay systems really manage to work properly. That makes the flaws stand out all the more. The world you can actually traverse is heavily restricted, the platforming sections are almost primitive, and combat is limited to arenas – and it is not exactly memorable there either.

A Mythology That Pulls You In – Or Almost Does

There is, however, one thing that works flawlessly: the world-building and the way the game draws from Southeastern American folklore. South of Midnight pointedly turns its back on tired fantasy clichés and builds a world with its own rules, its own flavour, and its own identity. We encounter strange and magical creatures who gradually reveal the logic of their mythology – all of it tied together by a common thread: pain. Every new story is born out of tragedy, and that beautifully reflects how deeply this universe is rooted in respect for family, land, and tradition.

The game definitely makes the most of that. Perhaps too much so, because at times it becomes so wrapped up in its own world-building that the main story and its characters are pushed completely into the background. Hazel, the protagonist, often feels more like an observer than an active force in events that do not always connect organically to her own journey. That makes it hard to become truly invested.

Hazel Flood‘s Southern odyssey begins in the middle of a hurricane – literally and figuratively – as the game slowly reveals the tension between her and her mother. While Hazel is away, the family home collapses and is swept off by the river. She has to save her mother, but along the way she discovers that she is a weaver, essentially a kind of witch; that fairytale creatures are real; and that a sinister curse is beginning to spread across the region.

As I mentioned earlier, the premise is strong – it blends drama and mythology with real skill – but unfortunately the main story cannot keep pace with it. The first half of the game spends far too much time on side stories that would have worked much better as optional quests. As they stand, they only pull attention away from Hazel and the central family conflict. The final stretch does introduce a few interesting, even genuinely strong threads, but some of them are either wrapped up too hastily or simply left hanging.

Gorgeous Presentation, Flat Gameplay

The levels would have been far more memorable if their objectives had been offered as side quests instead of mandatory tasks. South of Midnight, however, goes for a linear, “just keep moving forward” approach. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. I like games that do not waste your time and go straight for the point. The trouble is that this particular road ends up being damn boring. There is barely anything to discover, barely anyone to talk to, and the world practically begs to be explored – yet never lets you do it. The levels are basically made up of platforming sections and combat. That would not be a problem either if at least those parts were entertaining – but most of the time they just sort of… exist. Even the supposedly snappy double jump-dash-wall-run trio becomes dull in no time. The game does not want to challenge the player, and it never really mixes those movement tools into anything more interesting. Every now and then a chase sequence shows up, but the controls feel blunt and the animations struggle to keep up with what we are doing.

The combat? It does not exactly go all out either. It is arena-based, which already drains a lot of the dynamism out of it – and these days only the very best hack and slash games can really make that work. South of Midnight, by contrast, leans into a simple, overly familiar style that is fine the first time, clichéd the second, and dull by the third. Yes, there are a few new abilities and upgrades, but they feel more like cosmetic tweaks than meaningful additions. The enemies? A handful of generic mobs repeating the same moves, always against the same kinds of backdrops. It is hard to single out anything here. There is barely any strategy involved, but there is plenty of button-mashing. Charge your abilities, time your healing… and that is about it. There are boss fights, of course, and they look better and are occasionally fairly creative, but they do not shake up the formula – they are mostly just decoration.

And now for the light in the darkness: the audiovisual experience. What the gameplay fumbles, the technical execution ruthlessly makes up for. South of Midnight deliberately avoids hyper-realistic solutions, and thank God it does. What we get is a visual identity that burns itself into your retina – as if the concept artists’ imagination had suddenly come alive. Very few games this year will be able to capture the player’s imagination this strongly on a purely artistic level.

Southern Riffs and Stop-Motion

The soundscape is not just solid, it is genuinely distinctive. The vocal tracks that accompany the story do not merely provide atmosphere, they actively tell it too – full of rasping guitars, choirs, and Southern accents that make the whole thing feel like a walk through an enchanted swamp. The music was written and composed entirely in-house by Compulsion, with nothing outsourced. One track was so good that I honestly thought I was hearing a classic I had worn out years ago.

The voice acting is first-rate – but the subtitles are so badly botched that they become actively distracting. Some bizarre solution was used: lines are too long, then they suddenly cut off, and a single stray word slips into the next frame. That is not just aesthetically messy, it is genuinely impractical, because quite often you cannot finish reading the sentence in time. And if your English is not perfect, or you do not have the volume turned up, you can easily miss important parts of the story. That is not a minor issue. That is a real problem.

As for the stop-motion-like low-frame-rate effect – well, that too feels like something that only made it in as a token gesture. It feels as if the developers originally wanted to do much more with it, but then realised it would require too many compromises to integrate properly into the actual gameplay. So they pulled it back. During gameplay you barely see it, and even then only if you stop moving and take your thumb off the left stick. In the cutscenes, though, it works well. At least there it has a real stylistic purpose.

Smoother on PS5 Pro, But Not Deeper

Based on the PS5 Pro test, South of Midnight delivers the sort of technical uplift you would expect from this version, but not much more than that. The game carries a separate PS5 Pro Enhanced label on the PlayStation Store, and according to tests run on PS5 Pro there is no separate graphics mode selection at all: it runs with a single setup, but it does hold close to a stable 60 frames per second. That benefits the presentation, because Compulsion Games’ strong artistic direction, the stop-motion-inspired animation, and the painterly backdrops all come through more cleanly and more fluidly.

But the Pro does not work miracles either. The port feels more stripped-back than genuinely premium: there are no multiple visual profiles, the DualSense features are used only sparingly, and texture pop-in can still intrude on the overall image. In other words, South of Midnight is a more pleasant, smoother technical experience on PS5 Pro, but it does not become a better game because of it – the same stunning audiovisual package and the same shallow gameplay are staring back at us, only in a slightly cleaner frame.

A Colorful Dreamscape With Gray Mechanics

All in all, South of Midnight is a decent little game that occasionally shows flashes of something more, yet the same thought hovers over the whole experience from beginning to end: this could have been so much more. It seems to pull itself together a bit in the second half, but by then it is too late for a genuine reinvention. Visually, though, it keeps hitting hard all the way through – in fact, the further you go, the more powerful the pull of its imagery becomes, thanks to its surreal landscapes and beautifully realised characters. But however much I want to love it, I cannot ignore the fact that the core gameplay never evolves into anything more substantial, and the mechanics, even when they occasionally try to shift gears, never feel truly strong or memorable.

Thank you to Microsoft Hungary for the code!

-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”-

Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

Developer: Compulsion Games

Genre: action-adventure game

Release: April 3, 2025