Pyre

Ever since Bastion, I've been on a quest to eventually play through all Supergiant Games'... games. Their games have always been quite story-focused and innovative. Innovation means taking a risk, and doing so with every game is quite admirable. I'm glad it finally paid off with Hades, though I have not gotten around to it yet. Instead, today, it's Pyre.

Pyre definitely continues on having a focus on the story, more so than their previous games. The world this time around is some wasteland, where outcast criminals such as yourself have been exiled. Your goal is to participate in the Rites and win your way out of exile. The world and characters are very colorful, literally and figuratively, with a bunch of fantasy-races alongside our familiar humans. While far from fully voiced, the characters speak in a made-up language, which sounds oddly familiar, and adds a very nice touch. You get to, on occasion, talk to the various characters that make up your party. Your decisions, as well as the outcomes of gameplay matches, have consequences to the story. Whether these consequences reach far into the story or drastically alter its course, I was not able to tell. All in all, a lot of effort has been put into the worldbuilding, and I think the result on that front is excellent.
However, it's not all good. Many people coming to expect a game might find themselves spending more time reading, as if they were playing a visual novel. I would personally not object to that either, were the story and the writing excellent, but unlike the worldbuilding, they don't quite reach that level.

As for the gameplay, it's mostly a sort of 3v3 ball game. You control one character at a time, and your goal is to get the ball from the center of the field to to opposition's base. The ball can be run with, passed, and thrown. But while carrying the ball, you're vulnerable to other characters approaching you. If not carrying the ball, you can instead "shoot" at the enemies. There are some tricks for evasion, and different characters have different abilities, not to mention different attributes like speed or the size of their "aura" and attacks, allowing you to create your own team compositions depending on your own idea of a good strategy. The metagame - character level ups - also encourages you to not always pick the same team, even if you like them, offering nice variety.
The problem is mainly that I just don't like the gameplay. It's a kind of sports game, and it's just not something exciting to me. The boards are small, and the actions you can take are not very varied. It almost feels more like an arcade game. I'm also not terribly good at it, and losing doesn't just make you try again but furthers the story anyways, making the gaps between matches rather lengthy, and opportunities to learn to play well scarce.

I'd give it a partial recommendation. I think it's a fine game in theory, not really having much that would be universally considered a flaw, but in order to like it, you'd need to enjoy character interaction driven visual novels. Enjoying the mechanics of the high-action multi-character ball game, with a bit of party management on the side, is also important, but not as important as really caring for the story. If you're not into a lot of reading, I'd almost certainly stay away.