South of Midnight Review – Review

When South of Midnight released as an Xbox and PC exclusive last year, I played through the first few chapters and enjoyed what I played, but I got pulled away for a review and just never got around to going back. So I was excited to jump back in with the Switch 2 port. While the port itself has some issues that need to be addressed, I’m very glad to have finally rolled credits on this excellent adventure game.

You play as Hazel Flood, a recently graduated track star who finds herself a little directionless. When a hurricane hits her town, her home is washed away with her mother trapped inside. As she struggles to chase it down and save her mom, Hazel awakens a magical power within her. Her powers allow her to see physical manifestations of pain, suffering, anger, and regret. But they also allow her to unravel it, helping people through their oftentimes dark and disturbing pasts. At its core, South of Midnight is a game about reckoning with our own darkness, and coming to terms with both the good and bad in the world around us. The story is accentuated by a gradual but highly effective shift in the world Hazel explores. What starts as a stylized but still believable take on the deep south of the United States of America, gradually transforms into a land inspired by American folklore. The world around you becomes stranger until, by the end, it is entirely otherworldly and unrecognizable. I cannot emphasize enough how impactful and engaging the story is. Hazel does chatter a bit much during moment to moment gameplay, narrating everything around her, but she’s an endearing character, and the stories she gets tangled up in are heartfelt with some genuinely great performances.

The story is split into chapters that cover largely linear environments, though there are ample opportunities to break off and hunt down additional experience points and health upgrades. Levels have a strong focus on 3D platforming and exploration. Hazel’s jump feels a little loose at first, though added abilities gained later make the platforming significantly less punishing with the addition of a double jump, a dash, and a glide. Combat is relegated to enclosed kill rooms, in which Hazel will be set upon by a few waves of enemies before being able to move on. The combat mechanics themselves are reasonably satisfying if extremely basic. What got to me by the end was that combat never feels integrated into the level design. Instead, these kill rooms just grind the adventure to a halt. I’d have much rather encountered enemies wandering the level in a more natural way. As is, they’re a constant pause to progression, and by the end I found myself dreading them anytime I could see them coming up in the distance.

When playing docked, combat is at worst an annoyance, but in handheld mode, it can become a legitimate problem. The handheld experience for South of Midnight on Switch 2 needs some work. Image quality is hugely degraded over the docked experience. That would be fine, if it meant the game ran well, but it doesn’t. Combat nearly always induces frame rate drops and some of the more complex environments struggle to hit 30fps in moment to moment gameplay. The stylized decimated animation hides these issues somewhat during cutscenes, but it’s hard not to feel them during actual gameplay. The game is Steam Deck verified so I would have expected better from the Switch 2 given that this is a bespoke version of the game on overall better hardware. The good news is that the docked experience is significantly better. It’s not perfect, and I noticed a bout of slow down here and there, but it’s not anything I would complain about. Image quality is also much better and compares favorably to other consoles.

But to save the best for last, I wanted to take a moment to call out the soundtrack specifically. The game borders on feeling like a legitimate musical. Fully lyrical songs accompany most major story beats. Oftentimes as you move through an area, unraveling its story, the music will mirror your own experience. Instruments build on top of each other, backing vocals gradually become present, and finally a lead singer joins in as everything clicks. It is fantastic. One boss fight in particular actually manages to synchronize the movements of the boss in one phase to the music, turning it into an actual game mechanic. The music itself is a blend of the fully orchestrated pieces you would expect along with jazz, soul, and folk. It says a lot about the soundtrack that when you pull it up on a streaming service, you’ll find it is split into three different albums to cover the different aspects of the score.

South of Midnight is a fantastic game in isolation that merely struggles with some poorly implemented combat. On Switch 2, that misstep is exacerbated by the addition of performance problems in handheld mode. If you’re playing docked I can largely recommend this version without apprehension, but it is hard to suggest to handheld focused players. What persists regardless is an incredible story that just gets better and weirder the longer you play. The whole thing is accompanied by one of my favorite video game soundtracks in years. If it weren’t for performance issues there would be very little to stop me from telling you to play this game. As is, the recommendation comes with the heavy caveat of where you’ll be playing. That being said, I do recommend you play South of Midnight, on whatever platform makes sense for you.