Cool destiny, bro
Stories: The Path of Destinies is (aside from a shockingly bland title) a distinctive mixture of Diablo-like hack-and-slash, and choice-based narrative adventure. Stories isn't perfect at either of these things, but it is pretty good at one of them. The second one.
Its action gameplay is competent, but not much else -- there's a dash move, and there's a hookshot/grapple move, but most of the time you'll just be mashing the attack button. In the style of Batman, enemies will telegraph when they're about to attack, and you'll need to counter them to avoid heavy damage.
Except when multiple enemies attack at the same instant and you need to dash out to avoid them, unless you don't have the upgrade to dash through surrounding enemies, in which case you just die. That's a rarity, though.
Generally, the combat of Stories is a little about prioritizing dangerous targets, and a lot about hitting things with a sword until their health is gone. You gain experience, level up, get talent points, and invest points into new abilities, some of which make combat easier and others of which seem kinda useless. Generous checkpointing means that even if you fall, you won't have to re-tread any significant ground, which is nice.
The real meat of Stories is in its, uh, stories. Not the "story," mind you: that is to say, its anthropomorphic rebels-versus-empire plot is kind of a yawn. The characters are a bit tropey, the writing has a dull sense of humor, and the branching story choices don't feel very impactful. But...
If you can get through an hour or so of this uninspired world and its middling combat, you'll discover the game's real "trick." You die and it ends.
Then the story rewinds, but not completely -- you keep experience and other unlocks, and you learn something. The choices you make on where to go and who to talk to are impactful, in that they'll reveal an important truth about the world; and as you explore more branches of the decision tree, you'll gradually uncover more of the decisions that you need to make it out of the story alive.
(Not all endings lead to a unique truth, i.e. several paths through the decision tree will end with the same reveal. But your first redundant ending unlocks an option that will show, explicitly, which decisions will lead to something new. So the time-wasting is pretty minimal.)
This meta-narrative is the real story, and real hook, of Stories. The mystery of the ideal path is a compelling one, and each level is short enough that overlaps are mostly inoffensive.
The game can feel fairly repetitive as it goes on, because of the lack of enemy diversity in combat, and because of those overlaps -- especially in the final level, which is the same for every path. At its worst, Stories can feel like it uses button-mashing to fill the gap between story beats.
But the payoff is worth it. Again, not because of the quality of the underlying story, which is barely creative enough to get by. But the meta-story concept, using time travel to resolve a sprawling mystery of destiny!, is satisfying to explore.
The game's imperfections - its lackluster humor, its unexciting combat, its sometimes-redundant paths, the way its narrator laboriously adds "he said" to each line of dialog - really get balanced out by the cool factor of going back in time to correct your decisions.
A lot like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, I guess. Just with worse narration and no platforming.
Better than: Bastion, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Not as good as: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, The Sexy Brutale
And way better than: those shitty choose-your-own-adventure books I grew up with.
Progress: Got the good ending, and like 5 of the 24 other endings.