Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5 Spiel

by Rian

Perhaps not so surprisingly, this will not be the end of Poppy Playtime the main franchise. As I understand it, the series was first planned with total of five chapters. Due to the nature of the episodic release, some parts of the review may contain spoilers. Please do check out previous posts on Chapter 1-3 or Chapter 4, if you would like to be cautious. This is also the first chapter I played on the PC at the time of the release, instead of waiting for a console port.

With Minor Spoilers, Spiel

After so many GrabPacks, Poppy Playtime has a UI and UX wildfire to put out. The elements of the game are no longer tied together in one cohesive experience. One good example was the introduction of new type of a battery. Whatever happened to the previously used, possibly larger, blue battery, we don’t know. The game implies it is so heavy it can only be dragged with both hands, but the socket on the ground lacks the visual cue that the battery will be inserted automatically once dragged near enough. The new battery is just an example. The other hands all share the similar level of issues, and the world around the player also suffers similarly.

The puzzles themselves are, to put it bluntly, absent. Majority of the roadblocks are not puzzles; it’s more an escape room task from a Resident Evil mansion. It becomes a drag after a certain point when you need to press all the buttons, or place all the batteries, or find all the digits of a passcode. Remember what I said about the batteries? It’s quite literally a drag, and that drag carries over to the actual gameplay as well. Some of the more weirder tasks are focused on finding the batteries themselves then carrying them to the sockets, during a stealth segment, no less.

As a horror game, I believe the direction was simply off. Chapter 5, I assume, was originally designed as a closure: a closure for Huggy Wuggy, a closure for the arch nemesis, a closure for the protagonist and Poppy, and so on. Huggy Wuggy is the mascot of the game, but without mustering his appearances from previous Chapters (as early as 2021), it’s hard to appreciate the immersive panic the protagonist is experiencing. Same goes for Chapter 5’s lead antagonist, Lily Lovebraids. Her whole arc cannot be appreciated during the wild goose chase of a confrontation. Her personal backstory is deeply psychological one, however the game turns her into yet another toy monster. There is ludonarrative dissonance per se between how characters are supposed to be feared and how the game presents them.

And the same glitches from previous Chapters did come back to bite me again. Some of the items did not go into the receptacles, or could not be picked up, so I had to reload from the last checkpoint. I understand it became an industry norm to release the game then fix the bugs later. In a way, I do appreciate Poppy Playtime has aggressively put more checkpoints between sections.

Conclusions: Horror Suffocated From Its Own Weight

I’ve talked about price many times before. We are now looking at $22.47 for the Chapter 2-4 bundle. With $19.99 for Chapter 5, it is priced like a AAA title, should you choose to play it now instead of waiting for Chapter 6. I suspect the bundle will be updated to include all Chapters once the game is fully released.

It’s not just the price tag that makes Poppy Playtime a hard sell at the moment. With each episodes piling up, Chapter 1 from 2021 can’t be more plain than texture-rich Chapter 5. Yet to truly appreciate the relationship between the factory and the protagonist, the toys and the protagonist, and perhaps Huggy Wuggy and the protagonist, one must sit down and scavenge for GrabPack five times in a row. The episodic release is also becoming a drag for newcomers. Chapter 5 is mostly building up to a climax for Chapter 6 and profoundly lack substance to call it an independent episode.