Year: 2025
Platform: PlayStation 5
Developer: Bethesda
Genre: Action/adventure
Review Date: 7/2/25
Rating: ****
Brody: "Indiana, you can't keep running away from your problems."
Indy: "Watch me."
Taking place in 1937, shortly after the events in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," professor Henry "Indiana" Jones is minding his own business at Marshall College when someone breaks in and steals a mummified cat that the college recently acquired. The culprit leaves behind an important clue to his whereabouts as he escapes, which incites Indy to follow, and before you know it he's in Fascist controlled Italy trying to break into the Vatican while Marcus Brody takes over teaching his classes. Taking advantage of the Pope's illness, Hitler and Mussolini are working with the Vatican and a German archeologist named Emmerich Voss to uncover the secrets of The Great Circle, which could grant them great power in the upcoming world war. Indy's research takes him to Egypt, Nepal, China, Siam, and Iraq in an attempt to once again stop the Nazis from gaining the upper hand.
First and foremost, this is a big budget AAA title and the presentation is superb. It looks and sounds fantastic, and plays out like a love letter to the entire franchise. The amount of detail and research is outstanding, and the game is full of delightful easter eggs and lore. There's even a reference to the Temple Of The Forbidden Eye! Story wise, I would argue that it's better than the last three movies, although it tends to veer more heavily into the supernatural than I'd prefer. Voss makes a good villain. He's a smart, shrewd, and accomplished archeologist on par with Jones or Belloq, except that he's a sadistic and power-mad Nazi. Indy and Voss are presented as two sides of the same coin, although Jones is just as driven and is also a bit of an asshole. Naturally, a love interest sidekick gets involved in the form of a sassy Italian journalist named Gina Lombardi who's looking for her missing sister. Her antagonistic relationship with Jones provides some of the best dialog in the game, and while she can be grating and annoying, she can also be quite endearing. Sadly, the looming war in Europe has other plans for these two, which ultimately gives Indy another chance to patch things up with Marion.
As far as gameplay goes, it's played from a first person perspective, which is the game's biggest detriment. This eliminates any chance to identify with or roleplay as Indiana Jones, who is only seen during cutscenes and when climbing. I was hoping for more of a "Tomb Raider" or "Uncharted" experience, which is ironic since both of those franchises were aiming for an Indiana Jones vibe. "The Great Circle" is primarily a stealth game, which isn't a mechanic that I'm overly fond of. However, once you find the appropriate disguises, Indy can navigate more freely among the enemy, although higher ranking officials can still spot him. And if you're spotted, your best bet is to run away and hide as fast as possible, because combat isn't the game's strongest suit, and Indy can be quickly overwhelmed if multiple enemies come after him. When Indy isn't sneaking around through Nazi and Fascist compounds looking for clues, he's exploring tombs and ruins trying to spoil Voss's plans.
While the primary goal is to stop Voss, side quests, secrets, and mysteries are always showing up to distract you. Fortunately, nearly all of these can be picked up later and you can revisit any previous location at any time, but my OCD demanded following up every little lead and leveling up my abilities as much as possible. Whether it was tracking down medicine bottles for a grumpy nurse, recovering artifacts for an Egyptian aristocrat, rescuing an annoying kid from a Fascist detention cell, recovering someone's lost bottle of wine, or taking photos of cats around the Vatican, I wasn't going to leave any loose ends. So even though the Internet says you can finish the game in 12 hours, it took me considerably longer (77 hours, to be exact). The only place you can't revisit is the hotel in Sukhothai, so you have to make sure you pick up everything there before moving forward.
Since the game focuses on stealth, confrontation and combat are actively discouraged and Indy isn't a very good fighter. In fact, I died at least a half dozen times during the first fight scene, which is a forced tutorial that teaches you just how weak Indy is. You have to rely on your fists, as your whip does no damage and your pistol only summons more enemies. When you can find them, melee weapons are your best friend and they do at least 5x more damage than your bare fists. You can even knock out an enemy with a single hit from a flyswatter. While in stealth mode, silent takedowns are the only way to make progress, which requires sneaking up on someone with a melee weapon unseen and then attacking them. Hiding bodies helps to keep from being discovered, but only for so long. When you get through about 80% of the game, Indy finally learns unarmed takedowns, so you don't have to constantly scrounge around for bottles, hammers, wrenches, brooms, and guitars to bonk over unsuspecting guards' heads. The only place where hand-to-hand combat is actually encouraged is in underground boxing rings that can be found in each major region. There, you can beat up Fascists and Nazis for prize money and prove how tough you are, because punching Nazis never goes out of style. Plus, you need the money in order to purchase adventure books and upgrade your abilities.
While firearms are available, ammo is scarce and their use is discouraged. Firing a gun always alerts everyone else in the area, and they will almost always start firing back, which is not a good situation unless you have excellent cover in a defendable position that can't be reached by the enemy. I only found a couple of places where shooting a gun proved to be useful, and otherwise I just used rifles as melee weapons.
One thing the game never adequately explains is health and stamina, and how they're related. Even after reading about it numerous times, it still didn't make any sense to me. Eating fruit gives you extra stamina so you can run, climb, fight, and swim longer, while eating bread gives you extra health. But it's a different kind of health than the regular health. Bread health uses a green bar while regular health uses a white bar, and it's not clear what causes each bar to go down. Eating bread will not fill the white health bar, although I did see that happen exactly one time, and I don't know how or why. Apart from that one anomaly, only bandages will replenish the white health bar and only bread will fill the green health bar. It all seems unnecessarily complicated, and I just tried to keep everything topped off at all times, regardless of not understanding what it meant.
Overall, I found the game to be remarkably solid and stable and only encountered one game-limiting bug. Curiously, the only mention of it was in a single obscure reddit thread, which got me around it and allowed me to keep playing. So strange that even after six months after its initial release, there was no official acknowledgment or patch to address such a serious problem. But just so you know, once you get to the Himalayas, DO NOT try the "revisit location" feature until you at least reach the KMS Kummetz. Otherwise, you will not be able to cross the icy ledge with Gina at the beginning of the level, which is an extremely weird bug. If you do get stuck, the solution is to revisit either the Vatican or Gizeh, go to a safe spot where the bad guys aren't watching you, change into Indy's default adventure outfit, and then walk around long enough to reach a checkpoint. Then go back to the Himalayas to continue the story, and you can magically cross the ledge. Now, how someone figured that out is quite beyond me, but I'm glad they did, because I was stuck and very annoyed at the prospect of having to start the game all over. The only other bug I encountered was that the final puzzle can be solved with 49 relics, which prevents you from collecting the 50th relic. But it still appears on your map, taunting you, and when you go to its location, nothing is there.
Other than that, the only issues I experienced were audio quirks and inconsistencies with the theft mechanics. If you try to steal an item while the UI is red, that means you're being watched and someone will come after you, but late in the game I noticed that I would get caught stealing regardless of the UI state, which forced me into unwanted confrontations. The audio quirks, while harmless, were definitely annoying. The biggest offender was random repeated audio cues, especially from Gina. Gina can be overly chatty, which becomes really irritating, and in Sukhothai she repeats the same quips and conversations over and over. It really takes you out of the game, especially when what she says is illogical and out of context. Another common problem is talking through walls. Antonio is really guilty of this one. Even though he's in an office on the fourth floor, you can still hear him talking and repeating the same lines when you're walking around outside in the Vatican square.
As far as level design goes, the game looks fantastic and I loved exploring every little nook and cranny of the highly detailed and organic spaces. The only thing I found disappointing was that despite the change in locale, the Vatican and Gizeh played out nearly identically. Fortunately, while Sukhothai also has a very similar structure, it adds some variety and other elements that make it feel much different. The game's opening level is a shot-for-shot recreation of the opening sequence in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," which sets the tone of the game and introduces the Uncanny Valley aspect of Indiana Jones. Much like "The Dial Of Destiny," Harrison Ford's likeness is very good, but not quite right. Similarly, Troy Baker does a fantastic job of emulating Harrison Ford's voice, and he probably sounds better as a young Indy than Harrison Ford does at this point, but he's still not quite right. It's like they say: The best cover band in the world will never be perfect, and if they were, then what would be the point? Most of the time, Baker's performance is flawless and you don't even think about it. Occasionally, you'll pick up on a particular nuance and think, "Wow, that was really amazing. He totally nailed that!" And sometimes you'll cringe on a certain delivery. But overall, it's a very impressive piece of work.
Since I'm an old guy with old guy reflexes and not a lot of patience for failure and repetition, I played the game on the easiest difficulty setting. In general, I didn't find the game to be difficult at all, except when sneaking through heavily guarded areas and getting caught. I found the stealth elements to be very stressful, which forced me to exercise an extreme amount of caution while playing. Most of the puzzles are fairly simple, although I had to look up a couple of solutions online because they were far too obscure. Also, the final secret vault was just WAY too much work and I simply didn't have the patience for it. There are a handful of action sequences in the game that require quick and precise reflexes, which I definitely had trouble with. The hardest part of the game involves swimming past a giant snake (why did it have to be snakes?) which is literally impossible to do without a video guide to help, and even then there's no way to tell where you are, where you need to go, and how to get there. Additionally, the final stealth mission in Iraq seems to be significantly harder than anything else in the game and I repeatedly got caught and killed trying to reach Voss's tent.
One mission in particular is worth pointing out, where Indy experiences a hallucinogenic nightmare of recent and distant memories that resembles a psychological hellscape of fear, guilt, and shame straight out of "Silent Hill." Indy finds himself endlessly walking the halls of a dimly lit Marshall College, haunted by memories and voices from his past, mistakes he made with Marion, and his conflicted feelings about Gina. The longer he walks, the more the college begins to decay and transform into a wild jungle or lost ancient civilization, and threats become more immediate and menacing. Indy's sanity continually crumbles until all that's left is sheer madness. Utterly brilliant. It's a very captivating and totally unnerving mission, and one of the finest gaming moments I've ever experienced - until right at the end when I kept dying repeatedly.
If you're still wondering whether "The Great Circle" is worth playing, I would say that it is. If you're already a fan of the series, then it's a no-brainer and you'll be thrilled by all of the content and care that went into it. The production values are excellent and the overall experience is fun, satisfying, and not overly demanding. Plus, punching Nazis never goes out of style, which is especially timely these days.