You can finish Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in 15-20 hours if you stick to the main story. I played for 68. I went full completionist, collected everything, and played almost the entire game without firing a gun. I also got stuck in scenery more times than I can count, watched a soldier stand at attention while skewered in a trap, and lost hours to one puzzle near the end that nearly drove me mad.
The Great Circle has some rough edges, but I couldn’t put it down.
Part of that is the franchise. I’ve always loved the Indiana Jones movies. The storytelling is excellent, the action is exciting, the jokes land, and Indy is just a normal guy kicking ass and getting his ass kicked at the same time. Harrison Ford is too old now to make movies like the originals, and this game fills that gap better than I thought it would.
The short version
The Great Circle nails what matters most in an Indiana Jones game – it’ll make you laugh, it’s full of adventure, and it tells a great new story.
The sound design is excellent, and collecting items across six very different areas kept me busy for 68 hours. Also, there’s just nothing quite like beating Nazis senseless with cooking pans and toilet plungers. It never got old.
The downsides: it’s glitchy (usually funny, occasionally serious), the faces have an uncanny valley problem, and there isn’t enough story between the gameplay. My wife likes watching me play story-based games, and she gave up on this one. It’s also heavy on stealth, so if sneaking around isn’t your thing, most of this game isn’t either.
Play it if you love the movies. Skip it if glitches or stealth are dealbreakers.
The story fits between Raiders and Last Crusade
The tutorial drops you into the boulder chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it’s a great throwback. Then the game jumps to 1937, placing it after Raiders and before The Last Crusade. Indy is back teaching at Marshall College when a giant man named Locus breaks in and steals a recently excavated cat mummy. Tracking it down pulls Indy into a Nazi plot led by the main villain, Voss, and takes him through the Vatican, Gizeh, the Himalayas, Shanghai, Sukhothai, and Iraq.
The story itself is fun and engaging, and the cinematic scenes are done well. It’s like watching a movie. My problem is there isn’t enough of it. The gaps between story scenes are long, especially if you’re doing side content, and I kept wishing the game would hand me another cutscene.
Some creative sections help. At one point you end up in Shanghai while fighter jets bomb the city, and the whole level is a short, frantic change of pace. I wanted more moments like that.
Can someone else in the room enjoy watching this game?
Maybe. It depends on how you like to play.
I love story-based games, and my wife prefers that I play them, because she likes watching them like a show. She didn’t like watching this one. There’s too much gameplay between the story moments to hold a non-player’s attention.
If I had stuck to the main missions and skipped everything else, she might have enjoyed it more, but then I wouldn’t have leveled Indy up enough for the challenges ahead. If you have someone watching, and you’re playing it the way I did, this might not be the game for you.
Troy Baker’s Indy is amazing
Indiana Jones is voiced by Troy Baker, best known as Joel in The Last of Us, and he nails it. It sounds exactly like Harrison Ford’s Indy, right down to the slight mumbling and the way Indy’s voice drops at the end of his sentences. Even Harrison Ford has said how good the performance is, saying “If I’d known he was so good, I would have done it myself.”
The rest of the cast holds up too. Nobody sounds like they’re reading from a script. It’s every bit as professional as a movie.
The sound design and music are excellent
There’s a sound for everything: picking up objects, clothes rustling, feet on the floor, punches landing, the whip cracking, the grunts of jumping and running. It all sounds great.
The music is just as good. Most of the time it’s light background music you barely notice while walking around town. Some scenes have no music at all, and it fits. And when you enter an area you shouldn’t be in, the score turns ominous and puts you under stress. The developers did an excellent job here.
The world is noisy in the right ways too. People chat nearby, dogs bark, dishes clang, marketplaces hum. And Indy makes short remarks while exploring, which is a lot of fun, especially when he’s snarky.
The graphics feel slightly off
When I first loaded the game, I immediately felt the graphics weren’t up to par. That feeling faded over time, but something stayed just a little off. Most players seem to disagree with me on this, so take it as one opinion.
So much of the game looks incredible. The world, the furniture, the weapons, the clothes. Reflections, lighting, and shadows are excellent. The flame of Indy’s lighter even moves when he does.
The problem is the faces. It’s uncanny valley. Characters don’t quite look at the right spot when someone’s talking to them, and mouths move unnaturally or sit in odd positions, even though the faces themselves look realistic. Add some strange NPC movements, clipping, slightly boxy architecture, and colors that run too bright in places like the forest and flat in others like the skin, and you get graphics that come so close to realistic but stop just short of the finish line.
Indy moves like a real person
Indy can run, but not fast and not for long. There’s a stamina bar that drains when you run, climb, or carry enemies. When he climbs, he moves slowly, like an actual human would. When he climbs his whip, he grunts and struggles, and it looks every bit as hard as it would be in real life.
You’d think that would be annoying. Sometimes it is. But it feels deliberate, and it’s tuned well. I never felt like climbing dragged on so long it got boring, or that Indy moved so slow it would get him killed while escaping.
The whip is also useful beyond climbing. You can hit and stun enemies with it, drag them to the ground, and yank weapons out of their hands. It scares off attacking dogs, since you can’t harm animals in this game with the whip or anything else. And you’ll use it constantly to swing to hard-to-reach spots or pull down pieces of the environment to move forward.
You can fight with almost anything that isn’t nailed down
There are real weapons in this game, like guns and nightsticks – and you can also flip guns around to use the butt as a blunt-force weapon. But the most fun I had in combat was grabbing whatever was lying around and swinging it. Pans, shovels, brooms, crutches, guitars, violin bows, toilet plungers, fly swatters. If it’s sitting on a table or leaning against a wall, you can probably hit a Nazi with it.
The animations are half the joke. Watching Indy wind up and clobber a soldier with something ridiculous never stopped being funny, and it fits the movies perfectly. Indy has always been a guy who fights with whatever’s within reach.
Improvised weapons have different levels of strength and they all wear out or break, which adds to the realism of using them.
I played almost the whole game without firing a gun
That was my goal going in, and the game only broke it once, in a single scene where shooting is forced.
Skipping guns never felt like a drawback, because between the whip, my fists, and whatever junk was nearby, I always had something to fight with.
Firearms aren’t worth much here anyway. They’re hard to use and weaker than you’d expect, and the moment a gun goes off, every enemy in the area comes running. Then you’re swarmed by Nazis, and unless you can escape to a rooftop or underwater, you’re pretty much done for.
The game is easier without guns, and I think that’s the point. Indy isn’t a killer, unless he needs to be.
Collectibles: buy the maps, and do the medicine bottle challenges
The tip I wish I’d known from the start: every area sells maps that mark exactly where the collectibles are. Once I started buying those, collecting went from a chore to genuinely fun.
I almost never enjoy collecting things in games, but this game made it work. There’s a lot to grab, and most of it feeds back into the game:
Notes usually add backstory, but some contain hints or safe combinations you actually need.
Medicine bottles get traded to each town’s doctor. Do these challenges. They’re the cheapest way to afford skill books, and money gets tight later in the game if you’re buying books from other sellers.
Books teach Indy new skills: stamina boosts after dodging, more melee damage, extra health, pulling large enemies down with the whip, stronger firearms. Useful, especially if you want to clear all the boxing matches. You need to spend Adventure Points to learn the skills within the books.
Photos come later, once you get a camera. They earn Adventure Points, but photographing landmarks is also a fun way to soak in the world and a little history.
Artifacts earn Adventure Points too, but here’s one important thing to keep in mind: one optional, especially challenging puzzle at the end requires nearly every artifact in the game. Technically you can miss one or two, but trust me, you’ll want all of them.
Six areas, and every one feels different
Each city felt daunting when I first arrived. The towns are big, with a lot of space to roam, and it took me an hour or more in each one before I felt familiar with it. That’s probably a good sign. It means there’s a lot to do. But if you’re going for 100%, expect a ton of back and forth.
The Vatican. Alleyways, religious buildings, a construction zone, underground passages, even rooftops. I spent a TON of time here, partly because I hadn’t learned about the collectible maps yet, and hunting things down without them wore me out. This is the only area I couldn’t wait to leave, only for that reason.
Gizeh. Pyramids, desert, and small villages where people gather to eat and socialize. Running between basecamps got tedious, but I’d hit my stride by then. Moving through the pyramids and underground areas felt like what I came for, sort of like Tomb Raider. This is where it feels most like an Indiana Jones game.
The Himalayas. Beautiful snowy views, but you spend most of your time inside a Nazi naval ship that somehow ended up on top of a mountain. There’s more sneaking here than anywhere else, including dragging and hiding bodies, and the close quarters made it feel like a spy game. I enjoyed it.
Shanghai. Extremely short and completely different. Warplanes overhead, burning homes, a frantic escape through a destroyed city. It’s a great break from the big open areas, and the escape scene at the end is a really fun surprise.
Sukhothai. A tropical, old Southeast Asian town with tiny villages, rice farms, and humid forest. You travel most of it by boat, which is a neat change of pace, though the boating and swimming got a little tedious. The ancient ruins here are really something.
Iraq. The final area, and a bit of a bummer: you never actually explore Iraq. You’re on a giant Nazi military base the whole time, pushing toward Voss. The final battle is quite the show, though.
Expect glitches in every session
This game is glitchy. In almost any session, something will break.
Usually it’s funny. A hand twisted the wrong direction. Enemies walking through trees. A soldier skewered in a trap but standing straight up with his eyes open. Indy operating a two-person switch with a partner who isn’t there. Small things like that.
But occasionally I ran into more serious glitches, usually getting stuck in scenery. Sometimes you can jump around like a maniac and pop free, but usually you’re restarting from a checkpoint. Checkpoints are frequent, so you’ll only lose a minute or so. Annoying, but not devastating.
There were only two glitches that really bothered me, both in Sukhothai…
The Blessed Pearl note that isn’t there
One collectible note for the Blessed Pearl mission is supposed to sit on a crate. The map points right at it, but there’s nothing there. If you collect every other note and photo, the mission will eventually count you at all 20 notes, but the map never clears the marker, and the game never acknowledges it. As far as I can tell, there’s no fix. You just have to live with the marker always being there.
A whip swing that drops you to your death (and sometimes crashes the game)
There’s an underground area in Sukhothai where you swing from a branch to collect an artifact. Swinging over works fine. Swinging back doesn’t: the whip attaches and immediately releases, dropping you to your death. Sometimes the game hard-crashes right after.
The workaround that got me through was to run and jump first, attach the whip to the branch mid-air, then swing. It took a few tries, but it works, and I was able to clear the area.
The comedy is exactly right
This game has the classic Indiana Jones humor, and I love it. In one scene, Indy and Gantz are fighting on a boat while a guy clings to a crate that’s sliding off the ship. The crate slides right between them, interrupts the fight, and drops off the boat with the iconic Wilhelm scream. Gantz smiles at Indy like they’re two buddies who just got lucky. Then Indy punches him.
The whole game is like that. Indy is grumpy and rude, but in a funny way, exactly like the movies.
The puzzles range from freebies to hours of pain
Some puzzles are as simple as finding a note with a code on it. Others are proper code deciphers and ancient artifact puzzles. Most of the harder ones are optional and pay out useful items like ammo or health, and they’re a nice way to break up the game. I found the code deciphering fun and didn’t care much for the rest.
Then there’s the final optional puzzle, the one that needs all those artifacts. I worked on it for two hours straight. It nearly drove me mad. If you’re a completionist, expect to be frustrated here. Or to be tempted to cheat by looking up a guide.
Is The Great Circle worth it?
I played on the Xbox Series X, and the frame rate and loading times were excellent. I didn’t run into any performance problems. I’m unsure if the glitches also exist on other platforms.
If you have Game Pass, this is an easy yes, since it’s included there.
At full price, I would definitely buy this game and on sale, it’s a no-brainer. The glitches are frequent but mostly minor and wouldn’t stop me from recommending the game.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard is from players who don’t enjoy stealth. If you don’t like stealth, you might want to pass.
My verdict
The Great Circle is the closest thing to a new Indiana Jones movie we’ve had in years. The voice acting, the whip, the humor, the sneaking around Nazi bases in a stolen uniform, all of it is exactly right.
It’s also glitchy, the faces are a little off, and there isn’t enough story to keep anyone else in the room watching.
But I played for 68 hours, collected everything, and beat it almost without firing a shot. Whatever this game gets wrong, it got its hooks into me. If you love the movies, you’ll put up with the rough edges, because underneath them is a real Indiana Jones adventure.