It is an unfortunate case of too much telling and not enough showing. However, the legends and past of the world of AER are written so thoroughly and conveyed to the player with such certainty that all of the mystery and magic inherent in ancient myths are sucked away. We are told stories of the Creator, the champion Karah, and the spirits that remain in this land through NPC dialogue and the large tablets throughout the islands. While the islands are rather stark, the writing in the game does much to enrich the world with details, myths, and history. In some of the larger dungeons, you can get lost, which does require some wandering around until you find that next glowing diamond. With little variation to this formula throughout the game, eventually, you find yourself just going through the motions.
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It all requires little thinking of your own - there isn’t any specific order you have to activate these in because it’s all rather linear (unless you miss a passage, in which case you’ll have to backtrack and find it). Both are easy, with dungeons almost exclusively consisting of activating a glowing diamond shape somewhere in the area, spotting the next one, and platforming to it in order to open some doors or lower some bridges to progress. I personally don’t feel particularly attracted to the genre but I do appreciate that a lot of people get more out of it than I do and so far, AER: Memories of Old is one that I would recommend to fans although Yonder: The Cloudcatcher Chronicles is still the yardstick by which I measure these games, but then….you couldn’t gracefully explore the skies as a bird as you can here.“The game is centered around exploration and discovery as Auk transforms into a bird to soar over floating islands and illuminates sleeping temples with her lantern.”Īuk cannot fly within the caves or dungeons found in the hollows of islands, so the game boils down to puzzles and platforming. If you are hardened veteran of 3D games and yearn for challenge then this really isn’t the title for you. Thinking about it, this game is really what Feather should have been, offering the audio and visual cues that relax the player but also throwing in a dollop of puzzles and places to explore which will really add to the longevity for players who are fans of this more casual genre. You also can’t die in the game so there isn’t really a sense of threat or challenge beyond the aforementioned more cerebral sections of the game.Ĭlocking in at around two hours or so if you make a concerted effort to move through the main game, AER: Memories of Old feels like it’s designed more to be treated as a way of winding down such as Car Quest or the more recent Feather (which, containing no challenge whatsoever did admittedly feel more like a tech demo than a fully-fledged game).
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You can chat to a handful of NPCs that are scattered around but the bulk of the game is spent moving from place to place and solving the puzzles, all of which are pretty casual in difficulty. Presented in a low-polygonal style, the game runs quite smoothly and the sense of movement in the skies makes air-travel a real highlight, especially when combined with the lulling music and sounds.
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Sent out on a mission to the lost land of Gods, you play the last shapeshifter, able to not only traverse the hidden dungeons of the world but also the ability to transform into a bird and fly across the dozens of floating islands that make up the game. The bird-transformation mechanic and sense of openness that it gives however, is really saucy. A ‘relaxation game’ with more game play than I usually see in the genre, AER: Memories of Oldplays out as almost a gentle tutorial into the world of 3D platform games.