AER: Memories of Old begins with a beautiful little video gaming moment. As you clamber up and out of the collapsing cave in which your adventure begins, you're presented with an all-encompassing view of the fragmented floating islands, surrounded on all sides by majestic columns of billowing cloud and bottomless chasms, that make up its world. As you move tentatively towards the edge of the island on which you stand you’re instructed to press jump twice to transform into a bird, an action which immediately sweeps you up and out into the endless skies above.
One moment you’re stood on the edge of a precipice, the next you’re swooping through the air, diving through clouds and flapping your wings to give yourself a speed boost as you skim a wing across the surface of some great lake before directing yourself onto one of the countless splinters of land that surround you, morphing back into your human form to begin exploring. As far as introductory moments in a game go, it's a belter.
Swedish developer Forgotten Key has obviously spent a great deal of time perfecting the primary means of traversing its creation and it’s paid off handsomely as pitching yourself in and around islands, barrel-rolling through bespoke tunnels carved into rock and guiding your bird-self into great gusts of wind that funnel you along at high speeds is a delightful way to experience the world the developer has created here.
You play as Auk, one of the last shape-shifters, sent on a sacred pilgrimage through the Land of the Gods, where you’re instructed to use the power of Karlah’s Light – a lantern you pick up at the outset of your quest – to visit three temples in order to stop some great evil from devouring what’s left of the world. As you explore, you’ll piece together the history of the land you inhabit, using your lantern to illuminate not just the present but the past, holding it up to glowing cyphers in order to glimpse tiny moments from the lives of those who have gone before. You’ll also come across a handful of hardy NPCs scraping a living in a camp at the heart of the world who’ll gently guide you towards your next objective while filling in some of the backstory, which can be further added to by discovering some of the many carvings and scrolls littered throughout the tiny sky islands you visit.
Alongside the flying around – which is some of the best flying around we’ve encountered in a game in quite some time – you’ll guide Auk through dungeons, the biggest being those aforementioned temples, and partake in some enjoyably light platforming and puzzling in order to gather three fragments of great power and bring peace to the world once more. It’s here, with your feet firmly planted on the ground, that AER: Memories of Old loses a little of its charm; walking around on old terra firma, it turns out, can’t really hold a candle to the dizzying delights of swooping around in the skies above.
Yet these dark caverns are beautifully designed, atmospheric places filled with melancholy fragments of the past, haunted by the lost hope of past pilgrims, and, although their puzzles won’t tax you for too long, they’re satisfying and fit perfectly into the relaxing nature of the game. This isn’t an adventure about overcoming some insurmountable obstacle or engaging in combat (of which there is very wisely none). Auk’s journey is about healing, about bringing together disparate cosmic strands in order to soothe the void between man and nature that’s seen this world become slowly corrupted.
A combination of beautiful low-poly graphics, reminiscent of the likes of Journey, Rime, and, more recently, Ashen, accompanied by some top-notch music and ambient sounds helps to bring the Land of the Gods alive to spectacular effect. Taking to the skies sees low orchestral hums rise up, accompanied by wonderfully uplifting acoustic banjos and flutes that seem to follow you in flight, rising and falling as you do, gathering momentum as you careen through tight spaces on your way to one of the great temples to unlock another piece of the puzzle at the heart of the game. Caverns are filled with the whispers of forgotten pilgrims, their final moments captured forever in cyphers you can bear witness to using Karlah’s Light, while outside the deafening rush of giant waterfalls that drop majestically between disconnected levels of land fills the air.
This is also a commendably freeform experience; from that first moment you take off into the air you can choose to traverse the world as you see fit, discovering little scraps of knowledge here and there, piecing together the events of the past in no particular order and picking away at the puzzles you come across as you make your way towards the three temples which serve as the main progression points that drive the narrative forward.
Performance-wise, AER: Memories of Old runs flawlessly in both portable and docked modes and we didn’t experience any framerate hitches or bugs during our time in the Land of the Gods. It’s also a real looker, with strong art design that stands easily alongside that of Journey or even the mighty ICO in terms of creating an enchantingly ethereal setting for Auk’s sacred pilgrimage.
Conclusion
AER: Memories of Old may be a short game, it may have zero combat with light puzzling and platforming that isn’t going to set any sort of great challenge for players, but that isn’t really what this adventure is about and it's great to see a developer realise its vision without relying on comforts that gamers so often expect to pad out their playing experiences. Developer Forgotten Key has crafted an enchanting world here, with a fantastically fun and fitting means of traversing it; a splintered land full of melancholy memories in which you soar, a singular source of hope in flight above a world that’s relying on you for salvation. It’s a trip, a meditation on the nature of man and his fractured relationship with the natural world around him, a beautiful journey that's well worth taking.
Comments 32
@gamer95, have you played the game yet? Or do you just hate Nintendolife for writing a review about a game?
@Lucarianzx I won't answer for them, but what if I told you there are reviews by one person on Nintendo Life who seem questionable, whose comments are full of dogging on said reviews, and there was evidence to back up that they don't play the games for barely even a short amount of time? To what standards would you hold the highly esteemed NL? Asking for a friend.
I think most moans about reviews would be solved by ditching scores. Reading the words is enough.
@Hylian_Ticipated You sure your username shouldn't be @Hylian_Toxicated?
@PJOReilly Ow my sides. Ooo my liver.
Yeah.
Nature is my jam so I'll definitely give this one a look.
@Hylian_Ticipated, I'm not saying that every reviewer is right all of the time, that's not true, but I don't see anything wrong with review. I get it that a lot of game critics receive a lot of crap because of dunkey's videos which I somewhat agree with, but he can't cover every single indie game and that's why we have larger websites to do those reviews. That's just my 2 cents on it though I get it that everybody has different opinions.
I think if I had to do review scores my system would be: 'Make a special effort', 'Worthwhile', 'If you're bored and it's cheap', 'Don't bother'.
Have on PS4 have not played yet will have too soon x
I did think it was a well-written review of a game that sounds appealing. Felt the need to say that after the brief nonsense I hope we can all leave behind us.
@Lucarianzx Wait, people actually take Dunkey videos seriously?!?
@Lucarianzx That's not what I asked.
Should a person who doesn't put any time into games be reviewing them?
@Hylian_Ticipated, well this reviewer says that the game was short so... He finished the game?
@Hylian_Ticipated Scully is the one that comes to my mind, O' Rielly seems ok to me
Dear NintendoLife,
Can’t you please stop putting “short running time“ in the cons column? Many gamers today do not have infinite spare time and need to juggle time for family, kids, and other interests as well.
For me and many others “short running time” definitely goes into the joy column.
@akennelley1 Good to hear your thoughts. I'm personally not calling either of them out. It's just the damning evidence that I have that can't be explained. I question daily if I should share it or not. Because I want answers. Small outlets bust their ass and the big wigs get a pass because they have to pump it out. Not on my watch.
Great review. I played this awhile back on PC and was blown away by it. The review is right on the money describing how great the beginning is, how fun the flight is, and how the music swells and flows along to enhance everything. I think it's a pretty masterful game. Having said all that, I was partly blow away by the smoothness of the PC experience, which was running at 60fps on my older computer. When it was on sale I also bought it on PS4 and was sorely disappointed that it runs at 30fps there. So, I'd assume it runs at 30fps on Switch, and stays there pretty much locked, which is good. Anyways, the positive take away is that it sounds like this game runs roughly as well as it does on PS4, which is a cool think since Switch is portable. I highly recommend this game. I'll probably buy it a third time if it goes on sale at some point!
Oh, I specifically remember telling a friend that I love how satisfying the flight mechanics are, and how one can fly low and slow if one chooses. For some reason flying low and slow reminds me of dreams and I love it in this game. Of course you can fly close to the surface of a land island while going quite fast too, if you wish. I wish I could fly in Breath of the Wild like this game, with this game's physics and smooth and fun flight controls!
Might have to look into this one further. It sounds pretty solid.
@vinicity I fully agreee haha (even though I’m not a parent)
After being burned by Rime I feel the need to ask this, can you invert BOTH the x and y axis when it comes to camera controls (and also flying controls)?
Yeah, it makes little sense. What if every book review would end with “this was a great book, but I will give it a lower mark since the author should have written 600 pages instead of 200”?
I loved this game on PS4. Great to see some coverage for it.
@JayJ Sadly a loooooot of people do. I've seen whole forums that take his words as serious.
@Hylian_Ticipated
“It's just the damning evidence that I have that can't be explained. I question daily if I should share it or not. Because I want answers.”
Lol
This is giving me Rime vibes which I thoroughly enjoyed so I’ll pick this one up.
"strong art design that stands easily alongside that of Journey or even the mighty ICO"
A bit over enthusiastic there maybe.
@Hylian_Ticipated If the evidence you have is concrete, why wouldn't you share it?
Uh, no. "Captivating, combat-free adventure" is an oxymoron. It's the same reason why the "Pilotwings" series sucks. Hard pass.
@BulbasaurusRex There is absolutely nothing subjective about what you said. That was sarcasm.
I made the mistake of reading some of the comments, something I haven't done in a while. But since I trust anyone writing for Nintendo Life more than I trust random people on the internet who feel it is their civic duty to complain about other people's opinions, and because the review made this game sound like exactly the kind of game I enjoy most with my limited gaming time these days, I'm totally going to check it out.
Looks interesting.
it cost 20 bucks on the eshop and it's on sale now for $1.99. A whopping 90% off save 🥳 gonna give this game a try and definitely have helped my pockets 😁
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