The Falconeer Review - Beautifully Frustran

There is something beautiful in individual developers. It may be the passion that is so clearly highlighted in their work. It may be the understanding that they create is something you could create if you had patience, talent, motivation. This may only be extremely creative premises. The individual project of Tomas Sala The Falconeer holds almost everything that his overview has promised. This game combines pretty shaded graphics, a huge tentacular world and a fascinating history of political conflicts and economic terrorism. It's pretty impressive. Too bad dog combat commands are actively fighting throughout my game.

The Falconeer takes you to the Great Ursee, a world of agitated oceans and stormy skies, broken only by mountains and serrated arrows. There are only three ways to move: Ship, Airship and Warbird. As Falconeer, you will overlap your own warbird and alternate between escorting and shooting everything else. And there will be a lot of shooting, because this world is far from peaceful. The decadent and warrior empire and rebel learned under the name of the Order Mancer are in hard-circle; Everyone is just taken in the middle. This is the kind of configuration in which it is easy to invest, even if it is difficult to say who, if any, is right. In the midst of these giants is the small island town of Dunkle. When caught between the crossed fires of the economic and political conflicts between his neighbors, the inhabitants of Dunkle have no choice but to choose a camp.

You start as a newly created Protector of Dunkle, which is unfortunate enough to sit just on the border between the Empire and the Mancers. Imperial forces have been encroaching on your waters for years. From now on, Dunkle's revenues depend on the rental of a mine to the molest. When the little trade that still exists is treated thanks to the disappearance of navigation buoys, you go to learn what is happening. The story that takes place is simply exciting, but it is chained to heavy history missions in combat, which can be a real problem.

I'm going to put all my cards on the table here: I'm not gifted for shooters. The nearest I have never managed to do with a shooter was fighting bosses with Ebony and Ivory in The Devil can cry 3. So when I say that the airflow controls are terrible, this statement is accompanied by an asterisk. However, I sincerely doubt that the asterisk prevails over the simple truth I spent more than forty minutes trying to finish a single mission because I could not reach anything. The game has been designed for the Xbox controller and the Flightstick, and I'm inclined to say that it is the only way it should be experienced. Try to play with the mouse and the keyboard was a frustration exercise.

The game works well, and after an initial period of adaptation, I found that flying and exploring the world was a pleasure, even if I lost myself a lot. The fight, on the other hand, remained a chore. Expect to die a lot. Especially if you, like me, are very bad in 3D air combat. All my battles were won by my assistants IA, probably because I was completely unable to find the enemy, let alone hit him. Even with a button to help me focus on the enemy, the only way for me to reliably identify the location of a target was whether it drew on me. And if it pulled me on it, I could not fight back. It was one of the most confusing 3D combat systems I have ever experienced. At no time did I feel about understanding what was happening.

There are several classes, but I did not notice a lot of difference apart from slight changes in statistics, a different color warbird and a separate pool of entirely masculine faces for your character. The Power-ups were much more important - the regeneration power-up was the only reason I went as far as me.

You know what I liked? Visual style and presentation. Watch my bird fly through the cloud benches was worth more than the entrance price. The sound design was atmospheric and haunting, especially music. Most of the dubbings were of good quality, but the main winger NPC annoyed me after a while. Whenever I started to lose patience with the orders, I plunged and traveled the ocean for a moment, looking at tiny fish jump. It restored my energy at a time in the game and outside. Tomas Sala has started creating a living and breathable world that are both strange and dangerous, and I really believe he has succeeded.

The greatest forgotten in this game, apart from the controls, is the inability to interact with your bird. You can inject him mutagens to turn it on, but you can not caress it? If I had had the opportunity to interact with my Warbird, to personalize his equipment and color, and create a real link with him, I would have appreciated this game much more than me. In the state, I found that The Falconeer was a convincing but frustrating experience.

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Good

• Engineering story
• Immersive world
• Excellent sound design

68

The bad

• Dogfighting is horrible
• The fight is mandatory
• Can not customize or interact with the bird