Greak: Memories of Azur: Review

What’s cooler – “pixels” or modern 3D? “Hand-drawn animation,” the authors of Greak: Memories of Azur answer and present a game that looks like a beautiful cartoon. And what advantages, besides the chic visual style (and great music), are there in this hand-drawn adventure??

Airship as salvation

The main characters of the game are the brothers Greak, Raydel and their sister Adara. They belong to the Courine race, whose representatives, under pressure from the Urlag faction and other disasters and monsters, flee their native lands of Azur. Lots of strange new letters? Don’t be alarmed, the “lore” here is well developed, different characters gradually talk about what is happening and how they came to live like this.

But that doesn’t change the essence. There are bad ones, there are good ones, and we need to help the good ones finish building the airship so that together we can fly away from this already inhospitable land. In the central location, the camp where, in fact, the airship is being built, there are various NPCs that give out main or side quests.

The quests are, of course, simple – find four ropes for an airship, collect three mushrooms for a life-giving soup, kill five plague bats to complete the young scout course, and so on. But sometimes you have to do a lot to accomplish them. Solving plot tasks advances the story, and for side tasks we either learn a soup recipe or learn new skills, like a dive strike in the air.

There are also merchants in the camp (although occasionally they are found in other places), from whom, for the crystals collected during the passage, you can buy useful consumables, increase your inventory, or sell what we don’t need (for example, the fangs of defeated monsters).

Heroes of Sword, Cape and Grappling Hook

There are three protagonists, but at first www.blackjack-ballroom-casino.co.uk we play only as the youngest, the titular Grik, after a while his sister joins him, and only towards the end does Reidel appear. And the mechanics are built on the interaction between characters, the use of their unique abilities, and even the ability to control them all at once – this is especially useful in battles with bosses, when we hit them at the same time. This does not mean that playing only as Grik at first is not interesting, but it is the interaction that is the main highlight Greak: Memories of Azur.

The youngest has practically no unique features – he can hit with a sword, shoot with a bow and do a quick roll. But Adara fires magic balls and is able to float on her cloak for a limited time. Therefore, in one of the situations, it is our brother who turns the rays so as to move the platform towards the sister, on which she can fly. And there are many similar situations.

And Reidel has a shield that can be used to repel blades thrown at us and block deadly rays to let Grik and Adara through. In addition, the eldest was given a grappling hook. That is, for three of us there are three unique abilities, and two of them appear only closer to the end, when the game begins to unfold to its fullest.

Standard exercises take a lot of time when, for example, we pull a lever with one character so that the other goes through the opened door and stands on the pressure plate. We do roughly the same thing when we need to raise/lower the elevators – in the initial location, this is the only way, after the sister appears, to get to the chest with crystals.

Only this is not enough

Although in general the metroidvania elements Greak: Memories of Azur weak, there are few of them, backtracking is mostly forced, and we get to the desired locations most often according to the plot – for example, the bridge that you have been dreaming of crossing since the start of the game will be built only when the scriptwriters give us the corresponding quest.

Yes, it is possible to collect relics that unlock new skills or are simply nice collectibles – often only certain characters are able to get to them. Only this is not enough. So I got to one of these relics of Adara, and she was given the ability to shoot enhanced charges, which it is unlikely that she will have to use.

And in general there is not much in the game. The plot takes three to four hours and, in fact, ends at the most interesting point, when the mechanics of interaction between all three characters are just revealed. Unique abilities of characters, interesting and difficult bosses, even slots in the inventory for consumables are also not enough.

There is cooking – you can mix the found mushrooms and berries. But, as a rule, you still get food to restore health cells. There is pumping up the same health, but if at the beginning Grik has four such cells, then in the final there are five. And in your pocket there are more than a thousand collected crystals that have nowhere to put. So-so pumping. But this is not surprising – the game simply does not have the scope, complexity and variety to provide full-fledged role-playing mechanics.

And the main disadvantage for many is the inconvenient controls when you move all three characters or hit bosses with them. You can get used to it, but there are still enough hemorrhoids. In this situation, a cooperative mode would be ideal, but that’s precisely not the case. Like mini maps. The grappling hook is also inconveniently implemented.

Greak: Memories of Azur looks and sounds great, there are touching moments in the plot (although the overall story is quite banal), and the gameplay has interesting situations. That is, you can play and get some pleasant impressions and aesthetic pleasure. But there would be even more of them if the authors had improved the gameplay and controls, made what was happening larger-scale and diverse.

Pros: good plot; interesting mechanics of interaction between heroes; there are interesting puzzles; the hand-drawn animation looks very attractive, and the game overall is beautiful; orchestral soundtrack.

Cons: inconvenient controls; lack of a cooperative; lacks scale and diversity; some puzzles are frankly too long.