Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles Reviews
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles boasts an impressive colour scheme to compliment a vibrant and diverse world. Filled from end to end with gorgeous views adorable creatures and a plethora of hidden secrets, its certainly got its moments. A lack of diversity within quests and a fairly average narrative are its only real downfalls.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a relaxing adventure set in a beautiful world but lacks challenge.
"Wandering around in a world inspired by Breath of the Wild."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
For a game from an indie studio, Yonder is surprisingly robust, polished and large. If you’re after a different kind of experience, that’s peaceful and relaxing, Yonder might just do the trick
...this is a beautiful game that keeps me entertained for hours at a time. It doesn't matter how much I play, I will always have a reason to go back. If you are looking for an uncomplicated, sweet, relaxing and colorful adventure, then this is the title for you! They also take criticism very seriously - just check out the troll island. :)
At the end of the day, though its story isn’t anywhere near as inspired as its well-planned and executed world, Yonder is a feast for your eyes and ears. The passive nature of the play and the beauty around almost every corner, mixed with the consistent sense of discovery, make it a very serene and relaxing way to spend quite a number of hours finding all of the game’s secrets. Unlike its peers of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley it does have a better defined point where you could very much choose to consider yourself “finished” but at the same time nothing is trying to discourage you from continuing to enjoy the experience. If you love the sense of discovery in Breath of the Wild (or other titles) and losing combat isn’t a big deal to you Yonder is absolutely worth checking out!
Overall, Yonder is a game I`m enjoying and the development team at Prideful Sloth have done quite a decent job.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is like The Elder Scrolls for the most casual player all the way to The Legend of Zelda to its charming world design. While it can be compared to an open-world Harvest Moon, it's very much its own identity. There's plenty of deep rewards for those who live for that stuff. The sense of discovery kept me engaged the whole time. I wanted to collect everything not because I was forced to, but because I wanted to. Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles evokes the feeling of that time of innocence while being a kid roaming grassy fields and stuffing your backpack with everything you can find and knowing that even simple sticks & stones were treasures because they were yours. Then you mastered their uses and felt like the best adventurer ever.
Yonder is for people who enjoy wandering about from task-to-task. It is easy to lose yourself in the simple, charming, and surprisingly expansive land of Gemea.
What’s brilliant is any explorer in Gemea can simply choose to farm, complete quests, seek sprites to defeat the Murk, or all of the above! Though it has its flaws, Yonder blossoms wonderfully through its blend of familiar visuals and mechanics most gamers have already come to love, and then opens its world even more for players of different tastes to get comfortable and play how they want. This is definitely one cloud worth catching.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is, in a nutshell, a huge collection quest. That should be clear to every buyer. Whether large or small, you will be rewarded with a wonderful game world for your purchase, which you will be reluctant to leave. After a stressful day at work, we are driven to the cuddly world of the game every now and then. Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a clear recommendation to buy. If you can do without a cartridge, you can also get it for a much lower price in the Nintendo eShop.
Review in German | Read full review
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a relaxing, explorative crafting adventure game. The game invites decompressing and immersion into the fun Island of Gemea. If you’re here for cute animals, luscious environments and exploration, building farms, crafting ingredients and structures, then this is the game for you. The main story feels as if it ends a bit abruptly and the fast travel component is not ideal. However, with lots to do and lots to see you shouldn’t get bored quickly.
To some, Yonder will be just a drawn out series of fetch quests lacking a worthwhile reward. It didn’t feel that way to me, though. When it comes to carefree, pressureless exploration and discovery, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles does its job properly.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles delivers an imaginative and colourful atmosphere that's contained within its own unique fantasy land.
Due to some rather questionable gameplay decisions and a lack of variety in content, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles ends up being a disproportionately beautiful slog to nowhere. The tank controls are outdated without any of the design elements necessary to make them engaging, while the story tries to be an intimate journey of self-discovery without anything to discover. Gemea's lush and vibrant landscape is the one saving grace, and peacefully walking through colourful forests and past bustling rivers almost makes the whole shipwreck worth it - but the world's lack of complete identity, both in gameplay and how it presents itself, is too glaring to ignore. The shame of it all is that Yonder isn't held back by time constraints or a tight budget; it's held back by design.
You don't see many open world games that feature absolutely no combat and Prideful Sloth I think took a gamble here making a game like that. However their small team succeeded in my eyes as Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles was a relaxing and entrancing game to play through.
Yonder is a game that matches is aesthetics, design, and vision in a way that very few games could even hope to achieve; even those games that end up with astronomical Metacritic scores and GOTY awards from every corner. It's a beautiful, clearly heartfelt masterpiece, and if more games were to follow this one's lead, I would have a great deal more faith in the emergence of video games as an art form.
"There’s not enough farming for it to be a farming simulator, not enough danger to be an adventure game, and not enough story risks for a children’s game."
If you enjoy stopping to smell the roses, the fields of Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles are awash with aroma. However, if you're looking for something with a little more kick, you may not get what you're looking for.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is an enjoyable enough adventure, but it's missing a hook to get players invested. The game wants you to get lost in the economy and exploration it offers, but in just performing these menial tasks for their own sake it fails to create any moments where the entire experience is more than a series of distractions.