Songbringer Reviews
You'll enjoy exploring, and the bosses are tough nuts to crack, but frustrating controls and its dificulty may prove a little too much for some.
Songbringer is a super-tough, rewarding RPG that doesn't quite give enough
Songbringer is a beautiful and vast procedurally generated wonderland created by developer Wizard Fu. If you crammed the original Zelda and Dark Souls into a jar and then poured a procedurally generated fluid over the top, you’d have Songbringer. This game will have you locked in for hours with adventure, action, and a little frustration for good measure.
Clumsy combat aside, Songbringer is a gorgeous adventure that successfully stands out among the overcrowded dungeon crawler genre.
Space, science-fiction, and "expanding your mind" have always gone hand-in-hand. Whether it's something as worthy as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or as campy as Jane Fonda vehicle Barbarella, many creators like to partner the vast unknown of space with, well, tripping your balls off.Songbringer, an action-RPG from indie outfit Wizard Fu Games and its auteur, Nathaniel Weiss, also marries sci-fi adventure with a healthy injection of New-Age philosophy, all presented under 1980s aesthetics. Some would like to call it "Zelda on acid!" but that's not strictly accurate on either count, as well as being awful writing.
Songbringer’s eccentricities are enticing and endearing to be certain, but last only for so long. At the end of the day, weird does not a good game make.
Songbringer is a coda of the past that retro-inclined gamers will want to leave on repeat. Others may want to skip to a different song.
It's not a perfect adventure, and there will be some frustrating moments, but I'm ready to hear more of the song that this game brings.
If Wizard Fu set out to make the most faithful of homages to the original Legend of Zelda specifically, Songbringer fits the bill with its hands-off approach to exploration-driven adventure.
Songbringer is a worthwhile game to play if you're a fan of the action-adventure genre. Overall it's well made, looks nice, and the word seeds make the game fun and offers a sort of replayability most action-adventure games cannot. It's a bit unfortunate that the wonky combat makes some encounters more frustrating than they need to be, but other than that Songbringer is a well-crafted experience.
Songbringer is one of those releases you're either going to love or hate.
true gem of a game and a future classic
Songbringer is a game where playing it more than once is the point; it's what justifies the game's whole existence. But each time I fed in a new world seed word, I found myself enjoying the game less. The generated worlds are an interesting gimmick, but they spread Songbringer's shallow mechanics too thin. The game provides nearly limitless worlds to explore, but it didn't give me much motivation to keep at it beyond those first couple runs.
A rewarding sense of exploration drives this tribute to the 16-bit era. Strong ability based progression mechanics underline the Zelda-like comparison and procedurally generated elements complement the structure well. While its combat lacks precision, Songbringer is a very positive overall experience.
Criticising the very point of the game might seem unfair, but I can't change my own tastes and can only speak from my own experience. If procedurally-generated worlds sit better with you and you enjoy dungeon-crawlers and action games, chances are this one's for you.
It's not the deepest game, but it's smart, ridiculously pretty, and has me completely hooked.
While its procedurally generated levels are one of the most beautiful i’ve ever seen, Songbringer fails on making its gameplay and, especially its combat, a compelling experience.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Good adventure game with a large world to explore, unique items, and diverse combat. Suffers from many technical flaws however.
In theory, Songbringer should be excellent. As a procedurally generated take on the original Legend of Zelda, there's plenty of room to innovate with old and new ideas alike. Unfortunately, the old ideas feel derivative of better games and the new ideas are hardly revolutionary. The overall aesthetic and sound design do a great job at creating atmosphere, which makes it all the more disappointing when the level design falls victim to the typical procedurally generated pitfalls. Without attention specifically given to enemy placement, how areas connect, and dungeon design, Songbringer never sustains a consistent level of difficulty or quality. Procedural generation is a handy tool, but not when it's used as a substitute for actual level design.
While it does have cracks on its surface, underneath those cracks, Songbringer sings a beautiful tune.