AIRHEART - Tales of broken Wings Reviews
For a title with such a strong concept, Airheart does shockingly little with its premise.
This is a game that splices together twin-stick shooting, careful exploration, and crafting, but then throwing in roguelike procedurally-generated levels as well...
GREAT - Airheart delivers a reasonably balanced roguelike experience with a dieselpunk art style that looks great on the Nintendo Switch. Gameplay comes in the form of twin-stick arcade shooting & collecting, coupled with a trial & error crafting system that I found to be a bit annoying, but not enough to detract from the overall game. If you’re in the market for a thematically different roguelike, this game has a nicely structured game loop that delivers hours upon hours of fun.
Aesthetically, the skies above Granaria are sublime. The graphics are beautiful, the music is superb, and the incredibly deep ecology of the flyfish that realistically react to overfishing patterns is so extensively detailed that I have no choice but to be impressed. However, repeating the same sections over and over to grind out money while trying to make progress with a crafting system that is so poorly explained made me dread every minute I spent with the game. There's a solid foundation for gameplay once you're in the skies chasing fish and fighting pirates, but every minute that you're not dogfighting your way through the clouds to chase exotic creatures is so frustrating and dull that I just can't bring myself to spend any more time searching for Amelia's elusive Skywhale.
Stiff controls & Sub-par crafting spoil the fun.
All of these elements coalesce into something unexpectedly coherent and interesting, and while there are some minor performance issues to contend with on the Switch, Airheart‘s gameplay loop and general oddness make it a good fit for the platform.
There's certainly some roguelike fun to be had in Airheart – Tales of Broken Wings, especially for fans of twin-stick shooters and classic arcade action. Unfortunately, the elements outside of skyfishing and dogfighting are more of an interference than an enhancement, and they may put you off this game before you're able to get to the good stuff.