AER: Memories of Old review - This gorgeous open-world adventure soars to impressive heights, but is brought down by repetitive puzzles with. I couldn't shake the feeling while playing Aer: Memories of Old that someone really wanted it to be compared to Journey. Outwardly it's not all that similar, its papercraft aesthetic evoking memories.
AER Memories of Old Review
After the monumental success of Journey, the indie-game-that-could, it is only natural for there to be a legacy of other indie titles who try to capture a similar magic, come flight or fall. AER Memories of Old visibly takes inspiration from a variety of great games, but never quite manages to put together a deep, coherent whole, skimming off the tops of the likes of Journey, The Legend of Zelda, and ABZU. But while ABZU‘s oceans are teeming with life, AER comes up empty.
In AER, you play as Auk, a shapeshifter on a sacred pilgrimage through a shattered world. The game is centered around exploration and discovery as Auk transforms into a bird to soar over floating islands and illuminates sleeping temples with her lantern. Coupled with the sound of whistling wind and the pastel palette of the sky, flying feels amazing — there’s nothing better than hurtling through the clouds as a bird and changing back midair to rocket towards a bit of floating island like a meteor.
Expect to get lost in the overworld of AER, but not in a good way. You are only given vague directions by NPCs and no map marker, with no journal to record what little information you are given. This isn’t inherently bad design — meandering about these islands wouldn’t be as frustrating if there were actually things to see or do on most of them. There are a few unexpected gems to discover (such as the circle of dancing crabs on one island), but not as many as you would expect in this game that encourages you to explore. Many islands are merely tiny rocks with a tree or lake on it, and only one has a few other people on it to talk to.
_________________________
“The game is centered around exploration and discovery as Auk transforms into a bird to soar over floating islands and illuminates sleeping temples with her lantern.”
Auk cannot fly within the caves or dungeons found in the hollows of islands, so the game boils down to puzzles and platforming. Both are easy, with dungeons almost exclusively consisting of activating a glowing diamond shape somewhere in the area, spotting the next one, and platforming to it in order to open some doors or lower some bridges to progress. It all requires little thinking of your own — there isn’t any specific order you have to activate these in because it’s all rather linear (unless you miss a passage, in which case you’ll have to backtrack and find it). With little variation to this formula throughout the game, eventually, you find yourself just going through the motions. In some of the larger dungeons, you can get lost, which does require some wandering around until you find that next glowing diamond.
While the islands are rather stark, the writing in the game does much to enrich the world with details, myths, and history. We are told stories of the Creator, the champion Karah, and the spirits that remain in this land through NPC dialogue and the large tablets throughout the islands. However, the legends and past of the world of AER are written so thoroughly and conveyed to the player with such certainty that all of the mystery and magic inherent in ancient myths are sucked away. It is an unfortunate case of too much telling and not enough showing. Whereas Journey is all show, with the complete lack of text leaving the environment to tell the story, letting the player’s imagination fill in what happened for themselves, AER does the exact opposite. While this is not automatically poor storytelling, for a game about discovery and the exploration of this world’s ruins, it’s crippling. The player almost never feels that they found something for themselves because none of this knowledge was lost or waiting to be rediscovered — all of it is already known by the NPCs and by the remaining spirits in the land to be told to Auk, with even more recorded perfectly by the giant stone tablets. There is little to be gleaned from the environment itself. The only times that I did feel connected to the story was when I encountered the stationary, lingering spirits of people from the past and caught their fragments of dialogue. This was the best story aspect of AER to me — it shows the player that this world was once bursting with life; in the past, others had done the same pilgrimage that you are doing, their dialogue alluding to other stories that you can engage with, that you can try to piece together yourself.
AER‘s greatest strength lies in its visuals, with its low poly, geometric aesthetics and soft pastel palette. Both the overworld and the dungeons of AER are complemented by the absolutely marvelous lighting, with sunlight spilling into caves out of cracks, the brilliance of technology from another age, the glow from mushrooms and tears in reality. Aesthetically, the game is already wonderful, but Forgotten Key produces magic with it through creative, compelling imagery, making the most of the style they chose. There is still grandeur in the crumbling monuments, in the powerful images of spirit beasts and old cogs turning in an abandoned factory, the creative use of geometry, light, and legend. The sight of bright silver comets flying by as the towering Keeper of Dreams rose up from a long sleep was a minimalistic spectacle that took my breath away. The musical score follows the same philosophy as the visuals — it isn’t complex, but plays at the right moments, uplifting scenes and portions of gameplay.
AER Memories of Old knows its limits and doesn’t try to go beyond them, which causes it to fall short in places, leading to simple gameplay and environments. It makes the most of what it has, especially with its visuals, but AER still turns out to be a rather short, shallow game in the end.
*** PC key provided by the publisher ***
The Good
- Compelling, creative imagery
- Good visual aesthetic
The Bad
- Simple gameplay
- Empty world
- Unsatisfactory storytelling
If there’s something to remark about AER – Memories of Old, it’s how it lets you soar through its colorful, low poly world as soon as you’re done with its introductory sequence. While you are given vague directions as to where you need to go, nothing pressures you into heading to any particular spot straight away. Auk, a shape shifter that can freely transform into a bird at any time, must visit three temples as part of her pilgrimage, but she can bide her time exploring the islands that pop into view as you traverse the land.Auk’s movement feels a bit floaty at first, both on the ground and while airborne, requiring a bit of getting used to. However, once you’re used to the controls, the smoothness of the movement helps the exploration aspect a lot. Despite the map being fairly small, soaring through AER’s world is exhilarating. The game also performs very well making sure that the fluid movement remains unhindered. Every small island that can be seen can also be landed upon.
Some hold remnants of the past or scrolls that give bits of text talking about the world’s conception, mythology or events from its history. Others hold nothing aside from, maybe, a cute animal, a puddle of water or trees. The islands are organized in clusters of smaller ones with a larger landmass that usually contains a structure of sorts.
As you approach them, they get revealed on your map making sure you don’t get lost, despite there being no further indication of which places you’ve visited and which you haven’t.If outside Auk can shift between her human and bird form seamlessly, inside, she has to stick to the former. While caves are fairly straightforward, the three temples Auk must visit in order to complete her quest, are larger structures that manage to carry with them a sense of the primordial.
Remnants of the past can also be found here, as can platforming sections and light puzzle sequences. These are neat little additions that give one something else to do aside from just wandering. Their solutions aren’t difficult to grasp and the locations’ design flows very well, making sure there’s never too much backtracking to be done. There’s a constant sense of going forward, of accomplishment as you move from one room to the next.Auk can use the lantern she receives to both interact with certain objects and see remnants of the past in areas where white symbols can be found. Once light is shined upon the symbols, white silhouettes appear, with text often giving insights into the lives of these individuals and/or creatures. Through them, as well as the aforementioned scrolls, players can piece together what happened to AER’s world. These bits provide glimpses into how different events affected humans on a personal level while also discussing broader aspects like the link between humans and nature.
The small amount of writing there is does a good job of painting a world that has its own mythology. This is incentive enough to double check every small island for extra lore snippets.While you can go everywhere, the size of AER’s world works against its precept of free exploration. Almost every cluster of islands has something to do with Auk’s main quest, ending up in a situation where you can go anywhere, but you also “have” to go there in order to progress. Thus, despite the initial impression of freedom, there are times when it doesn’t quite feel that you’re exploring a “world” per se. Instead, it felt closer to being given a chunk of a greater whole which, at times, was a little too empty.
This emptiness is mostly justified by in-game lore and I’ll be the first to take a smaller, handcrafted world over infinite, procedurally generated expanses. In AER’s case, however, more could have been done. Once you’ve checked an area out, there’s little reason to go back to it. This makes it so that, after you’ve explored the entire world, there isn’t enough to fuel the need to go through it again as you’ll bump into places you’ve visited not so long ago.The story in AER – Memories of Old is told through text. It’s not particularly deep and only transmitted through brief encounters with NPCs.
It does, also, conclude far too brusquely, without ever showing even a semblance of the result the player’s actions had. The game looks pretty, for the most part, but its visuals can be hit or miss. The low poly style it uses makes for a stark contrast between areas that look quite beautiful and others that look bland. Especially inside, the proper use of lighting makes for some really great sights and subtle mood shifts that emphasize the ancient nature of the locations. Outside, islands are patches of green against a shifting backdrop which end up looking a little too similar, even as some might come with buildings or bodies of water.
This goes downhill once you reach the two snowy areas in the north which, by all means, look extremely bland.AER – Memories of Old does something interesting with its sound design in adding a dynamic element to the music when you change forms. When walking outside, strings play on a loop. Switch over to flight and rhythm kicks in, quickly joined by a banjo, going hand in hand with the flying experience that the game does so well. The sense of speed is complemented by the music. On the flipside, it really felt like the same track was playing over and over again to the point where reaching the snow area in the north, with its clear, crystalline piano layered on top of strings, was a relief.The five hours I’ve spent exploring AER - Memories of Old’s world passed by without me really noticing. Its highest point is clearly in the seamless transition between human and bird form and the fluidity of the movement. There are missteps, as well, in some repeating, unimpressive assets and the handling of its story.
The small size of the world does end up taking away from the feeling of freedom the game tries to give the player as, while you can go anywhere you want, there are only so many places you can actually go. It would have undoubtedly benefited from a larger world, both in terms of locations and lore, as what’s there does fuel one’s desire to find out more. With that in mind, AER - Memories of Old does what it set out to do. Its world does feed one’s curiosity, to an extent, it flows well, putting no obstacles in the player’s way, and makes for a serene experience fans of exploration titles should have on their radar., NoobFeed.