Nintendo Switch Review Code Provided by Navegante Entertainment
It isn’t often a game gives players the control of multiple characters and even when this is done it is usually two characters. Pushing this limitation to include a third character and sending players on a unique journey to bring them all together and fight as one unit is Navegante Entertainment. Working with Team17, they are about to launch Greak: Memories of Azur this week on August 17th for PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. After completing this journey, I can confidently say that this is an action/adventure platformer to consider.
Story
While on a quest to find and reunite with his siblings, Greak finds himself in a village that is actively preparing to flee Azur to escape from the Urlag invasion. Refusing to leave before he finds his siblings, Adara and Raydel, Greak sets out to search the nearby lands in hopes of reuniting with them. Along the way, he must aid the villagers to ensure they will be able to escape, and hopefully, he will find his siblings in time for them all to escape together!
Gameplay
Knowing that controlling multiple characters will be somewhat difficult to do, especially if players are just thrown into the game with all of them, the developers gradually introduce each character. To do this, they start out with the main character Greak and allow the player to get the hang of general movement controls and combat. As the game progresses, Adara and Raydel will be introduced with a similar setup. They will have a section of the game to be played with just their character before joining together with the others, giving the players a chance to get used to each character’s control style and abilities before mixing the controls together.
Each character does present their own controls and abilities to get used to though. Getting used to these controls separately definitely makes it more probable to control them all at the same time. Greak has a double-jump, short sword, and a wider range of attack styles but does less damage and can only hold his breath underwater for a few seconds, but can fit in tight crawl spaces. Adara has a single jump but can glide in the air with her arcane magic, uses her arcane magic to do ranged attacks, and can hold her breath for a long time underwater. Raydel has a double-jump as well and uses a sword and shield combo with fewer attack styles but the ability to block, but he is unable to swim so you will have to rely on his grapple to move through some areas.
Once you have two or three of the siblings together, you can have all of them move together by holding down the left trigger button while moving. Doing this means that your movement and jumps will be synced together, however, only the character you are actively controlling will attack when you do. The only way a non-controlled character will attack is when an enemy gets close to where they are. Also, if you want all of the characters to go through a doorway or an exit, you have to get them all to the spot and then interact. If you interact before all characters are there, only the ones at the doorway or exit will go through.
As you kill enemies and find chests throughout the game, you will find gems. These gems can be used at the shop in the village and when you find the stranger. While you will sometimes come across items that are worth selling, you will mostly be purchasing things from the shop. Each shop is a one-inventory system, so don’t expect each character to be able to purchase items from the shop. You have one set of gems to use and one shop to interact with, but you can split up the goods amongst each character as you see fit. I strongly suggest getting the inventory expansion item for both Greak and Adara as soon as possible because that was very helpful.
Each character gets their own inventory slots to use. While these will sometimes hold quest items, they can also be utilized for healing and power-up items. The power-up items are pretty straightforward where you have the one-time-use items that temporarily increase the attack power of a specific sibling. The healing items are pretty interesting though as you can make them yourself by finding fruits and meats out in the wild. While you can only stack up to three of each item per inventory slot, you need three items when you reach a cooking pot to make one healing item.
Using the cooking pot is definitely beneficial to saving space and getting the best health items. You can find items such as berries, nuts, and plums from bushes you pass in the world. While some of these items can be eaten individually to provide one health point, you can cook them together for an item that will provide two or three health points. Three nuts will make a muffin that provides two health points, so I don’t suggest doing that. However, my favorite one to make was using two berries and a nut to make a three health point providing Jam. Play with the different mixtures to find the different things they make, but note that making multiples of the same thing can be stacked to take up fewer spots in the inventory.
Make sure you save often as well when you make progress in this game. If any of your characters die, it counts as a game over and sends you back to your last save point. There are no checkpoints and you can’t just revive a character if another one is still alive. Once any of the three character’s health reaches zero, that’s it. However, you can increase each sibling’s life points by one if you find their secret hero’s den. These dens are set up so that they can only be reached by the sibling they are meant for and there is one for each hero (at least from what I found). These dens will have a challenge to be completed where you have to hit all the floating gems within a time limit and if successful you gain the life point. There didn’t seem to be a limit on attempts, so I definitely suggest completing the challenge once you find it.
Audio and Visual
Using cartoon-style artwork for this game, they made this fantasy world really come to life. Even when you were in a darker area of the world they created, it still had a wonderful and friendly style. Despite having a somewhat dark story behind it, the art style they chose to go with made it feel lighter and allows players to experience the adventure that they created.
While the sound effects provided were all pretty standard, I thought the music style they went with was beautifully fitting to the dark atmosphere and light art style. During the adventuring sections, the music wasn’t distracting and brought out the general atmosphere, but during battles, the intensity of the music met with the gameplay.
What Could Be Better
When you play as Raydel, you are given a short moment to learn his controls like Greak and Adara, but they don’t teach you one thing that would have been helpful to learn before the first boss fight you reach with him. It isn’t until you reach the end game labyrinth that they show you how to put his shield over his head and then back down, which would have not only been useful during the boss fight but helpful to the fact that I did it on accident and couldn’t figure out how to put the shield back down. Most of the tutorials were well placed, so I don’t know why they waited to show this ability.
I did think that the game took a little too long to find Raydel and bring the whole trio together. Overall, the time the game provides to play with all three characters at the same time is far too short given that the three characters aspect is one of the main things that is going to draw people to play the game. Granted, the boss fight and labyrinth section you get to use the trio together during were the most entertaining to get through from the rest of the game, so I just would have liked to have had a bit more with them together.
Conclusion
Greak: Memories of Azur has an entertaining adventure that left me wanting more! I simply didn’t get enough time with the trio. I really hope that they end up making more for this title and either bring out some DLC’s or turn it into a series. The story they created was has a solid foundation to be built off of and the adventure they provided in this initial title was pretty awesome to experience. I definitely suggest considering this game to be your next platformer.
