The Falconeer took flight on the launch of the XS, and I was pleased to receive a review copy of this $30 launch title. Players are tasked with piloting a warbird in a steampunk-ish setting that has you battling pirates and imperial forces, defending the poor and abused from the ruthless powerful ones if you so choose — players actually have the ability to aid or fight four different factions. Though I have never played Panzer Dragoon, The Falconeer looked similar to that, and also reminded me of 2006’s Lair, a PS3 launch title that I enjoyed. However, I found my time with The Falconeer mostly underwhelming despite some impressive effort by the developer, Tomas Sala.
The game begins with a conjuring faerie-like character talking about strange things that seem to be about the past, present, and future. A lot of voice-acting work went into this game, and I was surprised at the variety of accents and tones, and overall it was good. I did find myself struggling to get all that excited about what was going on, and a lot of information is thrown at you right away. I felt even a little more disconnected from things when I was asked to pick not only my character appearance but what chapter I wanted to start in. You can choose from about six different appearances and origin stories. I appreciate some flexibility, but sometimes being linear, at least at the start of a game, has its strengths. A quick tutorial mission introduces you to the gameplay loop, and then off you go.
My biggest issue with most flying games is how often you have to brake, bank, take a big turn, and have another run at the target. That and trying to keep a target visible and chasing it down enough to get shots on it. Too often I am either too close to a target, so it whizzes by my field of view, or I’m too far away for my shots to make contact by the time they get there. This is probably as much a ‘me’ problem as it is with these games, but I wasn’t surprised I had the same troubles in The Falconeer, despite a reticule that is intended to help players successful lead their targets.
Eventually, some upgrades help this situation out some, but I still had a lot of less-than-fun times of having to circle around, take another attack run, or spend what felt like way too long chasing down other flying foes, be they other falcons, airships, or manta rays. Controls are pretty tight and all, but whether I was on a seek and destroy mission, escort, delivery runs, fighting in air or ships on the water, I had the same frustrations. These mission types repeat, and before long I couldn’t tell if I was airsick, seasick, or both. Combine these struggles — which, again, your mileage may vary — with a lack of interest in the four different factions and the addition of more and more lore, and I became disenchanted with the game.
This is in spite of how great the game looks, runs, and also how it sounds. The presentation package of The Falconeer is quite good, especially on XSX, but that alone couldn’t overcome the struggles I was having with the experience otherwise. I appreciate the effort that went into making this, especially seeing as it was practically done by a one-man studio — but neither the lore or the gameplay really grabbed me and held my interest for long. I could see where more adept and/or forgiving players in this genre would have a better time than I did, though, so if the game sounds interesting to you, it’s worth keeping an eye on, especially given it costs less than half of some of the other launch games.
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