The Falconeer Review – A FLYING ADVENTURE THAT NEVER REALLY TAKES OFF!
Thrust into various factions in the world of The Falconeer, it is your responsibility to ensure that the enemy doesn’t defeat your faction. Aaaand that is pretty much it! The premise revolves around a conflict between various factions. But unlike many other titles, it lets you experience this conflict from the different sides. Each chapter allows you to choose which faction you wish to align with. You are then tasked with a series of objectives to complete for them.
The problem here is that the story is delivered in quite a dry fashion. Most dialogue just ends up being long winded exposition dumps. It is easy to get lost when trying to follow the plot. It doesn’t help that most of the mission directions also follow along the lines of “Go to this fortress, but be careful there are enemies on the way”. The voice acting in this game is also quite over-the-top and can start becoming a little grating after a while… here’s looking at you Freeman Serson
The Falconeer’s Gameplay Mechanics
The Falconeer is a simple aerial combat game. And I do mean simple! The objectives here boil down to “fly here, fly back, fly there, fly back”. It feels as though the objectives are just a list of fetch quests, with how much you go back and forth from base. Because of all this, the gameplay should be amazing to make up for it right? Well, no… Now don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is good and the flying mechanics feel quite responsive. However, the lack of variety in the game mechanics leads to a very repetitive experience.
The combat mechanics also feel decent! It allows you to quickly manoeuvre around in an attempt to get the upper hand on your enemies. There is also an interesting range of opponents to come up against. My personal favourite was facing off against what I could only describe as a flying stingray. This definitely caught my attention for a moment! However, then The Falconeer returned to its rinse and repeat gameplay, and with that, my intrigue was gone. This game really feels more like it was an extended tech demo, rather than a full game!
The Falconeer’s World Design
Opting for a more simplistic, cell shaded approach, The Falconeer has some gorgeous sights to behold as you soar across the sky! Ocean based chasms, with half destroyed cities immersed in its waves is truly one of the most fascinating designs in this title. Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the rest of this world! As most of what you’ll see, is in fact, a blue sky and the ocean. Though it is worth mentioning that this title does feature some good water physics and we all love some good water physics!
It may initially be exciting to set off on an adventure into the clouds, but when you start to see the same, unvarying aesthetic, it becomes quite monotonous. The reality that 90% of your game time will be spent staring at the unchanging ocean can be quite off putting! And honestly, it is hard to keep focused on this game because of that.
Decision
Whilst The Falconeer is not a “bad” game by any means, it just does not provide enough variety to be captivating! You may enjoy it for an hour or two, but it won’t be long before you fall into that repetitive rut that makes this title become more of a chore, than an enjoyable experience. It’s empty world and rudimentary mechanics will leave you feeling very dissatisfied!
By Samuel Incze
Playable
The Falconeer is initially a fun experience. But with its lack of variety and uninspired story, it fails to keep us intrigued. There are definitely some cool moments here, but these dissolve quickly in the monotony of the generic and uninspired gameplay.
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