I’ve always been a fan of platformer games, even if I play them with two left thumbs. They remind me of the earlier days of gaming and make me feel like I’m playing at the arcade again. The idea behind it is pretty simple; traverse a few platforms, solve a few puzzles, and beat a few baddies; it’s an age-old recipe. So, to make it stand out from the crowd, you need to throw in something special.
Greak: Memories of Azur throws in quite a bunch; beautifully hand-drawn artwork, a live orchestra soundtrack and a little twist on classic platformer gameplay.
Under attack from the Urlags, you take control of Greak, the smallest brother of three Courines. Your goal: to seek out your siblings all while gathering parts to build an airship and escape the lands of Azur.
As you venture through challenging puzzles and fast-paced combat, your party slowly grows as you find your siblings, Adara and Raydel. With their own unique abilities, each character helps you explore further into the world to gather what you need before fleeing from the Urlags.
The game’s puzzles are designed to force you to use each character to move forward, and the boss battles can be either easier or harder depending on how you utilize each character and their abilities in the fray.
There’s quite a bit of difficulty when it comes to managing your characters in real-time; I only died twenty or so times, forgetting to move my other character out of the way when I needed to. The puzzles also required me to sit up from the couch and assume the try-hard position. It was good to be challenged, and I think a game this short needs to have a bit of difficulty where you can easily get a hand cramp trying to hit the right buttons.
The game offers a good mix of fighting and puzzles until the end, well, just before the end. After spending a couple of hours on what I knew was the last puzzle of the game, I expected one last, epic boss battle before just barely making it to the airship alive, but it never came; sure, there were some guys to kill on the way out, but nothing I hadn’t faced before and, for me, it felt like the game just, kind-of, didn’t end.
Even still, there’s a lot that Greak gets right. The artwork is absolutely stunning, and there are small details that change ever so slightly as the game progresses. The sound changes when you dive underwater, and the loading logo is different depending on who’s in your party. The combat is fluid, and the puzzles get the brain juices flowing. It’s the little things that make the game more enjoyable, and, overall, that’s what Greak is; enjoyable.
You can grab Greak: Memories of Azur for your Nintedo Switch or get it on Steam.