AER - Memories of Old is a game about freedom. The game sets you loose in a world of floating islands and mysterious architecture with an astoundingly fun flight mechanic that lets you soar through the sky like you've always dreamed.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first fifteen minutes in this game; and then I reached the first dungeon.

As soon as you enter any of the three "Zelda Style" dungeons in AER you are immediately stripped of your ability to take off into the skies. You are instead forced to walk slowly through cramped and repetitive caves following glowing lights and solving uninspired simple puzzles.

On the surface these dungeons might not have needed to be such downers, serving as an important contrast to the open skies of the overworld and giving weight to the moments you're finally able to let loose. By nature of the design of the game, however, these places take up the significant majority of the player's time. In the four hours I played AER I was in dungeons for nearly three.

The developers of this game were on to a winning formula and they knew it, every step of the way even down to the name this title is marketed as being a game about flight and the sky. So why did I come away from this game feeling like I'd spent the evening underground?

Instead of creating interesting worlds and challenges around the central mechanic the developers opted for the lazy approach: copy-pasting the same basic dungeon formula we've seen a hundred times over with no unique twists to set them apart from the rest. The single good mechanic in the game relegated to being nothing but a method of travel between cages.

I am playing an exploration game, it is an exploration game where it's flying is it's MAIN feature. And it removes the one aspect of fun from the game as soon as you enter a cave, the main feature in the game is that you can fly like a bird, you enter the cave, it is gone, and in it's 'stead is a simple puzzle that is just simple enough that you might stuck on it due to lack of immediately getting it. Sometimes you need to remember you can take out the lantern and use it, and sometimes you do not need to take out the lantern at all to interact with things, it is completely selective. This shouldn't be a major complaint but after a while it stops being a nitpick and a major annoying feature of the game, it feels like an extra input for no reason, why not just keep the lantern out at all times? Why make it two button presses to activate something?

For the most part it is just following a shinning light on the map, doing the thing, and then going to the next shinning point followed by an unskippable 10 second long cutscene, of them probably raising their fist to do something. It really bugs me that the main feature of the game is constantly being taken away from you and given back due to cave sections, I know I am not exactly the demographic of this type of exploration game but really it is the one mechanic the game has to offer and it is really well done, it is just a pity that it forgets that is REALLY why people are playing the game for.

The on foot segments are extremely boring, offer subpar poetry, and worst of all, after activating EACH AND EVERYTHING, it pauses the game completely to show what you have done, in adventure games it is sometimes common to show this to point where you should go next, but you do not need to do it every single time, in fact, most of the time the game doesn't give you much direction at all spare for a piece of dialog you cannot re-read, could you imagine if in Zelda, every time you get an item, it zooms in on the door, rather than the one time it zooms it and plays a jingle once.

There is a complete dissonance in what the game's best feature is, and what it goes on to do half of the time, the game best feature is the fast-paced flying mechanics, the game's worst feature is EVERYTHING ELSE that is extremely slow in comparison. And it is not like these on-foot segments have anything special to show, they're exceptionally shallow (unless you really REALLY like run of the mil apocalyptic logs) and just stop again: THE MAIN FEATURE. It is even worse when the on-foot segments have nothing to offer than just extremely boring platforming with no puzzles at all, just go somewhere, all this does is make the boring segments longer.

And the game is 2 hours long, I bet that HALF of that time is dedicated to taking away the control from the player to zoom in on something or BAD ON-FOOT SEGMENTS.

Played on the Nintendo Switch

This game takes place in a fragmented world, where the survivors of the event that caused this fragmentation (the Great Divide) now live. You play as Auk, one of the people who can shift into a bird. You explore the floating islands where you find pieces of history to put together the story, while also searching for the Guardians. With their help, you will be able to encounter the sinister force that is taking over the world.

The mechanics are pretty simple, but very solid. The main feature of this game is turning into a bird, which will be your main way to explore the fragmented world. It works beautifully as you fly over small and big floating islands. When you land on any island then you can use your lantern in order to see ghosts of the past and piece together the story. You will also need to use this lamp in order to complete puzzles inside temples. A little bit of platforming will take part in the exploration of temples too.

The art and looks of the game are gorgeous. My favorite part were the baby sheep who follow you with little hearts coming from them. That was very sweet. The music compliments the ambiance very well, although maybe it could have done with a bit more sound in some places.

While this game looks, sounds, and performs great, it is just empty. There is not much to do. I would fly by multiple islands with nothing on them....nothing. This got very boring fast. The lack of sound in some places made it even more empty. The characters did not make enough impact to even remember them. I had no connection to this world, and I didn't care for it. All looks, and no substance.

And don't get me started on the ending. Of course, I won't discuss that here, but let me at least tell you that there is no clear ending... more like a cliff hanger. Sigh...If you have insomnia, play this game. It took me forever to finish, because I would fall asleep after 5 minutes of playing.