julevi

This game feels cheap, which is very disappointing considering that it´s almost as expensive as the biggest and best executed titles on switch. The mechanics do not feel smooth, and I personally am not a fan of the game´s visuals. There are a lot of different art styles mixed in a strange way, from a beautiful drawn style of the background of the inner café to cheap feeling bright colors outside and bad textures. The story is told in such a short and plain way in the beginning that it felt like a bad joke. It´s literally: Your mom falls asleep, a strange man appears from nowhere, tells you she´s half dragon, gives you a dragon´s egg and tells you to raise the dragon to ask it for help, all within what feels like one minute. Beneath that, the game is pretty repetitive, you´re basically farming ingredients all the time. Moreover, farming means going outside and pressing A on bushes which always look the same, strange flowers and butterflies on them, and they randomly drop carrots or onions or whatever else. Also, your dragon finds ham in little caves. (?) I´m very disappointed because I thought the idea of the game was so cute. Not a big fan of the execution. Glad to at least have bought it on sale.

Alba is a bit short given it´s price, you can easily get through it within 2-3h. BUT - I have to say that I was very positively surprised. The game runs perfectly on the Switch, the island is beautifully designed and executed. My facourite part was striving through high grass searching for ducks as well as striving through the woods, trying to find a special bird by listening to the different bird voices and singing. There is no very deep message, but it is done with love and I really enjoyed playing it.

For me personally, this was my most regretted eShop-Buy in years, considering the proud price. Overall, I do like the principle of the game, the graphics, etc. I did play it on PC and also loved similar strategy games in the past. But what really drove me crazy after a while were the switch mechanics. Everything feels so cumbersome and slow to me. Due to not owning a screen I am playing all of my games in portable mode, which has never been a problem. With this one, the small screen becomes a real pain after a while. Also the loading time for the rounds increases drastically while playing along, so that after a while I felt like I was spending far more time waiting than actually playing the game. Very little fun factor and disappointing. Some games are just not meant to be transferred onto switch.

Given the reasonable price of 20€ this game surprised me a lot. The performance is very well executed and it has a very lovely, relaxing, warm atmosphere that simply makes me happy whenever I feel like needing a little break. I loved the possibility of planting and building freely around the huge own island. The story might be a bit childish, missing depth and has very simple dialogues. Also, it has a pretty long and boring dialogue which you just need to get throught. For 20€ you´ll get more than you could expect. If you´re in need for a relaxing getaway, give this game a chance and you will not regret it.

Best price-performance-ratio I´ve had in a game in years. The performance on the Switch is incomparably smooth and perfectly implemented. The world is beautifully designed and shows so much love for details. The movement on palamute and wirebugs is addictive. Psychologically, I´ve never been as drawn in and more excited / outraged / bloodthirsty on my hunts as in this version. This is the absolute peak of the series for me so far. 10/10 without any hesitation, Capcom excelled with this one.

I have very mixed feelings about the Faconeer which is disappointing because I was excitedly waiting for the release for weeks and so ready to fall in love with it. First of all: It closes a gap in between fantasy and aerial combat that I´ve craved since childhood and am very sure I was not alone with. Also, the game experience feels great when it comes to atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack. Every (!) dialogue and menu item has a high-quality, charismatic speech-output that gives a lot of depth to the story and experience. The controls feel neat and great as long as you´re in the menu. Given that this whole game is a one-man-show by Tomas Sala, I am pretty impressed by the implementation. BUT. As soon as I´m leaving the menu for a mission, I do not get along well with the flying controls. I will say that I´ve played several other aerial combat games before where I did. These feel a bit stiff and unnatural to me. Also, the bird is flying pretty slow unless your using your (very limited) dash bar or using height differences or wind tunnels to gain speed. But let me tell you, height wants to be gained first and wind tunnels are rather rare. So what I´m missing is that craved kind of flying zest, which was the only reason for me to buy this game, because the game only consists of either being in a simple menu or out there flying. There is no possibility to unmount the warbird for some ground exploration etc. that could give extra depth to the flying experience itself. Also I want to add that as admirable as Tomas Sala´s work is, I am not buying art here, I am buying a game and I want to get a certain feeling out of it. Here I was going for speed frenzy and flying thrill, fighting wind and weather for the missions, feeling the strengh and weakness of a single war bird lost over an endless ocean. If one person is not capable to fully translate that feeling technically, he might should have gotten some support on that, because 30€ is a quite a bit for what this game is actually offering. So long story very short: I don´t feel it with the Falconeer, I really wish I did.

This is the cutest game I´ve played in a long time. You feel that the developers put a lot of love into some details, like the movement of the animals and the overall design. Animals do get a bit wobbly sometimes. There´s some bugs and issues with it though, and the screen takes a while to load. I hope they will fix some of them over time. There are many options to individualize the character and many, many very cute animals that you can even mount and ride around with. I can definitely recommend this game for any animal lover in search of a relaxing, peaceful little game that will instantly boost your mood. The price (10€) is very fair for what you´ll get.