AER: Memories of Old (Nintendo Switch) Review

No matter how much information is known about a game prior to playing, each one tends to have expectations about it from the very start. AER: Memories of Old surpassed those, resulting in an hour or two of ignoring the main story objectives in favour of flying through the plentiful white, wispy clouds that created a thrill some gain from riding a rollercoaster.

The ease of transforming from a walking human to an avian creature added to the marvel of flying, which is quite indescribable. The world itself is made up of several islands dotted about, each needing wings to reach the destination. The story and puzzles are unravelled naturally, and they are never so hard to solve that one needs to resort to an online search for a walkthrough. Solving them not only moves the story forward, but gives great satisfaction as well.

Those who love ancient history will be giddy with excitement at exploring ruins and examining artefacts, figuring out the mechanics of items to move the story forward. There are few other inhabitants in the world of AER, which adds to the feeling of isolation in the empty world. At times this nears being overwhelming, but there seemed to be an element of hope for the future. The few characters that are met have distinct personalities which contributed to high immersion in the story.

It may take time to get used to the graphic style: faces aren't highly detailed at all. In the beginning this seemed weird. Not being able to see a nose, mouth and eyes was disconcerting, but it wasn't long until all characters felt human, with hopes, dreams and fears all people have, no matter when in time they lived or where. There are a lot of unanswered questions at the beginning which do get solved by the end. There are a few abilities the main character has which are pretty cool, and add detail to the environment, which can be a little creepy with the skeleton like figures appearing from thin air telling the story, but they aren't scary, and are more informative of what happened in the past. There is a bittersweet part to the tale, and it wasn't a game that this reviewer could play for hours and hours in a row - breaks were needed to realign emotions, but that is an individual occurrence, and most gamers will be fine.