Greak: Memories of Azur - early impressions

So far I have put around 2.5 hours into this game and only know about it because I watched a video on "top Metroidvania game few people know about." Normally, these are indie releases and involve small teams of people in their creation. I liked the simplistic look of this game and it appeared to have some innovative gameplay using teams of people in puzzle completion a lot like the Trine series of games. Unlike Trine, this game is only single-player and thus far, that is just fine.

src

The story of Greak is pretty standard: A nation that was at peace for ages suddenly finds itself being overrun by some sort of dark force and it is your job to help the "good guys" to overcome this through various missions and collecting items.

You start out by only having access to a character named Greak, who is looking for his siblings as a primary endeavor, but on your way you have other missions that the townsfolk have for you in their quest to build defenses against the oncoming horde including an airship.

src

Gameplay is really simplistic at first, as you would expect, but get's increasingly complicated as you progress. This is the way that these games should be in my opinion because Metroid-vania or not, I am not a fan of games that are too difficult right from the start. You could easily say that the first 1.5 hours of this game are so easy that you are very unlikely to die at all, even when you get to the first boss.

Things get a bit more complicated once you are controlling two characters at once.

src

Once you are controlling two characters and later in the game (which I have not yet encountered) three, you have a number of options at your disposal including a "come here" command and a "follow me and mimic my button presses" command. Unfortunately, this does exactly what it says it will and mostly this results in your companion doing something really stupid like jumping into a pit that damages them. I think they did a reasonable job with the AI on the character that you are not currently controlling, but since some enemies respawn even in cleared out areas, there are instances where all of a sudden the character that you are not currently controlling is in a fight without you having command over what moves they make. They do put up some level of defense but as you might expect, it isn't very good.

In boss fights this is particularly noticeable as your companion(s) is/are basically cannon fodder if you don't switch to make them do something more sensible like dodge.

src

During boss fights, I think only the best gamers with lightning-quick reflexes are going to be able to make much use out of their companions and for me I mostly just let them stand there and pop off a few shots, connecting on a few of them, while maintaining control of Greak, who has the best attack with no stamina associated with it. I suppose it is still nice to have them along and in most situations you can't simply abandon them and go at it on your own because there will be many situations you encounter that you can't progress due to a series of switches that require 2 or more characters be present.

I DO like the fact that every character has various strengths and weaknesses. Your sister for example, and I don't recall her name but she is wearing purple, can dive underwater for a dramatically longer period of time than Greak can. This is where backtracking and picking up previously unavailable chests happens and for the most part these chests contain currency that you can use to make upgrades to equipment.

src

For the most part, having more than one person in your party makes previously unsolvable puzzles, solvable. Some of these puzzles are rather excessively tedious in my mind and even though they are not high-IQ in nature, I find them a bit frustrating because they take so long to accomplish.

While it is a good game and I am enjoying it, I think that calling this game "Metroid-Vania" is a bit of a stretch since there is no XP and upgrades are very few and very far between. This is just my personal opinion though as I am not sure what the criteria to be considered an MV game actually is.

The art in the game is good, the music is pretty good as well and since it is less than 1.3 GB unpacked, the game will likely run on most PC's even if they are older.

The story involves a bunch of reading and for the most part I skipped a lot of that because I don't actually care about the lore of what is going on in this world.

Up to this point I would say this is a low to mid-level difficulty game that will appeal to most users especially if they enjoy platforming and rather simplistic combat. It is less than $10 on both consoles and PC at the moment and of course there are cracked versions of it available on torrent sites. I am currently playing the latter but I have a rule with these sorts of games especially if they are indie: If I enjoy the game for 3 hours of gameplay I buy the game anyway even though I already have it.