You’ll inevitably end up making use of this feature relatively often, but whether you do it every single time is less of a certainty. Thankfully, there’s an automatic fast travel mechanic that you can choose to engage with upon embarking on lengthier journeys.
This, naturally, means that there’s a lot of empty space to traverse between missions. While most of the world is dominated by uninhabitable waters, these factions take control of cities built upon the few rocky outcroppings emerging above the ocean.
There’s the Northern Imperium, the greatest single power of The Great Ursee the Mancer Order, a powerful tech-cult who hoard knowledge and harbour powerful secrets Freebooter Rebels, disillusioned citizens who seek revenge on the powers that banished them to live in underground caverns and independent freehouses, smaller settlements which exist tangled in the web of conflict between larger powers. It’s a world steeped in mythology, mystery and endless conflict between its various disparate factions and settlements. Still, this game doesn’t seem to want anyone to focus on its gameplay: more than anything, The Falconeer exists to tell a story, one of a semi-surreal waterlogged world known as The Great Ursee. When every mission is a combat encounter and every combat encounter plays out the same way, it can begin to get stale. Furthermore, tactical choices don’t extend much beyond a single “attack” and “dodge” move. Canons feel near-useless at the start and only begin to feel slightly less so in the games closing hours (and even then, they don’t feel genuinely powerful). While this isn’t inherently negative, and there are a variety of enemy types thrown into the mix to liven things up, these enemies mainly just offer aesthetic and HP variations the core combat never meaningfully develops beyond the game’s opening minutes. Every mission you’re assigned over the course of The Falconeer’s 10 to 15-hour campaign involves aerial combat-dogfighting-atop your warbird. Of course, this does lead into the one downside of The Falconeer, the one thing that doesn’t quite fly as high as everything else: the combat.
#THE FALCONEER REVIEWS UPGRADE#
There’s even an upgrade system, which lets players spend their money-earned on missions-on various upgrades, combat boosts, ammo types and more powerful canons.
#THE FALCONEER REVIEWS FULL#
The game’s writing is stellar, using relatively brief dialogue sections to bring a completely new fictional world to life, one full of combat, treachery and genuinely interesting ideological conflicts. Movement is polished: gliding across the aquatic open world is a joy with tight flying controls and a satisfying mechanic which sees you charging up a boost meter by flying downwards before soaring high with a newfound thrust of speed. Almost nowhere is it apparent that The Falconeer was the product of one pair of hands hammering away at a single keyboard. Seriously, the fact that this was a solo project puts us all (or at least my lazy arse) to shame. Struggling to relate? Then you’ve clearly yet to play The Falconeer, the first solo project of developer Tomas Sala. The conflicts and political turmoil that dominate the thoughts and dictate every action of the seafaring residents below are but distant whispers among the perfect silence of the clouds. The waves may be crashing and maelstroms circling in the waters below, great steam engines may be chugging away towards their destinations as sea winds howl with a terrifying ferociousness, but none of that can reach you up there up in the sky, everything’s just fine. There’s a sense of serenity that sets in when you’re soaring high, far above the ocean atop a magnificent giant falcon. Reviews // 18th Dec 2020 - 2 years ago // By Jamie Davies The Falconeer Review
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