Airheart: Tales of Broken Wings

“GREAT - Airheart delivers a reasonably balanced roguelike experience with a dieselpunk art style that looks great on the Nintendo Switch. Gameplay comes in the form of twin-stick arcade shooting & collecting, coupled with a trial & error crafting system that I found to be a bit annoying, but not enough to detract from the overall game. If you’re in the market for a thematically different roguelike, this game has a nicely structured game loop that delivers hours upon hours of fun.”

“Airheart: Tales of Broken Wings is a great looking and fun PlayStation 4 game with an interesting premise and setting that will certainly grab your attention. The roguelike with permadeath elements are certainly not for everyone, but if you give this game a chance, I'm sure you'll find a game with a solid gameplay loop that can become very addictive. The game does not have a full trophy list with a Platinum, but it does have one trophy in particular that asks that you craft every weapon in the game, so I'm sure you'll be very busy working on that one for a while!”

“Stiff controls & Sub-par crafting spoil the fun.”

“Airheart is a nice looking that sounds amazing, but it's riddled with issues that may be too damaging for some. You can't unlock all achievements in the game. You may not the able to unlock your plane parts, every so often enemies are bugged and you cannot complete levels. It's nice, but you can't expect too much.”

“Simply put, the core experience of Airheart: Tales of Broken Wings is unconventional and addictive.”

“All of these elements coalesce into something unexpectedly coherent and interesting, and while there are some minor performance issues to contend with on the Switch, Airheart‘s gameplay loop and general oddness make it a good fit for the platform.”

“An enjoyable rogue-lite twin-stick shooter.”

“A game that has good ideas and will make us enjoy thanks to the beauty of its scenery and its great soundtrack. Sadly, the game seems repetitive and the excessive time we'll have to spend collecting makes the magic of the title in other facets disappear.”

“There's certainly some roguelike fun to be had in Airheart – Tales of Broken Wings, especially for fans of twin-stick shooters and classic arcade action. Unfortunately, the elements outside of skyfishing and dogfighting are more of an interference than an enhancement, and they may put you off this game before you're able to get to the good stuff.”

“Airheart - Tales of Broken Wings is an intense twin-stick shooter that at times will have you on the edge of your seat. However, Airheart is let down by the vast amount of grinding it takes to reach its endgame, and with minimal story elements peppered throughout, it's hard to see a lot of players following through right to the very end.”

“Overall, Airheart – Tales of Broken Wings is a solid time. A decent enough story with some fantastic world-building, fun progression via crafting, and some really intense quick decisions to be made, make this far more than just ‘falling with style.’”

“Aesthetically, the skies above Granaria are sublime. The graphics are beautiful, the music is superb, and the incredibly deep ecology of the flyfish that realistically react to overfishing patterns is so extensively detailed that I have no choice but to be impressed. However, repeating the same sections over and over to grind out money while trying to make progress with a crafting system that is so poorly explained made me dread every minute I spent with the game. There's a solid foundation for gameplay once you're in the skies chasing fish and fighting pirates, but every minute that you're no”

“Airheart presents an interesting idea with hints of brilliance, but fails to deliver a game with staying power. Whilst the upgrade system is satisfying, it's let down by repetitive gameplay and UI issues that get in the way even when playing with the endearing crafting system.”

“For a title with such a strong concept, Airheart does shockingly little with its premise.”

“Overall, Airheart - Tales of Broken Wings is a fun and challenging roguelike twin stick shooter that incorporates resource management and crafting. Even with the short falls of some of the UI issues and crafting lacking much direction, the game is fun to play. You may find yourself frustrated with the difficulty that quickly ramps up, but each run is short enough that it doesn’t become overly tiresome. Airheart is a perfect fit on the Nintendo Switch, allowing you to pick the game up for short bursts of time to complete a resource run.”

“Airheart takes a unique look on a roguelike game and handles unlike other twin-stick shooters. Generic storyline interjections aside the game crafts a nice looking world and keeps the challenge varied. I would recommend this for fans of the roguelike genre.”