14 DAY TRIAL // 
Greak: Memories of Azur looks and feels like a heroic bedtime story. It looks magical and makes you fell in love with its characters and feel intensely every success and even more so every failure. Yet, it also makes you feel like part of the discovery expedition of the developers. Being their first project, despite some memorable moments, the game exhibits their lack of experience.
The first thing the captures you in Greak: Memories of Azur is the hand drawn artistic style. The world and the characters are the embodiment of a magic world, where the good struggles against the evil, where beauty tries to reconquer the destroyed and the damaged. There is an instant attraction to the Courines race that inhabits this harsh world. The constant conflict with the Urlag left its visible mark, but underneath the scars the there is hope.
And the most eloquent proof is our hero, Greak. Being small, lacking experience and not the most powerful Courines he definitely is the most determined. He will not rest and face any adversities just to find his other two siblings: Adara and Raydel. Reunited, the trio will brave the challenges of this puzzle platformer and discover more and more from the world of Azur.
Starting with Greak, your options are quite limited, since all three heroes have different abilities that you will need to combine in order to progress through the world and access new regions. Being the smallest, Greak is the most agile and can fit into small spaces. Adara has magical powers that allow her to levitate and attack from a safe distance, while Raydel the oldest is equipped not just with a shield, but also with a hook he can use to grab items or enemies. Finding both his siblings grants access to previously locked areas, where you can find new treasures.
Collaboration is key even beyond their different abilities. For example, different mechanisms like the elevators need two persons to operate them. Also combat becomes much fairer when you have to face the smaller or bigger opponents as a team. As a result, we can say that Greak: Memories of Azur is a single player co-op experience, and maybe a missed opportunity. The gameplay would have been terribly fun if you could have involved two other friends in the adventure.
Especially when it comes down to the control scheme. Individually the siblings are easy to control and do exactly what you order them. But when you team them up, even the most basic actions become really frustrating. Making your siblings follow you is not the most complicated thing and works just fine if you have to traverse flat terrain. But if you encounter jumping and dashing, the control scheme shows its severe limitations. Although your siblings try to imitate your moves, the outcome is far from ideal.
Not moving in sync, the other two characters tend to get stuck in objects or fall short from a ledge. More often than not you are better off moving them individually through the platforming sections. The same can be said also when it comes to combat. Although your attack capabilities increase, the control scheme makes you more vulnerable. For example, Adara instead of staying back to shoot magic missile, will follow you to the front line to shoot from there. If you switch control to her and make the Greak and Raydel follow you, they will not go ahead to take the heat but hang back and do nothing while their sister launches the magic spheres.
If any of the siblings falls, it’s game over. Since there is not autosave, and you can save manually only at some scarcely placed points, this leads to a lot of frustrations. The nerves are also amplified by the randomness of the creatures spawning and attacking patterns, and also by the fact that you have no map of the levels. You have a map that shows on overview of the regions, but not their actual structure.
While exploring you will encounter also random spawns. You can visit an area, clean it up, reach its limit and on your way back you may or may not encounter some new opposition. All in all, you can finish the game in six to seven hours, including the side quests you will encounter. This amount of time takes into account the fact that often the game fails to take into account that you might not have found one sibling or the other, and the suggested route may not be usable without their abilities.
In these cases, you will have to take a detour and discover the game world without too may clues. Beyond the haphazard combat situations, the control that requires a certain precision and pace, the difficulty level is increased by the extremely limited inventory. This will often force you to choose between quest items and the ever so precious healing items. And more often than not you will not have enough room for the loot you could sell at the scarcely met merchants.
The Good
- Beautiful and heart-warming visual style
- Challenging and engaging exploration
- An interesting tale
The Bad
- The coop control system is catastrophic
- Lack of a detailed map
- The difficulty is all over the place
Conclusion
If you can get past that, you will find a charming game, that visually is a masterpiece. The puzzles and platforming elements may not be revolutionary, but they work well enough. The atmosphere of the game is undeniable, but it is affected by the combat that often feels unbalanced. If it would have given the option for couch or online co-op Greak: Memories of Azur would have been a true gem.
Review code provided by the publisher.
