Greak: Memories of Azur [Xbox]
Navegante Entertainment’s Greak: Memories of Azur is a single player action-adventure platformer that sees you take on the role of three siblings: Greak, Adara and Raydel as they journey across the land of Azur. You start the story as Greak, gaining your siblings as companions on your quest as you progress - finding them along the way. The Urlags have been invading, and the Courine family must escape from their homeland of Azur by crafting an Airship, piece by piece, to take them away to safety.
Each of the three characters has their own individual abilities, which you’ll need to make clever use of in order to complete puzzles and successfully navigate the world. Greak is the smallest and fastest of the three, allowing him to squeeze through small spaces and easily dodge enemy attacks, whilst wielding a sword as well as a crossbow to take down his foes. Adara, the sister, is a magic-wielder who is great for some range. She has a slight levitation ability to allow her to jump further distances, as well as being able to hold her breath for longer to dive deeper in water to explore. Lastly, we’ve got Raydel - the big brother of the Courine family - who utilises a sword and shield for much higher damage, is able to withstand more and he’s got a pretty useful grappling hook.
The controls are great, and it feels good to switch between each of the characters on the fly, making use of their abilities when needed. You can combine their attacks in battle, allowing all of them to attack enemies and bosses at once for extra damage. Similarly, as you travel the world you can hold the left trigger to have the siblings run together, or you can take control of one at a time, calling to the others when required. Sometimes you will find that the other siblings can get in the way a little bit, but as long as you manage the three of them well - you’ll do just fine. It adds depth and strategy to each boss battle, as using multiple siblings allows you to deal more damage, but you’re also leaving yourself far more open to risk with enemy attacks potentially wiping out any of your characters resulting in a game over (and a return to the last save).
The combat is straightforward for the most part, only beginning to put up a bit of a challenge during boss fights; but even during those, we found it to not be too difficult. The bit that will get you though, is the lack of an autosave. Instead, you must rely on the few save points throughout the world (and there’s an achievement for using these less than five times!) - so you’ll need to keep an eye on your health as you go, and make use of the save points prior to taking on bosses as this is when you’re most at risk. Learning and utilising the skills of each sibling as you add them to your team is important as you’ll often come across things that require specific abilities - though sadly the game ends not long after finding and recruiting Raydel, the oldest of the siblings.
Done in an absolutely stunning hand-drawn style, Greak: Memories of Azur is one of the most gorgeous looking games we’ve played in a while. It starts with a phenomenal opening cinematic, followed by a inked-style introduction to the story, before leading in to the main game which looks just as well-detailed and interesting as the cinematic. Character designs are striking, with simple, mouthless faces for the siblings, and menacing looks for the Urlag enemies; and the world is vast and varied, with different environments that are equally stunning all throughout your journey. The sound design is fantastic, with plenty of environmental sounds and an enchanting soundtrack as you explore the vast land of Azur that is reminiscent of many other fantasy-themed worlds.
Priced at £15.99 on the Xbox Store, but currently at a discounted price of £9.59 for a limited time, Greak: Memories of Azur is a lot of fun, offering around 6-8 hours of playtime. There are plenty of dialogue options with the NPCs you’ll meet along the way, with different interactions depending on which sibling they speak to. There’s also collectible relics throughout the world, with some increasing health points (a crucially needed resource). There are a few achievements that will require multiple runs; including one to complete the game in under 3 hours, so you’ll need to be quick and avoid all of the optional stuff! I do wish there was maybe an option to play this with two or three players as well as single-player, although they would obviously only be able to be ‘tagged in’ at the relevant points in the story, but as is - the characters each have enough difference in their abilities and being able to run around independently of each other that it could work, albeit for a limited portion of the story. If you like action-adventure platformers with gorgeous artwork, and you’re looking for a new game to pass the time with - then you might want to give this a try.
In the end, we decided to give Greak: Memories of Azur the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.
Have you played Greak: Memories of Azur yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Team17 for the Greak: Memories of Azur Xbox review code!
