AereA

Review

Aezir was once a beautiful floating Island full of harmonic music for its students. But all that came to a bitter end when two incredible maestros discovered the true power of music and its magic. One of them became consumed by its powers. The outcome of this conflict was a great separation which broke the Island into four segments. Now, we need you and three of your friends to recover eight primordial instruments to restore the harmony in Aezir. Are you up for it, young conductors?

Aerea is an action / RPG game where you take control of one of four apprentice musicians (or up to four in a local co-op game) who has to recover eight primordial instruments.

At the start of the game, you’ll have to choose one of the four characters available to play: Jacques (the melee musician), Wolff or Claude (with long-range musical attacks), or Jules (the mage of the music). Each of these characters have their own abilities and attributes. 

After that, you’ll end up in Aezir Concert Hall where you can interact with other characters: Antonio the cleaner, Edgar the travel agent, Guido the Maestro, Clef the parrot, and more. Within the concert hall, you’ll find the travel counter (which will get you to your next mission or quest), the relic room (where the primordial instruments should be kept) and a shop where you can buy potions, abilities and upgrade your instrumental weapons. Talking with other characters will lead you to your next quests. These quests can be within the Concert Hall (mostly conversation with no action) or to other parts of the island where the action takes place.

Your character will have two gauges to fill in while fighting. The first gauge is for experience points; your character will receive experience point by eliminating an enemy. The second gauge is for instrument experience points. With every kill, your character will receive tuning points. Each time  the second gauge is filled, you’ll receive an orange clef (key) which you can use at the shop to upgrade your attributes (weaponry, armour, critical hit, etc). Within these levels, you’ll see pots, and by destroying them you’ll be earning clefines, which is the currency in the game. Clefines can also drop when you eliminate an enemy but not on every occasion. Those Clefines can be used at the shop to upgrade your skills or buy new items. Check out, and most importantly, destroy the box with the question mark as they may hold interesting items which could be beneficial within the levels.  What I really like in this game is how many different enemies you’ll encounter within the stages; there are some fun-looking bosses to eliminate! There are recipe books to collect within each level, including the concert hall. When you collect them, you’ll get access to specific items in the shop.

I must admit that this game is lacking in challenges; it is very easy to get rid of enemies with one to two attacks and the bosses should have been significantly harder. I find it very easy to move through the levels. Personally, I am not a hardcore fan of this genre. However, If I was a newcomer to RPG, this game would be a great introduction.

Graphically the game is splendid. I really like this type of artwork and the animations are great. The soundtrack is brilliant and the controls seems to be better on the mouse and keyboard rather than the gamepad.