What’s Good About The Falconeer
The Falconeer is probably the most recent example I can think of where I was less interested in a game’s mechanics and more in its story. Because that and everything about the game that isn’t gameplay is fantastic. Except for the game’s audio and music, it was all developed by one person, which now that I think about it is something of a running theme with the last 3 or so entries in this series, but I digress. The game is an ocean world RPG (I see what they did there) where you play as an Empress on her deathbed following an assassination attempt reliving the memories of various falconeers to unravel a web of treason and deceit and to also keep herself alive at the same time.
As far as setups for stories go, it’s a pretty dang inspired one because it gives you a unique framing device to see different perspectives on the same event if need be or a bunch of different looks into the day to day life in the Ursee, the mostly forever oceanic world dotted with small man-made islands and settlements to break up the never-ending barrage of the sea. There are Seven main locations that you interact with: The small town of Dunkle, the ancient fortress of Castelluss, the Imperial Harbour, the mining headquarters of Cleftspire, The secrecy shrouded Shard, The Basilica of the Mancer Order, and one more location I’m not going to give away for spoiler reasons. Each has its NPCs, merchants, and side quests to interact with their own stories and all are interesting in their way and gives a better insight into the way of life in the Ursee and the Imperium.
But now for the gameplay and the difficult part of this: The gameplay in the Falconeer is simply okay. It’s not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just not up to the standard set by the rest of the game and since you spend most of the game playing it, you tend to notice some issues. It’s largely a riff on Panzer Dragoon and Ace Combat, but with Giant Warbirds and in an open-world setting. The base act of simply flying around can feel good when you are traversing the skies and the open seas and interacting with the various settlements, but combat is when things mess up. The main issue comes from the fact that the lock-on doesn’t seem to come with an auto-target feature, which makes it difficult to keep track of enemies with your standard weapons and this leads to a lot of leading with your shots. In most other air combat games, this is fine, but here combat can get so frantic even early on that it can lead to a lot of missed shots and frustrations. You get an AI wingman and some tracking missiles to alleviate the problem, but it persists more than I would like it to.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is the music by Benedict Nichols. It’s this nice mix of ambiance, horns, choirs, and drums to make a sound that conveys the tone and atmosphere of the setting nicely. My favorites being the combat tracks and the opening narration music. They all come together to make this compelling soundtrack that I just can’t stop listening to, which is the highest compliment I can pay to a game. Hell, it’s been my writing music for this piece fittingly enough.
Overall, the Falconeer is something of a first for this series. It’s a game where the gameplay isn’t the main focus of what I think is good about the game, but everything else is so much greater than the sum of its parts that I can’t fault it. If you are looking for a game with an interesting story and setting, I highly recommend it.
