Great: Memories of Azur is an action-platform video game developed by Navegante Entertainment and published by Team17.
The Greak in the title is none other than the protagonist, or rather one of the protagonists of the story we're going to explore in this title, three brothers who will have to reunite before they can save the kingdom of Azur.
Kingdom that is the victim of a plague, an assault of monsters that have invaded the kingdom and are corrupting it, leading to the death of the ecosystem and putting its inhabitants in grave danger.
A tribute to his predecessors
At a glance Greak can only remember one of the masterpieces that preceded it and I'm talking about Hollow Knight. The two titles do not have in common only the type of game, but the graphic style of Greak, with his own hand-made animations very close to that of the Team Cherry title.
The game world of Greak consists of various settings divided by way of levels that revolve around a central hub where we can make purchases to upgrade our equipment and where all the main NPCs are located that will allow the story to continue, indicating new areas to explore to recover this or that material. Materials that will be used by the master carpenter of the village to be able to complete his airship and bring the inhabitants to safety, away from the plague of the kingdom.
But what sets Greak apart from any other title in the genre? Its peculiar mechanics of course.
A poorly oiled mechanism
The whole, or nearly all, exploration of the kingdom of Azur is based on solving simple puzzles and puzzles mixed with platforming sections and rare boss fights.
The puzzles we are going to encounter will be solved by using multiple characters, and this is where the title shines and falls out at the same time. These puzzles will never be too complicated and an analysis of a few seconds will be enough to guess the solution. Very interesting a couple of "bonus" rooms in which time trials that really made me sweat will have to be solved, to get the extra power-ups they contained.
But it is when the time comes to show off his protagonists, the three characters that we are going to interpret that Greak begins to be a little less convincing how it has appeared so far.
The three guys we're going to play are Greak, a young explorer, Adara a young oracle and Raydel a brave and expert knight.
Each of them will have peculiar abilities, for example Greak can perform a double jump, use a sword and a crossbow and slip into tight spaces, Adara can levitate in mid-air, shoot magic bullets and is able to move quickly under water, finally Raydel is equipped not only with a mighty sword but also with a large shield with which he can protect his brothers from traps and bullets and with a robbery with which he can move quickly or shorten the distance with the enemy.
As I moved through the various areas with these three characters I couldn't help but notice a similarity with Trine, the Frozenbyte tetralogy, the first chapter of which came out over 10 years ago. And it is after realizing this parallel that Greak's main flaw shows up. In this title the three characters move freely on the game map and are controlled simultaneously; by pressing LT the characters carry out the same commands and by releasing the button it is possible to move each of the three brothers individually. The platforming phases, however, are almost impossible to overcome with precision by moving all the characters simultaneously, since each has a different jump animation, and will therefore be overcome by moving each brother individually, resulting in having to repeat three times every jump, every swing on the rope and every underwater section (which in Raydel's case will have to be completely bypassed as he cannot swim due to the heavy armor).
This procedure goes to drastically break pacing of the title that alternates excited moments with extremely slow and cumbersome passages simply to perform one or two jumps (a problem that was not present in Trine since the characters alternated cyclically taking the place of each other).
During the exploration phases it will not be rare situations in which one of the brothers left behind during the resolution of a puzzle is attacked by an enemy, resulting in his death and the consequent game over.
The opposite situation occurs when all three boys are controlled because at the press of a button three simultaneous attacks will be carried out with consequent instant death of almost every enemy.
An intermediate situation finally occurs during the bosses, some will be incredibly easy to deal with the whole trio, who will go and destroy them in a matter of seconds, while others will be much easier if faced individually, entering the boss room with one only of the characters and leaving the others behind, in a long fight back and forth.
Great: Memories of Azur it's an incredibly ambitious title, certainly well done, with a delightful art style, but whose mechanics that center the experience have a number of others and lows that heavily affect the experience.
A title that is certainly worth playing for lovers of the genre, but from which those who do not like the combination of platforms and puzzles must absolutely stay away.
