The Best Aery by a Country Mile
If you are curious about what peak Aery might be, play Aery – The King’s Messenger. I’m not sure the Aery series will be able to top this without fundamentally changing how things are done. It minimises everything wrong with the franchise, and maximizes what is good.
Story has always been an Achilles’ Heel. The story in Aery games is often mistranslated or nutrient-free, and sometimes both. It’s possible to play an Aery game for a couple of hours yet nothing of note happens. Level after level repeats the same hackneyed journey.
For Once, we’re not Wincing as the Story is Told
Aery – The King’s Messenger improves things by keeping it simple. The writing is fine, concise and in comprehensible English. It tells a simple tale of a scout and his falcon, discovering barbarians on a kingdom’s border and then racing home to relay the tale. Things happen, the plot develops, and the prose doesn’t get in the way of the flying sim stuff. It’s inoffensive when virtually every other Aery has been the opposite.
The soundtrack is completely new. Aery has leaned on the same score for, I kid you not, a couple of dozen games now. I heard one of the Aery musical pieces in another game recently and had a Pavlovian reaction: I expected to start flying about. But Aery – The King’s Messenger offers something new, and it’s amazing how much of a reaction it had on us. We paid attention and appreciated the flying more.
The levels, the backdrops you soar round, are all familiar. Aery – The King’s Messenger doesn’t suddenly find some levels down the back of the sofa. But it takes a different approach to them. Each level is a journey, a long, ten-minute glide through a space. There’s no doubling back on itself, no criss-crossing over the same town. The levels are all cross-country flights and Aery – The King’s Messenger is generous about how much ground it covers. The levels are two, maybe three times as big as the average Aery level, and it feels expansive as a result.
Twisting, Turning Through the Aether
I’m also a big fan of how Aery – The King’s Messenger is channeling its inner Millennium Falcon and making tight turns through tunnels and narrow causeways. The series has always stopped short of challenging, tight sections, when I’ve always thought that it had room to ask more of the player. And the result is that there are more claustrophobic tunnels and valley sections that make the flying stuff more varied.
Bugs have always been an albatross. Certainly in the early years of the franchise, Aery has traditionally been spotty on launch. Visual bugs, pop-in, invisible walls and broken achievements were all mainstays of the series, but Aery – The King’s Messenger is almost completely free of any problems. There’s the odd bit of pop-in, and some weird bleaching in the lighting of some levels, but it’s otherwise smooth sailing.
None of this sounds revolutionary, or even new to the franchise, but it amazes me that none of them have coincided in the same Aery game. We’ve always had this gripe with EpiXR Games, because we know they are very capable of producing a streamlined iteration of an Aery, but they never seemed bothered about making it happen. We assumed they were too busy churning out game after game.
Everything that is wrong with Aery – The King’s Messenger is baked into the franchise’s identity. The only way an Aery could improve is to rebuild everything from scratch.
You Say You Want a Revolution
The art is a big one. The Aery series is looking its age. There’s a certain ironic appeal to skyscraper-sized polygons moving slowly towards your bird, but Aery – The King’s Messenger is looking a bit last-century nowadays.
Levels are regurgitated with every release, which is a problem that comes from the same source as the art: the Aery team simply don’t have the time or resources to make new areas with each game. So, we get the same levels on view every time.
The gameplay has barely changed in the past ten years. Play Aery – The King’s Messenger and the first Aery games side-by-side and you’ll notice that the feathers are more visible, there are more feathers, and they appear sequentially rather than all at once. But that’s it. There are dozens of games, yet the fundamental controls, camera and objectives are all the same. You could argue that the formula has been remixed in EpiXR games like Murder Diaries, but I can’t help feeling that Aery deserves some of that love.
The Best Aery Yet?
With Aery – The King’s Messenger, I can’t help feeling that the hawk has hit its head on the ceiling of what an Aery can achieve. There’s nowhere to go after this. It spruces the story, music and sense of adventure, which have all let it down in recent years. Even the bugs are gone.
For Aery to develop now, it needs a new direction. Something needs to give in the art or gameplay. I’d love to see EpiXR Games slow the franchise down and attempt that rejuvenation, but the cynical side of me thinks they either can’t or don’t want to.
For now, though, EpiXR Games deserve smaller, but still notable laurels. Aery – The King’s Messenger soars past the craters where other Aery games have crashed. It’s about as flawless as an Aery can be.
Important Links
Explore The Skies (Again) In Aery – The King’s Messenger – https://www.thexboxhub.com/explore-the-skies-in-aery-the-kings-messenger/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/aery-the-kings-messenger/9PPMB8Q0TLBJ/0010
