A Pretty Mix of Pixels That Form a Below Average RPG
Pixel platformer RPGs are popular in the eastern market, and Wings of Endless tries to bring this style to a western audience. This is an adventure game where you control three protagonists to complete a quest. If you think that sounds a bit generic, it is – but the fun twist is supposed to lie within the three playable characters.
Your goal as the starting character Hariku is to find a talking owl that’s hidden within an ominous castle and deliver him to the ‘Tower of Mages,’ creating allies along the way. The owl is found within the first mission and the map then opens up and the real game begins – adventure through many different biomes, dungeons and towns, slaying anything that stands in your way.
The visuals will hook you in at first, being a stunning display of 2D pixel art. Then the question becomes: can the rest of the game keep up?
Visuals – The Good Part
It became clear quite early on that the only thing to elevate Wings of Endless above the mass of generic RPGs available right now would be its visuals. Pixel art is on point whilst also being animated beautifully – swinging trees are complemented by falling leaves and flowing grass, well-animated and well-designed character sprites are as abundant as they are adorable. A great indicator to good visual polish is everything that should move, does move. Whether it’s idle animations for characters, waterfalls falling, or fire flickering, environments are always alive.
Great polish is often a product of a developer’s love. Their work will mirror their effort like any other art form, resulting in great attention to detail. One example of this can be found within the weapon sprite system. Each new weapon you find on your adventure will have its own unique sprite. When nothing except the damage numbers change, it’s so easy and common for developers to reuse the existing weapon sprite and just change the numbers and icon – so I really appreciated the developers going above and beyond here.
Weighty Combat With Poor Execution
Combat is introduced to Wings of Endless neatly, letting the player get used to basic mechanics, then building upon them until finally giving you a boss fight that has you using all you have learnt. It’s really nicely weaved into both the gameplay and set piece.
Combat feels weighted and impactful, a good first impression, but far too quickly becomes unapologetically repetitive, monotonous, and clunky. Here is when questionable decisions by the developers start to rear their head. Evident as early as the first two enemies, is the fact that almost all enemy attacks can be dodged using a hit and run strategy. This tactic annoyingly is always favoured, as mistiming a dodge ever so slightly can mean the enemy flips around in the 2D space to face and pummel you lightning fast. Enemy AI punishes you for interacting with combat the way the developers intended, and rewards you for taking the lazy way out.
These issues aren’t helped when new playable characters are introduced, a mechanic that seems tailor-made to sort out issues of combat variety. Each character has only one damaging move, with the rest being movement or a gimmick ability. The first character swings a hammer, the second tosses daggers horizontally, and the third is slightly better with a little variance in attacks but still defaults to the same combat options.
The main character Hariku uses a hammer that is in desperate need of some retooling; most importantly it needs more reach. As the self-proclaimed ‘best bounty hunter’ I wanted to feel like my massive hammer was as powerful and large as it looked, but instead I felt like a kid with a short stick.
Platforming – The Seeds For Bigger Issues
Whether you are in villages, the wild, or mid boss fight, there is a lot of platforming in Wings of Endless, meaning it’s a key area they needed to get right. Starting with the basics, jumping for all characters is incredibly stiff, with the small benefit of being able to vary jump height. Most modern platformers use jumping to propel the player character forward in long floaty arcs. Wings of Endless has gone with the more old-school, rigid vertical jumps using minimal forward movement. Standardization of game mechanics plays a big role here, meaning that those used to modern platformers will find this variation clunky.
Some varying movement mechanics introduced later on such as a dash, double jump, and boost jump, got me excited at first but surprisingly still stuck to the same rigid formula as jumping. They act on either the X or Y axis, no in between, you move vertically or horizontally.
Level design – What a Mess
Level design, aside from the visuals, is pretty terrible – especially when meshed with platforming and combat mechanics. The exact reasons why the level design is so bad are hard to explain without using examples. Icicles placed above every other platform force you to back up to the previous platform after every jump; cannonballs can soft-lock stun-lock you until all character health bars are depleted slowly one after the other; thorns placed perfectly to accommodate for a forward, floaty, arcing jump leave you banging your head because of your obligatory rigid vertical jump. Does that sound fun?
Enemy placement (especially regarding platforms) is rather nonsensical. With dodging being a central mechanic the developers intend you to use for combat, why did they place most enemies on platforms too small to dodge on? I tested this, standing right on the edge of five different platforms containing enemies in the opening stages, and every single one saw me roll right off the other side. So, when engaging an enemy on a ledge in melee combat, if you don’t kill them within the first few hits (which you often won’t as enemies are rather tanky), you are then out of stamina and must fall off the platform either by jumping or dodging to avoid being hit.
Lack of enemy variety is another issue. When combat on the player’s side is so monotonous and repetitive, the enemies need to do the heavy lifting with varying move-sets, attacks, and movements – they don’t. Each new area introduces around three new enemies, each with one or rarely two attacks (the second often a ranged option). Although each features a unique design with beautiful art and animations, none of their move-sets force the player to interact with them in new or interesting ways.
The level design also doesn’t even mesh well with the character switching mechanic. Most areas heavily push you towards playing as Hakiru for the smoothest experience as he has all the movement options. For example, when excited to play as the new character I had just unlocked, the next dozen areas all either required, or were far better suited for, the guy I had already been playing as – even more of an issue when the new character was also far worse in combat.
I’m sure Wings of Endless’ biggest issue is starting to become clear by now: cool ideas with well executed visuals, but when all put together it just doesn’t work.
There was one positive I experienced concerning level design – interactive looping. Displayed really nicely in the opening mission, looping level design is a somewhat rare but welcome addition. The mission has you exploring a dimly lit castle and in one of the rooms, if you decide to jump, you can just about make out a massive bat hanging from the ceiling, asleep. You continue on, but on your return the lights in the room are now on, the bat is awake, and attacks you. This is a lovely way of making looping level design feel interactive instead of lazy, by using foreshadowing and storytelling through gameplay.
Boss Fights and Target Audience
The main issue with boss fights is the difficulty. They are punishing but not satisfying, a dire spot for a boss to be in. For example, the second boss you fight is a pig with a flamethrower (a nice concept). The fight is fine, good even, with fun dodge timings and damage windows but then, when he uses the flamethrower, it’s undodgeable unless you use Hariku’s jump to reach a platform above – again pressing the easiest, longest, and most boring playstyle as you are forced to do this over and over.
Furthermore, with the boss-fights being so punishing (as someone who has beaten almost every souls game it still took me a fair few attempts) it begs the question, who is Wings of Endless made for? The art style suggests it’s one type of player, the punishing gameplay suggests it’s another, and the narrative goes in a complete opposite direction, seemingly intended for kids.
A Narrative For Who?
Something immediately noticeable within the first few lines of dialogue is the surface level narrative. What you see and what you are told is what you get: over-explained actions, over-hinted at twists, and predictably goofy dialogue. To those who love in-depth or even engaging stories, there is very little for you here, despite quite a lot of humour that didn’t land for me. If you are one to even question a narrative or character’s motivations as I naturally do, asking questions such as: “who is Hariku besides a bounty hunter,” “why are we not more wary of this talking owl in an ominous castle?” Know that these are never answered.
Because of the constant jokes, a light-hearted childlike atmosphere is created. The narrative as a whole feels aimed at a younger audience with a generic and rather predictable plot. There are a lot of “or something” and “I think,” which in excess can come across as a lack of confidence from the writers rather than character naivety. As always there is the possibility that this is just another joke from the writing team that didn’t land for me.
So if dialogue and narrative isn’t the main focus because action and adventure is supposed to be, that’s obviously a fine alternative. However why then does the dialogue constantly interrupt the gameplay and grind the pacing to a halt? If you want a game centred on action, then allow me to continue with the main focus of gameplay, rather than be stuck in dialogue for half the run time.
One thing the narrative does an okay job at is mysteries concerning some world events and characters that had me genuinely engaged. Unfortunately, this only happens twice and the payoff was only worth it once. Still, a nice mystery is present and well set up.
A Pretty Picture With No Substance
The best way I can describe Wings of Endless is as some puzzle pieces that had the potential to be a nice picture, but instead the developers decided to make an Eton mess. Initially I tried my best not to be too negative as clearly some who worked on this game put a great deal of love and effort into it, but this just ended up serving as a constant reminder of what could’ve been.
The frustrating gameplay and unintuitive design made this one a real slog to finish, hence I wouldn’t really recommend Wings of Endless unless you feel either the comedy will land for you, or the visuals can hard carry the experience. The game, as it stands, has no idea what it wants to be and yet tries to be many things. It doesn’t know who it is for and yet tries to be for everyone. Consequently it fails in almost all of these areas when the pieces are all put together.
Is Wings of Endless a hardcore RPG with punishing mechanics? Or a light-hearted action RPG with a narrative made for 7 year olds?
I don’t know, and it feels like the developers don’t know either.
Important Links
Pixel Art Metroidvania Wings of Endless Now on Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/pixel-art-metroidvania-wings-of-endless-now-on-xbox/
Buy Wings of Endless on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/wings-of-endless/9n8cxnp4cb1p
