From the first trailer I saw of Greak, I knew I had to play it, it had a look that reminded me or Ori and Hollow Knight, but a gameplay mechanic that reminded me of Lost Vikings. Now that the game is here and I have put a lot of time into it, were my hopes rewarded, or has it tainted my gaming memories?

Greak: Memories of Azur tells the story of Greak, the youngest of three children, who along with his sister Adara and older brother Raydel, attempt to escape the clutches of the evil Urlags, however before their escape can succeed, the trio are separated and it is up to Greak to reunite them all. Escaping the Urlags is not the only threat, as they conquer more of the land, a corruption starts to seep in, which in turn creates new monsters, that threaten all that encounter them. In Greak’s attempt to find his family, he is overwhelmed and falls to the ground in a forest, before being rescued by a team of scouts from a nearby settlement. Upon waking there, he explains who he is and what he is doing, but while he needs to find his family, he is also willing to help the refugees escape in their self-made airship. Story wise, things are sparse, there are enough interactions with characters, to make your progression through the world entertaining, but none of them feel all that special, the lady manning the store, longs for tales of adventure and the old blacksmith is curmudgeonly dedicated to his work, pretty standard fare.

Taking a look at the gameplay, things are better, but not all that great, though we shall start with the good first and that is quite good. Greak has skill, he can dodge enemies, double jump and even wall jump, to help reach higher parts of the world and nothing about his skills, take long to master, so pretty soon, you will be exploring like a pro. Greak is also equipped for combat, with both a sword and bow, letting you take down enemies from afar, or getting in close to dish out more intense attacks. As enemies are formidable, especially when you first encounter them, you will need to get your dodge down pat, Greak might be nimble, but you need to make him quick, failure to learn how to best use his dodge, will result in a game over. This isn’t because if you take a single hit, you die, but more than it is very easy to lose your health, if you are not paying attention, thankfully most enemies, upon defeat, will restore some of your lost health, if needed. For the times when you have no enemies near you, but need to restore health, you can eat various foods that dot the land, though you can also cook meals up at the refugee settlement, or campfires around the world, the upside is they offer more healing per meal, but they do take a larger number of ingredients to get there.

Once you have found your first family member, in Adara, the game quickly loses its balance of action and exploration, even though it still requires you to do those exact same things. The reason why this is an issue, purely comes down to the fact that you have to manage both characters and later on, all three, at the same time. The game does allow you to take control of all at once, or a single character, but as they all move at different speeds, jump another way from how the others do and so on. The result is that while you can run along with them all at once, the moment you have to jump or drop down a ledge, the gap between them grows larger. While you can deal with this, as the game has a button to call the others to you, I found it was better for me, to manually control them, one at a time, but that ended up with me feeling like I was playing a three-player couch co-op, on my own. There were times when it felt like I was the entire pit crew for a race car, whilst doable, it clearly works better with other people and that is what Greak feels like, playable on your own, but would have been a lot more fun with other players.

None of this highlights the gameplay problems that pop up, once you start reclaiming members of your family, some puzzles are fairly straight forward, stand on a button or turn a crank and hold, letting someone else go under, to then repeat on the other side. Issues come from when you have to start proper platforming to get around, Greak is the most versatile, as he can double jump up, giving him some more height and range, while Raydel uses a hookshot for his more advanced movement and while it is helpful, it still falls short of the double jump. Sadly, Adara is left behind here, in a big way, with her Princess Peach inspired float-after-jump mechanic, which is handy for crossing big gaps, but because she can’t double jump, she is limited in the height she can get. There were a number of times, I would struggle to get her up to a place, because she was unable to grab a ledge that was slightly higher than her jump could reach.

The other issues the game has are a lack of map and a messy inventory screen, the first of those is pretty self-explanatory, there is no map. Well, let me correct that, there is an overworld map, which is used for helping you get around and that serves its purpose well enough, but there are no local maps, so when you are exploring caves, forests or fortresses, you will have to remember where things are on your own, but when you are in each location, there isn’t a lot to distinguish different parts of them, it can be hard. The second issue is more of an issue and that is inventory space, each of the siblings has a bag that can hold a finite amount of content and while you can get some upgrades, it is never enough, mostly because game critical items take up space as well. The best example is food, if you want to make a healthy soup, you need the ingredient, 3 mushrooms to make one soup, straight forward right, except you only have three slots in your bag, at first, and you can’t pick up the soup if you have not spare slot, it becomes a balancing act that never manages to be fun, so much so that I was constantly eating food, in order to free up space for other things I was finding.

One area that the game does an incredible job is in the presentation, with everything being hand animated, from the world to the people and enemies that fill it. While the detail on the playable characters is nothing to special, due to their simplified faces, they still manage to have a look that is totally unique and perfect for the world they live. The enemies are strange, in that the most common ones look the blandest and that is a hard thing to see, given they are made out of mud, or a mud-like substance, but the bosses and more challenging enemies seem basic by comparison. They are still wonderfully animated of course, but there is nothing special about their designs, which is a bit of a shame. The games soundtrack is pretty standard fare, there is an otherworldy, fantasy driven theme that runs through all the tracks and while you can get to enjoy them a lot, while you get stuck looking for the exit, none of the music really felt like it would be pieces I would listen too on their own.

Greak: Memories of Azur is a challenging game to recommend, it has wonderful art and decent music, but is marred by the fact that it constantly feels like you should be playing it with someone beside you. Combat is basic, but still will kick your butt, if you are not prepared and while dying is easy enough to avoid, relying on the paltry inventory to help you prevent it, will not end well. If the developers patch in a co-op mode, then this would be a game worth experiencing, but for now, unless you want a game to challenge you, from a mechanic point of view, then Greak should be more of a figment of your imagination and not one you should commit to memory.