Aurion
Remember the many , many , many times I’ve emphasised that I’m terrible at platformers? How I treat those reviews with kid gloves because I know I’m not going to do well at the game, and want to temper expectations?
There’s a genre I’m worse at, and I was wondering when we’d get to it.
Welcome, one and all, to the fighting game genre.
Yes, just hide, Enzo. That’s all we can do.
Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan (which I’m going to shorten to Aurion for the course of this review) is an action-RPG whose combat is a brawler style. You play as Enzo and Erine, an exiled king and queen traveling from realm to realm to establish alliances to retake their kingdom. In each kingdom, they encounter new dilemmas and obstacles, new barriers to overcome, and gradually work their way towards reclaiming their kingdom. It’s a game whose lore and story are intertwined with African folklore and tradition. I know I always praise a game’s environment and atmosphere, but here, they really shine.
In the fights, the pair work together, creating combos and special moves to blast their enemies into oblivion. Or, if you’re me, pressing the “hit” button a lot, then the “hide” button, then the “hit” button some more. Really, both methods seem equally sound.
This, though, is the crux of where I struggled with Aurion. This is a game that, from the outset, lets the player know it’s best played on controller. I, as my channel description says, play on touchpad and keyboard and nothing else. This means that, when I need a combo to go off, I have seven different keyboard buttons to cycle through, all of which I’m liable to get wrong. My stubborn insistence on sticking with a system I like makes combat in this game extremely difficult.
I was pretty good at the cutscene part, though.
That my set-up and the game’s recommendations don’t work together is fine, though. As I repeat throughout this series, these reviews are not based on how much I enjoyed a game or how well I did at it. Rather, they’re based on how well a game achieves what it set out to achieve. I know and recognise I am not the target audience for a game with brawler mechanics. It’s not a mechanic I enjoy or am very good at, and that it plays so centrally means I did put the game down well before the end. However, what I did play of it, I enjoyed.
Aurion is by no means the greatest game of its genre. While I recognise that some of my hesitation with the combat mechanics are because of lack of familiarity with the genre and ill-preparedness for it, there is a lot of complexity in the mechanics that may be unnecessary. Still, it brings a unique look and feel, and I love it for it. I look forward to what Kiro’o Games makes next, and hopefully, it will play on touchpad.
Developer: Kiro’O Games
Genre: Action, Brawler
Year: 2016
Country: Cameroon
Language: English
Play Time: 20 Hours