You are Ayre, a dragon rider and the last of your kind.  One day you find a glowing gem that communicates to you.  The gem says they are part of a massive crystal comet that fell and crumbled into hundreds of pieces.  It’s up to you to explore the land riding your flying dragon to find all the crystal pieces and uncover the mystery.  Along the way you might discover other secrets in this no-combat, stress-free low polygonal 3D flying exploration adventure.  It’s available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

You can explore the vast land on foot or by mounting your faithful dragon pal.  You’ll want to ride the dragon as much as you can, because your walking speed is incredibly slow.  You can do all sorts of maneuvers with your dragon, like boosting, diving, hovering, and more.  You can even dive off your dragon and hang glide to the ground.  It’s a bit complicated to remember all the button commands, but luckily the game usually has button prompts to remind you what does what.

Aside from crystal pieces, there are other things to find, too.  There are landmarks to find, as well as pieces of armor you can equip to you and your dragon.  Not sure what they do besides just looking cool, since there is no combat in this game.  There are also puzzles where you must carry an orb from one area to another.  You can also activate ring races with your dragon, and these are beneficial to complete because when you do, you can get a stat boost for your dragon.

Unfortunately the game has a few problems that made me lose interest quicker than I wanted to.  There really isn’t any direction in this game so sometimes it’s hard to know what to do sometimes.  The map in your journal isn’t helpful at all and while I like the simple graphics that look like a PlayStation game from the 90s, the draw distance is short and there is a lot of popup.  Things like trees, crystals, and other structures tend to come up on you faster than I would like.  The combat free gameplay also got a bit boring and repetitive for me.  It’s really not a bad game, maybe just not for me.

Kid Factor:

Ayre and the Crystal Comet is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  I really didn’t notice any violence at all actually.  I guess you can make your dragon dive into the ground really hard, but nobody gets hurt.  Reading skill is needed for the text, and younger gamers may have trouble with the complicated controls and bored with the gameplay.

Tags: Game Reviews