Video Game Mini-Review: Greak: Memories of Azur

The Nintendo Switch houses tons of 2D platformers, but Greak: Memories of Azur instantly stands out with its lovely visuals. Beneath its beautiful exterior, Greak has enjoyable but flawed gameplay hiccups that prevent it from reaching its full potential. 

Set in the land of Azur, Greak: Memories of Azur follows the story of three siblings—Greak, Adara, and Raydel—who are separated during a conflict between their race and the invading Urlags. Players begin their journey as Greak, working to reunite the siblings while also aiding in the construction of an airship to escape the war-torn land. The story isn’t special, but it’s serviceable. 

Greak: Memories of Azur’s gameplay revolves around controlling the three siblings. They each have unique abilities and combat styles. The character-switching mechanic is essential for both puzzles and combat, and players will constantly control all three simultaneously. While this idea brings a good amount of potential for puzzle-solving, it can be clunky sometimes. Keeping the siblings together for platforming sections is cumbersome, and switching between characters during combat makes coordination difficult. Combat itself is simplistic, and encounters are rarely satisfying, but they aren’t too frustrating. 

The puzzles are simple mostly consisting of activating switches and manipulating light. These provide a nice break from the combat, but again, controlling the three characters is more frustrating than it should be. Greak also has some frustrating backtracking throughout the game which just feels tedious. While the core ideas in Greak have potential, they don’t always blend together smoothly.

Greak: Memories of Azur is visually stunning, with its hand-drawn art style creating a storybook-like experience. The environments are rich with color and every location feels carefully crafted. The character designs and smooth animations also look great.

Greak shines visually but falls short in almost every other way. This is a nice experience, but a sequel that irons out the wrinkles would go a long way.