The Falconeer: Warrior Edition

Genre: Open-World Combat Flight Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

The Falconeer is an Open-World Combat Flight Simulator set in a fantasy-based world covered in oceans where players pilot a large bird and shoot other bird-pilots, ships, zeppelins, and other enemies. This game was first released on PC and Xbox One in 2020, but was later released as a “Warrior Edition” on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch that includes two additional DLC packs released after the initial launch of the game – The Hunter and Edge of the World.

The presentation in The Falconeer is lovely, featuring 3D visuals that include beautiful night skies, radiant sunsets, a hypnotically churning ocean, and voluminous clouds that can gradually turn into lively thunderstorms. That said, while this game has some nice sights, it’s also oddly bare – much of the game’s ocean is a vast expanse of nothing, just endless water surrounded by cloudy horizons on all sides. And the islands and structures you encounter are generally relatively small and lacking in any great complexity. There are a few exceptions, structures with some really nice architectural design, but these moments are few and far between.

At the very least the game’s sound makes the best of things. The Falconeer features a moody, atmospheric soundtrack and good voice acting helping to make this game’s fantasy setting feel more like an epic lived-in world.

When it comes to the gameplay, The Falconeer has many of the core building blocks in place well enough, but seems to be lacking a lot of the elements needed to capitalize on them. The core dogfighting the game offers is good, though it can often get disorienting, and players taking on missions too difficult for them will find themselves hopelessly outgunned. However, that’s not the problem with this action. The problem is that it can start to feel a bit repetitive.

It’s not helped by the fact that the world of Falconeer feels far too spread thin, with not enough interesting stuff to do to justify the Open World game design, and while it tries to make things interesting by having RPG elements that encourage players to visit all of the game’s island cities, these RPG elements don’t feel involved and well-designed enough to fully justify their presence – even something as simple as comparing equipment before purchasing at a shop is more complicated than it needs to be.

In the end, I really respect what The Falconeer is going for, but I just don’t think it succeeds. It presents players with a unique and interesting world to explore, but that world is far too empty with not enough to do. And the idea of an Open-World Combat Flight Sim is enticing, but the way it’s executed here feels too repetitive to live up to that expectation. This is still a fun game, but it definitely feels like it needed something more to transform it into a truly great one.

tl;dr – The Falconeer is an Open-World Combat Flight Sim that has players piloting a bird in a fantasy world covered in ocean. The concept and core gameplay here is good, but the game’s large world is too empty and spread thin, and the RPG elements don’t seem well-implemented. This is still a decent game, but it needed more work to be a truly great one.

Grade: C+

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