Aeolis Tournament

Genre: Top-Down Arcade / Party Game

Players: 1-8 Competitive / Team Competitive (Local / Online)

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Review:

Aeolis Tournament is a family-friendly Top-Down Arcade / Party Game that has players using vacuum guns in various events. This game was released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020.

The presentation in this game is good, but comes across as somewhat cheesy, with goofy, cartoony characters and environments depicted with 3D visuals that are decent enough, but do have the disadvantage of making it easy to lose your character in the fray. This is paired with a cheerful and energetic soundtrack and cutesy to the point of annoying sound clips of the characters’ wordless expressions of excitement – “Yay!” “Uh-hyuk!”. This feels very much designed for the kiddies, but older players will likely find this to be far too juvenile.

The gameplay is fairly simple, with players moving and aiming using the same stick (always a frustration of mine when a game could easily be a two-stick shooter), with players holding down a button to suck using their vacuum, and releasing to blow. This mechanic is put to use in different ways – trying to blow other players off an arena, sucking to grab a ball to bring to a goal, and so on.

As for problems, the main one here is that as a Party Game, Aeolis Tournament is seriously lacking in variety, having only three free-for-all events and three team-based events. Mario Party this ain’t. And the individual events aren’t varied or deep enough to really be strong enough on their own.

Furthermore, the “blow/suck” mechanic just doesn’t feel right. After sucking for a while, the vacuum fully “charges”, at which time it stops working, and players are left with no choice but to blow, or else have a non-working vacuum. In a game where these mechanics are supposed to be the core of the experience that everything else is built around, this really… er… blows. Or sucks. Either criticism works, I suppose.

I like the idea of a Party Game built around a unique mechanic, and Aeolis Tournament’s vacuum mechanic had the potential to be a worthy focus for such a game. Unfortunately, the mechanic just isn’t all that well done, and there aren’t enough game modes, content, or depth to the game to make it worthwhile.

tl;dr – Aeolis Tournament is a family-friendly Top-Down Arcade-style Party Game where players use vacuum guns for various events. Unfortunately, the events are far too few in number, are too shallow, and the vacuum mechanic has problems of its own. The result is a good idea that’s ultimately done poorly, and not worth your time.

Grade: C-

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