Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield

Genre: Auto-Runner

Players: 1

.

Review:

Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield is an Auto-Runner released on multiple platforms in 2021, including Nintendo Switch. This game puts you in the role of a young man escaping from a scientific facility and running from the organization in charge of said facility.

The presentation here is absolutely slick, with stylized 3D visuals that use some bright colors and sharp lines with an effect that almost looks like a modern comic book. However, the real star of the presentation here has to be the excellent soundtrack from Danime-Sama that combines elements of jazz and hip-hop to create some great tracks to run to, with some of the highlights here including The Man Who Outran Time, Midnight Scramble, A New Age Lupin, and Intertwining Fate. This game’s attitude really comes through in its soundtrack, and this is likely the best part of the game.

Unfortunately, the gameplay itself isn’t quite as successful. Start with a fairly typical Auto-Runner, bring the camera in close enough that there’s not much time to react to obstacles, then add in slow-motion every time an obstacle rushes on-screen to compensate for that. Not only does it feel patronizing to be given slowdown for each obstacle, but doing so changes the flow and tempo of the level, meaning that you’ll undoubtedly mess up your timing because of this. You can ditch the slow-mo in the game’s harder modes, but of course that leaves you with the issue of the camera being too close to the action.

Then of course there’s the other issue here – this game is only a few hours long, meaning you’ll be done with it not long after you start it. And while I’m not necessarily opposed to a short experience in a videogame, I’d hope that it’s at least justified by a profound story or a particularly low price tag, neither of which is present here.

In the end, while it’s not a terrible entry in its genre, Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield is a mediocre Auto-Runner that’s only elevated by its excellent presentation. However, it’s not elevated enough that I would recommend this game to many people, unless it got a significant discount.

tl;dr – Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield is a mediocre Auto-Runner with a fantastic presentation. The visuals are slick, the soundtrack phenomenal, the gameplay is fundamentally flawed, and the game overall is completed within a span of a few hours. While it’s not terrible, there are better entries in the genre and games that cost less.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are MB, Andy Miller, Johannes, u/RamboFox, Exlene, Eli Goodman, Ilya Zverev, Stov, Connor Armstrong, and K.H. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}