Review: The Falconeer

The Falconeer is a third person aerial combat game, where instead of being sat inside an aircraft, you are sat atop a huge falcon, all rendered in a visually pleasing art style that can often give a false sense of calm before throwing you into yet another dogfight with the enemy forces.

Floating in the wind and taking in the semi open world environment was one of the highlights of my time with it.

While The Falconeer’s narrative is played out in an interesting way; putting you in the shoes of various warring factions and seeing their side of the story before moving onto another faction to experience how they perceive everything, the actual gameplay soon became repetitive and frustrating for me.

Flying one of the titular falcons, the three main mission structures involve combat, escort and delivery, all of which have slight nuances to them, but essentially boil down to doing the same thing again and again.

Frustration came with my main 2 gaming gripes appearing once more: difficulty spikes and boss battles. Why these still can’t be skipped passed so that you can continue the game is a big bone of contention with me in any game, especially in this one where it often meant replaying a chunk of the mission once again…and again…and again.

If you’re a fan of aerial combat games and want something a little different to jumping into a fighter jet or spaceship, with the added bonus of some slight RPG elements, The Falconeer could well be worth checking out. Just be prepared for some cumbersome controls while in combat and those damn difficulty spikes.

Review by Dave from an Xbox review code.