Greak: Memories of Azur review

Reviewed on: PS5

Greak – Memories of Azur, at first glance

may look like just another indie metroidvania but has big differences that set it apart from that category of games.

Greak – Memories of Azur was developed by the studio Navegante Entertainment, and published by Team17 Software for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch and PC Steam.

Summarizing the description on the game’s official page on the digital stores: Greak – Memories of Azur is a side-scrolling adventure game where all the animations were hand-drawn. You control 3 characters, each of whom has distinct abilities that are used to move forward in the game.

And that’s exactly it. Of course there’s a not-so cute story behind the adventure, with an introduction to the mythology of the World of Azur telling a bit about that universe and what happened that makes it necessary for us to help the characters on their journey. Sometimes with separate tasks for each one and sometimes controlling all of them at the same time.

As I said in the first paragraph, Greak looks a lot like a metroidvania, but lacks depth in combat. The game’s big focus is on puzzles and brain teasers and combat is not the main draw, unfortunately.

Another thing I noticed were some silly decisions regarding the controls: the O button is used to grab items, and also on ladders.

They could have given the option to grab the ladder by pressing up on the directional pad or the analog stick too, as is common in almost every side-scrolling game.

And something that irritated me quite a bit right at the start is when you are controlling two or three characters: any action you do in the scenery, like entering a door, talking to an NPC, accessing the item menu or even saving at a SavePoint, will undo the selected group and you will be controlling only one character, having to go through the process of bringing the characters together again.

The graphics are pretty, but most of the time the “camera” is pulled far back and the characters are very small on screen, which takes away a bit of the impact. But when the camera is closer, the characters get bigger on screen, and you can notice the quality of the hand-drawn graphics.

The game’s stages are divided into scenarios, which are interconnected in some way. And some scenarios are only accessible when you are controlling the first two characters together.

And speaking of the characters, when you find the third brother, we have a large scenario with puzzles that need plenty of interaction between the three, and when you finish, poof…… the game ends.

I thought I would get to enjoy a few more clever puzzles using the three characters, but I was fooled. I finished the game in about 10 hours, with 50% of the trophies collected. But I think we could have had a few more scenarios to explore with the three characters together.

I was left with a slight feeling that, when the game finally got good, unfortunately it ended.

The game is worth it, and despite being rather short, don’t expect a metroidvania full of equipment, skills, and that characteristic gridded map. It’s a game to play in a lull between big releases.

The PS5 version of the game was kindly provided for review.