My favourite game of all time!!! It's basically an interactive album with really incredible songs, it's very immersive, every level feels so different and it has a gameplay style that is constantly changing and keeping you on the edge of your seat - one moment you're in a bike, the other you're tokyo drifting through the fields, the other you're flying and breaking hearts, all while following seamlessly the beat. It's so refreshing, the story is very cute, the enemies are super interesting, and it's full of subtle metaphors that all but complement the several levels of gameplay. It's very replayable, and at the same time it's not hard at all, so it's never frustrating. I cried laughed with euphoria on my first gameplay by the sheer greatness of it, so for me this is a masterpiece.
It's a vibe! I love how they nailed the aesthetic identity of the game. It's a vibrant and delightful musical experience that centers on love. There's a story here, but it feels way more like a sense of a story rather than one that is being directly told to us. I love the themes and all that, but I will have to admit that the gameplay is little more than a fast paced, quick time riddled velocity simulator. It's fun, but not my kind of gameplay.
Also, Begin Again is a bop!
This is a complete masterpiece and so underrated, this is not completely a game, this is a whole experience, and i must say that this was one of the best experiences i ever had in my life. Im writing this after beating the game and this game left me so mentally exhausted that made me think of the rating, but it was completelly worth it, you must play this, just put your headphones on a high volume and enjoy this one hour magnific creation.
What Sayonara Wild Hearts lacks in length, it more than makes up for in spectacle. It's quick to grasp, but hard to master, has a truly incredibly soundtrack, and gorgeous visuals.
I've only played through it once so far, but I have no doubt I'll replay it for years and years to come. Its immensely satisfying, and feels like it rewards you for learning it.
It's the only game I can think of that's comparable to Rez, and I really do wish I could say that about more games.
I've only played through it once so far, but I have no doubt I'll replay it for years and years to come. Its immensely satisfying, and feels like it rewards you for learning it.
It's the only game I can think of that's comparable to Rez, and I really do wish I could say that about more games.
This review contains spoilers
I don't know who Queen Latifah is but damn the end credits really wanted me to know she was a part of Sayonara Wild Hearts.
Won't go into too much detail but I played SWH in the middle of the night and at the same time ended up being an odd psuedo lifeline for a friend that may or may not have been ok? They were fine but needed to check in with someone in case something happened. Surreal experience. Less surreal was SWH cause I sucked so bad the game asked me multiple times if I wanted to skip levels
Won't go into too much detail but I played SWH in the middle of the night and at the same time ended up being an odd psuedo lifeline for a friend that may or may not have been ok? They were fine but needed to check in with someone in case something happened. Surreal experience. Less surreal was SWH cause I sucked so bad the game asked me multiple times if I wanted to skip levels
Sapphic Sonic the Hedgehog with rhythm game elements that also features motorcycles, anime battles between women that use both martial arts AND sword-fighting, AND it has robots AND lasers AND skeletons; as a one-and-done aesthetic experience Sayonara Wild Hearts is pretty fucking awesome. It's got cute themes going on too, but it is pretty lucky it's such a short game cuz otherwise it'd be kinda frustrating that it takes so long to get to its specific thesis. And I'll be honest here: I don't think the gameplay is very good, as an action game nor as a rhythm game. The controls and camera were especially aggravating during certain sequences; it's really only saved by the game's rather generous checkpointing system. I don't know if it was just the Switch version or what, but the controls would also just hang up a lot for me causing a lot of unavoidable deaths, mostly happening when the player character model gets caught up against a wall/boundary.
That said, I do love how confident it is in its storytelling and diversity of gameplay stylings, and the best chunk of the game was probably towards the middle where the game mixed up the gameplay almost on a level-by-level basis (and also where I think the best song in the game happens). Relying on the player to form their own interpretations of the events unfolding was smart and I think pretty effective, but sometimes the visual homogeneity/repetition feels like it's potentially undermining the distinct narratives they're portraying, alongside muddying the visual clarity in a game that's already extremely difficult to parse in the moment-to-moment.
But I suppose a lot of that just doesn't really matter in the end though, huh? It's definitely been designed to be an aesthetic experience first, a narrative experience second, and a gameplay experience third (emphasized in how the game really doesn't want you to die and how performing perfectly seems overall deemphasized as there's only three possible achievable ranks on top of there being seemingly no possible fail-state). I dunno if I'll ever revisit this one, but I'm glad I finally picked it up on a whim. Also Queen Latifah sounds like she's having a lot of fun yelling the title of the game, and that kinda rules lol
That said, I do love how confident it is in its storytelling and diversity of gameplay stylings, and the best chunk of the game was probably towards the middle where the game mixed up the gameplay almost on a level-by-level basis (and also where I think the best song in the game happens). Relying on the player to form their own interpretations of the events unfolding was smart and I think pretty effective, but sometimes the visual homogeneity/repetition feels like it's potentially undermining the distinct narratives they're portraying, alongside muddying the visual clarity in a game that's already extremely difficult to parse in the moment-to-moment.
But I suppose a lot of that just doesn't really matter in the end though, huh? It's definitely been designed to be an aesthetic experience first, a narrative experience second, and a gameplay experience third (emphasized in how the game really doesn't want you to die and how performing perfectly seems overall deemphasized as there's only three possible achievable ranks on top of there being seemingly no possible fail-state). I dunno if I'll ever revisit this one, but I'm glad I finally picked it up on a whim. Also Queen Latifah sounds like she's having a lot of fun yelling the title of the game, and that kinda rules lol