Pier Solar and the Great Architects Review

"Quite Retro"

Campaign

The history behind the creation of Pier Solar is a fascinating one, starting off as a Megadrive/Genesis title a good while ago we have now been given a slightly enhanced version of the new consoles. It's great to see people and companies still supporting game heritage, even better yet I love seeing titles like these come onto the latest consoles for a even larger audience to enjoy. Pier Solar tells the story of these three young children and their dangerous adventures as they seek out this ancient race that was the great architects. This all starts out from a simple exploration into a blocked off cave as Hoston's father becomes ill and the others agree to help out. Each brings their own skills into the group and they always explore as a set pack. Hoston is a young botanist and what I set as my primary melee component. Alina is the distance character in my group and also in constant need of her father's approval for things. Edessot is the final in their squad and a really young genius in creation of mechanical devices. Together they're a sort of family and keep close through their journey. The game takes you over a many number of terrains, landscapes and general locales. All the while you're growing the inventory and supplies of the team in order to survive these ever hardening places. A big issue I had was actually moving through environments as you would often get stuck on things or not know how to progress as it seems very open in questing, and then there were ever frequent random battles popping up. It seemed almost too often that these chain events would show, and they're rather boring. It's entertaining to fight and pick your options in battle with every character, but the frequency was far too much. Even building on that the pace seemed off as it was boring working through these battles and advancing the plot which I actually did like.

Gameplay

Pier Solar is done in simple graphics that everyone can appreciate in the style of those old bit games. It feels much like The Legend of Zelda in its older years, but I did have many times where I would clip on objects or my path would get stuck which was frustrating as that always led into another unwanted monster battle. Additionally the lack of direction in the map or even objective points really lengthed game time and I was usually clueless in terms of my next direction. The combat while being interesting and alright usually is beat to death by constant appearances. Haven't a clue how many cave creatures I killed at the start, but it was too damn many. Which is a shame as the balance of items was interesting and selection of skills needed to be well placed. Everything also seemed to lack a pace of play which really brought down these expansive landscapes. Minor elements like this made it feel incredibly boring at times in a rather fascinating mini RPG universe. The menu wheel was also sort of weird and at my first death I was also completely lost as you're sent to this dark space to grab a last save. Additionally I did like the graphics options despite being not too useful, I liked seeing the differing styles of this individual title.

The Conclusion

In terms of gameplay and time worth you'll get it by playing Pier Solar. It's just whether you find the constant attack you turn based combat exciting as it eventually became dull by over occurrence. There were also the previously stated issues of world movement and direction which had me puzzled at times despite being a simple place I needed to go. The story was also interesting enough and the characters were well fleshed out with their own sort of niche. In the old Genesis days I'm sure this would have been just outstanding, but this generation expects something with a little more pace.

Pier Solar Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by WaterMelon

Rating Overall: 6.2