The Falconeer was pretty much the only launch title I was interested in playing on the Series X. So when I found out the striking aerial combat game was swooping onto Switch, the hunt for Microsoft’s next-gen obelisk became a little less pressing.
In The Falconeer, players take on the role of a pilot of a bloody huge bird. (Can you guess what kind?)
Taking to the skies on your fabulous falcon players are plunged into the fantastical and turbulent world of the Ursee: a vast oceanic expanse fought over by warring factions.
In each of the game’s chapters, which you can replay once completed, you play a Falconeer in service to one of the Ursee’s conflicting factions. For a game about big battling budgies, the world-building and lore Tomas Sala has created is incredibly dense. As such, I soon found myself swept along by the intertwining storylines which plays across its main questline.
Outside of the main missions, players can pick up side quests at their home island or take to the skies in search of adventure. Many of the islands dotted around The Falconeers large map are home to numerous traders offering new and better equipment. Each island also features plenty of side missions to fill your coffers and bag some extra experience.
However, whether you can land on an island in the first place is dependant on how much you have managed to irritate its inhabitants and the faction that owns it.
Regardless of the potential complications, it’s always worth venturing off the beaten path in The Falconeer because the rewards for doing so are always worth the extra effort. It also helps to smooth out the game’s constantly rising difficulty curve, which is no bad thing.
Though there’s not much variety in the missions, even the transport missions involving a scrap or two, it doesn’t matter because the primary gameplay loop is so damn satisfying.
It’s clear a great effort was made to make sure your warbird feels and acts like a living creature rather than a feathery aeroplane.
Your falcon swoops and climbs like a real bird of prey, and it will run out of puff and almost fall out of the sky if you try and push it too hard. Something I was prone to accidentally doing when I first started playing. But once I had got used to the rhythms of the game, my trusty feathered friend and I were effortlessly dancing, dive-bombing and raining merry hell down on my enemies.
What’s most impressive is how the physicality of your mount informs how you approach the game’s battles. Unlike most aerial combat games, you seriously have to think about where you are in the sky on the run-up to a fight. The first thing to note is that staying low is rarely ever a good idea. Instead, a gradual climb to higher altitudes to survey the scene and then diving into battle is almost always the better option. In short, it pays to think like a bird.
The easy comparison to make would be to say The Falconeer is a far more complex version of Skyward Sword’s Loftwing sections.
However, The Falconeer feels much more engaging than the admittedly fun aside in Links adventure. By making you have to consider the health and limitations of your feathery mount, your falcon feels far more like a partner than a mode of transport.
So it’s a decent game then, ‘but how does it run’, I hear you cry?
The good news is that it runs at a stable 60 frames per second throughout and has no loading screens after the initial title screen.
The only slight downside is that the game can look a little muddy when things get hectic due to the resolution scaling they’ve used to keep that frame rate consistent.
But, considering The Falconeer was a Series X launch title, to see it running almost flawlessly on the Switch is nothing short of miraculous.
Ultimately, though regardless of the platform you decide to play it on, The Falconeer is a unique, and highly enjoyably aerial combat game, which is unlike any other in the genre.
If you’re a fan of the genre or are just in the mood for something a little bit different, or have just come off Skyward Sword and liked the flying parts, The Falconeer is one game you would be a dodo to miss.
