Windscape

Windscape is an incredibly ambitious game and developer Dennis Witte deserves a lot of praise for pulling it off as well as he has. While there are certainly areas, such as combat, where things have been kept simple, the vast majority of Windscape represents a thrilling adventure that is simply oozing with charm.

Windscape has its rough edges, but the scope, ambition and heart of this one-man passion project help it to punch above its weight class. If you want a Zelda or Skyrim-style game that’s great for relaxing after a long day, Windscape fits the bill nicely.

A great game of exploration in which we will want to get lost doing missions or simply exploring its beautiful world. Its gameplay doesn't stand out but in general the title offers a great trip.

Windscape invites you to wander and feel like a part of its mysterious little world. Some NPC models look a tad nightmarish and there’s a significant weight to movement, but with generous, location-based healing/save points, and a focus on enjoying the surroundings rather than demanding combat or frustrating enemy encounters, Windscape is a friendly, pleasant experience that is more meditative and nostalgic than anything else. And it’s all the better for it.

Windscape isn’t an antidote to the everlong tropes of modern action-RPGs – simply because it still needs to rely on enough of them to tie its own systems together – but it does present a relaxed and engrossing alternative that’s designed to give players of any age or skill level the chance to explore, battle and craft at their own pace. The deepness of that crafting system belies its apparent simplicity, and with all manner of stories to uncover across its hand-crafted lands, you’re left with a first-person adventure that very much belongs on Switch.

There are a number of ways in which the compromises of its premise and origin are most definitely felt, but they ultimately serve more as minor distractions. Once you move beyond these flaws, you encounter a pleasantly charming experience that feels simultaneously familiar and surprisingly fresh. Everything you’ll see and experience has been done before, but rarely has it been done simultaneously or in such a way as in Windscape. In other words, while new ground isn’t necessarily broken here, you at least get to see old ideas from a new perspective.

Windscape is a delightful and charming experience. It’s like playing an Elder Scrolls game that is designed to be friendly and fun, however, for everything I found about it to be enjoyable there was something else slightly off-putting that made me think it could use just a little more time in development. While nothing was game breaking, these problems will hopefully be addressed in future patches as they feel like such minor bugs that could be stamped out early after release. It’s an enjoyable adventure for first-timers to the open world formula or those looking for a relaxing experience they don’t need to take too seriously.

Unfortunately, the game's uninspired characters and repetitive combat prevent it from capitalizing on its strengths. Throw in some other rough edges, from wonky UI design to dialogue quibbles, and Windscape solidifies itself not necessarily as a bad game, but as an average one, through and through. Die-hard Elder Scrolls fans may have some simple fun scouring Windscape's world for quests and bosses, but it's tough to imagine many others wishing to dive into Ida's unremarkable world.

Overall if you fancy an easy to play, very basic RPG then this could be the game for you. Unfortunately, there are a lot better, more memorable RPG’s on the system and it's hard for me to recommend this over those titles.

Windscape may look like a decent lo-fi adventure at first, but it doesn’t have much to offer beyond its initial cartoony charm. With sleep-inducing combat and an absolutely skeletal crafting system, it just does nothing to keep your attention.

I hate being too negative about Windscape, since it’s not like it was designed by a huge team or anything. It’s the work of some people who, I assume, wanted to make their own Skyrim or Zelda, and there’s nothing wrong with shooting so high. The thing is, as I said up top, there are other indie games that have aimed for that too, and they’ve shown that it’s quite possible to emulate the spirit of Skyrim and Zelda without having anything close to their budgets. So when I say that Windscape falls short, I mean that it falls short of the likes of Yonder and Oceanhorn too. Given that those games exist, you’re much better off playing them than even thinking about this.