This week I had the opportunity to play Aether & Iron for several hours, a narrative RPG set in an alternative version of the 1930s in which we have flying vehicles, but also entire cities floating in the air.
Story
Walls of text, usually dialogue between the main character and another person or a description of the landscape are what you will see most of the time while playing this game, but to make it easier for you to follow the story, absolutely the whole thing has a narration and what's more, a very high quality one.
At the beginning of the story, you are a rather desperate smuggler who has a hard time finding work, so he accepts anything, just to make some money. As it often happens, a seemingly easy job gets complicated very quickly and you find yourself in the middle of something much bigger than yourself, but when you realize that, it's too late to give up. In just a few hours of the game, the story grabbed me strongly in its jaws and I can't wait to see what awaits Gia and company next.
Gameplay
Within the story itself, the player chooses how to act in certain situations, which as a result changes the story itself. Initially, the decisions have a minimal impact on the story, but over time, they change not only the relationships with the characters, but also the city in which you find yourself. But in order to make the story more exciting, a classic DnD skill check was inserted into the decisions - that is, you roll dice on which you must get a certain sum in order to successfully perform the desired action. The difficulty of the action itself depends on the situation you are in, and in order to make the desired actions easier over time, it is possible to specialize the character in such a way that you get additional points when rolling the dice.
In addition to narrative gameplay, we also have vehicle battles in the form of a classic turn-based RPG. Battles that start simply - 1 on 1 on an empty map, quickly become complex and exciting. This is achieved by the main character adding new people to his team, which results in a larger number of enemies. The maps become more complex, adding areas where vehicles will take damage or even be completely destroyed if they end up there at the end of a turn, and with vehicles being able to push each other away, combat becomes much more strategic than I expected. Finally, let's add the fact that each character we add to the team has different specialization options through their skill tree and the points we get for each level of the character, which unlock passive or active powers in battle, such as reducing the possibility of enemy vehicles moving or the ability to jump over vehicles, the battles themselves get a considerable depth that always gives me the feeling that it is just complex enough, but more importantly, it leaves satisfaction with each new battle.
Oh yeah, did I mention there's an entire section reserved for vehicle editing?!? Changing the parts that affect how far the vehicle can move each turn, what weapons it has, how many lives it has, but also the visual change, specifically the color, to make the vehicle exactly the way you like it.
Aether & Iron already feels like something special and I can't wait to play it for another hour, and if you like the combination of story and strategic combat, do yourself a favor and play it too.
A copy of the game for review purposes provided by the development studio Seismic Squirrel and Chaos Theory Games.
