Video Game / AereA

Following

AereA is a 2017 Action RPG developed by Dutch company Triangle Studios and published by SODESCO, using a format similar to Diablo — but Lighter and Softer.

Much, much, much Lighter and Softer, in fact. It's a music-themed action game for starters.

The floating island of Aezir has split apart into nine pieces, owing to the Evil Wizard, Demetrio, who stole the nine primordial instruments that maintains peace and balance within Aezir. You're the best among Great Maestro Guido's disciples, tasked with a quest to find the primordial instruments with your trusty default instrument as your companion; you play as one of four heroes of Aezir tasked with saving the land:

• Jacques, the Cello Knight, the warrior carrying a cello and bow like a shield and a sword;
• Wolff, the Harp Archer whose harp unleash energy arrows;
• Jules, the Lute Mage whose lute is as tall as himself and functions like a Magic Staff that castsd attacking spells; and
• Claude, the Trumpet Gunner, who carries dual trumpets, Guns Akimbo style that he use to spam ranged attacks on enemies.

The game was made available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A co-op mode is available for up to 4 players who wants a friend to help them save Aezir.

Choose your Musician. Choose your Instrument. Choose your Quest.

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Sewer stage might as well be a castle given how huge it is, and its crawling with Rodents of Unusual Size.
• Airborne Mooks: Most of the stages has at least one airborne enemy variety who swoops around the place trying to attack you, and are expectedly faster than land-based enemies. The scarabs in the forest, harpies in the desert ruins and vultures in the desert for a start.
• Amphibian at Large: The swamp level is populated by giant toads and frogs as main enemies. Who slaps at you using their tongues.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The forest stage, where you're assaulted by hordes and hordes of oversized beetles, grubs, and large insects. And also giant spiders.
• Blob Monster: Green and yellow sentient slime-blobs infests the swamp levels (where else?)
• Boss Subtitles: ALL the game's bosses are introduced with a cutscene, including the words "BOSS ENEMY" in caps followed by their names.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Eleanor, another star disciple of Master Guido who serves as an NPC, falls under Demetrio's spell and finally snaps out of control, attacking you with her enchanted instrument as well, in this case a violin whose musical notes can drain your health. She's a Mirror Boss around the same size as your characters, and the subsequent boss battle is a "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight.
  Eleanor: Please leave me alone, get out of my head!... NO! Don't come any closer... I'm not... I don't have control over myself! It's too dangerous! I feel like... something is making me... do things I don't want to...
  [turns evil, complete with Evil Costume Switch where her blue dress turns red and black in an instant]
  Eleanor: [as a brainwashed boss] HAHAHA! Much better! Eleanor was strong, being able to resist my power to control her for so long. Too bad she wasn't strong enough''. Now lets see how strong you are...
• Bubblegloop Swamp: There's a swamp world where you spend the whole level wading through water, either up to your knees or chest. It's also filled with hostile amphibians.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": For some reason, the game's recurring Giant Spider enemies are called "cicada" in-game, even with their lack of wings and crawling around like an arachnid (they do have six legs instead of eight). The King Mook is notably called a "Bagpipe Cicada".
• Crate Expectations: Besides clay pots and urns, square wooden crates are another item you can repeatedly smash for points. The ones in the desert and temple ruins might be justified as they're probably the remnants from some long-lost, extinct civilization, but one does question who places all those stacks of crates in the swamp levels.
• Death Mountain: There's a stage set in some snow-capped mountains, whose boss is the Drum Mammoth (a mammoth-like monster fused with a drum).
• Dual Boss: Lava Caves ends with the Silver and Golden Bat Twins, a pair of giant bells with bat-like wings who can launch projectile attacks besides trying to crush you with their bells.
• Everything Fades: Besides adhering closely to Bloodless Carnage, every slain enemy simply dematerialize into a cluster of musical notes two seconds after they're killed, leaving behind pickups and goodies.
• Evil Former Friend: It's not immediately obvious, but after the Gryphon boss battle you speak to the janitor, Antonio, and finds out more about Master Guido's past. It turns out the villain Demetrio was Great Master Guido's best friend, before Ambition Is Evil kicked in leading to Demetrio's Face–Heel Turn.
  "It hurts Guido, despite all that happened, Demetrio was his best friend... and this could only end one way or another..."
• Eyes Out of Sight: For some reason, everyone in the game have their eyes obscured either by bangs or caps (see the poster on top of this page? That's literally how all of them look in-game). Even NPC characters like the Great master Guido, your senior advisor Eleanor and the concert hall's keeper Lorien, have their hair covering their eyes.
• The Faceless: Demetrio the Evil Wizard main villain appears in cutscenes (first time after the Lyre Scorpion boss) but he's only seen from behind his throne, with shadows conveniently obscuring his face ala Dr. Claw. He eventually reveals himself as a Final Boss, in a form resembling a pale-faced Villainous Harlequin.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Most of the "large" variants of regular enemies, like the giant scarabs, giant toads, giant snakes, giant scorpions, etc. Despite their sprite size being larger than your onscreen character, they're as easily stunned as their smaller counterparts and barely stronger than the regular variants. The game can throw a group of small enemies with two or three large ones mixed in, it hardly makes a difference.
• Flower Mouth: The giant serpent-like monsters infesting the Temple Ruins has these in place of heads, opening into a splay of four petals each ending in a curved fang.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are nine primordial instruments scattered across Aezir, and you need to seek and collect allof them to save the island. Unfortunately all of them, when left idle, morphs into monstrous bosses you need to defeat.
• The Great Serpent: The Accordion Snake is a giant serpentine monster (based on a cobra)... with parts of an accordion's bellows as it's elongated body. And it's frill is made of piano's keys.
• Heroic Mime: While you can choose between four characters, none of your playable heroes are capable of speech. You just listen, approach NPC characters, get instructions on where to go next and kick ass.
• Instrument of Murder: ALL the heroes carries these. Jacques with his cello sword and shield, Wolff and his harp who fire arrows, Claude and his trumpet guns, and Jules whose lute is a spellcasting weapon.
• Killer Gorilla: One of Demetrio's minions, the theatrical knight, commands a giant gorilla monster (fused with a trombone and with drums for arms) ordering it to smack you down as a boss. It's also one of the few bosses who doesn't die after it's defeat, merely leaving behind the Sousaphone promordial instrument before fleeing.
• Kill Enemies to Open: In every area. The exit is marked by a floating lock icon, that stays locked until you kill every mook infesting the place. It's even one of the hints showing up on loading screens in-between levels.
  Some doors only open when you defeat all nearby enemies.
• King Mook: More than one boss, like the Bagpipe Cicada (a sized-up, more powerful version of the forest's regular cicada enemies) and the Lyre Scorpion (a beefed-up equivalent to the desert's recurring scorpion monsters).
• Lethal Lava Land: There's a stage called "Lava Caves", and of course it's filled with lava pools, grates that spews molten lava, and sentient Living Lava enemies (who's a Palette Swap of the swamp level's Blob Monster mooks).
• Lighter and Softer: One of the most light-hearted ARPG games made in the 2010s, in fact. The whole game runs on Bloodless Carnage, the stakes are much lower than contemporary games at the time and the threat of Demetrio is mostly downplayed. Online reviews like calling this one a "Diablo-lite".
• Mirror Boss: Eleanor after falling under Demetrio's spell, and Demetrio himself in the second phase of his boss fight when he deals with you hand-to-hand.
• Money Spider: The game's enemies are oversized animals, and somehow they produce coins after you defeat them. The forest stage for instance has literal spiders who drops money when slain.
• Musical Anatomy: The game revolves around numerous musical artifacts called Primordial Instruments, stolen from the Great Musician Maestro Guido by the Evil Wizard Demetrio and removed from Guido's concert hall, where the instruments then develops sentience and becomes instrument-monster hybrids. For instance, there's the Drum Mammoth (a mammoth whose body is made of drums and timpanis), Accordian Snake (a serpentine monster whose torso is the elongated bellows of an accordion), Lyre Scorpion (an animated lyre with scorpion pincers) and so on. Several of the game's lesser enemies are also instrument-animal hybrids as well.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: The temple ruins level's boss is a Harp Gryphon. Like all the monster-themed bosses in the game, it's half an animal merged with a giant, sentient musical instrument.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Not too different by a margin, but besides serpent-like creatures the Desert Ruins also contain wolf-headed kobolds as an enemy type.
• Polly Wants a Microphone: Clef, the assistant of Guido, is a parrot who can speak fluent human languages. He'll provide hints between stages.
• Rewarding Vandalism: You'll be smashing dozens and dozens of pots, vases, and breakable stuff adorning entire areas as you progress through each stage. In fact it's compulsory to do so, if only for the experience points.
• Scary Scorpions: The Rock Desert stage is, expectedly, infested with giant scorpion monsters, with the brown one the size of dogs and green ones twice larger than you (and expectedly far more durable). And then there's the Lyre Scorpion...
• Temple of Doom: The Temple Ruins is expectedly one of these, crawling with serpentine monsters. You'll need to search through it's maze-like interior for one of the Primordial Instruments.
• Vile Vulture: Besides scorpions, vultures are another recurring enemy in the Rock Desert stage.
• World in the Sky: Despite the large variety of environments - that ranges from deserts to forests to tundras - the continent of Aezir is set entirely in the skies. You travel between stages using flying ships, and during gameplay you can see platforms that leads to drops all the way down from the heavens.

And all is at peace in Aezir once more. You have saved the land, Maestro!