Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey from Sony Interactive Entertainment and The Not So Great is a game where the titular girl must search for her lost father. Check our Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey review!
In 1927, Aurora Aylesworth, a young 19-year-old astronomer, sets out on a journey to find her father, who disappeared four years earlier while investigating the remains of a spaceship that fell to Earth in 1908, Eureka, and from which peculiar beings called robotos emerged and who now live integrated, in their own way, into society. But Aurora will not be alone in her journey: she will have the help of her faithful Lackey, a roboto that has been with her since she was a child, as well as friends and other people she will meet during her travels, while facing the dangerous Brainless, deformed versions without conscience or intelligence of the peaceful robotos and which, for some reason, seem to want to prevent Aurora from completing her goal.
Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey from Sony Interactive Entertainment and The Not So Great is a game where the titular girl must search for her lost father. In an alternate 1908, a spaceship fell to Earth, and mysterious robots – known as robotos – emerged from the wreck. Aurora’s father went to investigate the spaceship’s remains and eventually disappeared. As Aurora grew older and since she was still so concerned about her father’s disappearance, she decided to go on her way to investigate the remains herself and discover what had happened to her father.
I’ll be honest, this one didn’t give me the best of first impressions. As the game begins, we get a pretty shallow explanation of the events that led to 1927, where the game takes place, and Aurora is running away from robotos. At first, it wasn’t clear who those metallic entities were, and even less why Aurora was running away from them. You’ll quickly be introduced to Lackey, a roboto that arrived with the spaceship but who is gentle and has been Aurora’s best friend since she was a kid. Lackey’s function in the game will be mostly to help you progress through some puzzles. Lackey can also attack the enemies when Aurora orders him to, at the cost of some of his Dignity. When he loses all of it, you’ll have to wait for this meter to replenish before attacking him again.
On the gameplay side, you’ll move Aurora left or right using the left analog stick. The D-Pad can’t be used for this one, which felt weird since a lot of games support both options. Another oddity in the control department is that confirming a text element is done with the Square button instead of the X button, which took a good while to get used to. If you ever feel lost, the objective is shown when you pause the action, which will certainly help you along the way.
As you encounter horde after horde of evil robotos, you’ll have to fight your way through the bunch as fast as possible. Attacking is done by aiming with the right analog stick and pressing the R2 button to shoot. Some enemies are shielded, and you’ll need to use a stronger attack to drain their shield before being able to damage them. As mentioned earlier, there’s also an attack using Lackey, in which you can throw it at your enemies, which does some splash damage. Due to the “Dignity” gauge mentioned earlier, this attack can’t be spammed.
I wasn’t impressed by the combat. You’ll always meet the same few enemies over and over again, and aiming is very clunky and feels like it was designed primarily for a mouse instead of a controller with an analog stick. Aurora is also always at the center of the screen, so you can see around you but not very far from you, meaning your point of view is highly limited. It’s even worse in slopes because there you do not even see up to the end of the screen. When you finally see enemies, they’re already too close, and you’ll have to walk back to attack them – that is unless there are also enemies coming behind you, which happens a lot.
Exploring the spaceship remains also adds some puzzle elements, for which Aurora will need to use Lackey to solve them. You can order Lackey to stay at one specific spot or get back to you but following is very approximative, and you’ll often wonder where he’s hidden, and then you’ll have to retrace your steps to see where he’s stuck.
The presentation is minimalistic, with very few objects in each scene. The character’s models are also very simple, and so are their animations. On a more positive note, the dynamic shadows were nicely done. There are some great animations for the few bosses. On my 55″ TV, the text was way too small to read, which is usually the case for games ported from PC to console. The text also moved at a very fast pace, which can make it harder to read. This is twice as important since the voice acting is in Spanish, so if you don’t know the language, it will be hard to keep up.
On the trophies side, there are 28 trophies that can be earned in this title if you can get past all the game issues mentioned in this review. The list is composed of 10 Bronze trophies, 11 Silver trophies, and 6 Gold trophies. Trophies are awarded mainly for progressing through the game and reaching the end, with some miscellaneous trophies to worry about along the way.
Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey is a game that just didn’t click with me. The gameplay is way too clunky for its own good, and traveling through each area and trying to attack all the robotos felt like a mess. Lackey is used for some puzzles and will get stuck in places when getting back to you, which is not ideal. Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey is available as a Cross-Buy title with a $14.99 price, so your purchase will give you both the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.
Disclaimer
This Aurora’s Journey and the Pitiful Lackey review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
