Heavens Vault – Switch – Tower

Like many children, I went through a phase in my life in which I wanted nothing more than to become an archaeologist. The main reason for this is the Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones movie series. This is an impressive mix of walking dictionary and action heroes for me and as a result I got this dream job. I know today that the truth is different because this profession requires a lot of sensitivity and patience and life is full of very little activity. Reason enough to stick to the work I have just chosen and immerse myself only in the field of archeology, for example titled Heavens Vault.

As Archaeologist Alia, you will be in the game in a universe like the desert, which knows how to shine both aircraft and robots. Your adventure begins when your professor asks you to follow the path of the lost Renpa. Along with your mechanical accessory river and your flying ship you wander around a game world, which has many moons and debris that are connected by the flow of oxygen, hydrogen and ice. By air you can go from place to place on this river and gradually learn more about Renba, where he is and the long forgotten stories.

The game is basically reminiscent of classic point and click adventures. You turn Alia through villages, buildings or ruins and interact with all sorts of objects there. If most of them are simply explored, you can always take exciting things with you to use them elsewhere. But conversations with your Robot Six or human settlers are also part of a good archaeologist’s day-to-day business of getting useful information. However, language is a barrier to you. Many inventions are presented with unknown symbols, which need to be learned little by little. This is the only way to find out all the secrets that the game world has to offer.

It is this symbolic font that makes Heaven’s Vault so attractive because it significantly promotes the story, as well as the player’s motivation. Once you can guess at first what the individual characters mean based on your context, a whole glossary of nouns, verbs, adjectives and everything you need will open up for you in the course of the adventure. Imagine this decoding as static puzzles waiting for you in every corner. Sometimes a letter adorns the entrance of a house, sometimes you will see more letters as an inscription on the knife. This game mechanic never seems to be exaggerated, but fits in perfectly with the whole game world. In order to identify a form in translation, as a player, it becomes very exciting when you bring in new words and compare familiar words and letters with new letters. It does not always work, but it does not affect making mistakes. If you ever make a mistake in a word, you can call back your notes in the characters at some point to use the new knowledge in encryption.

Unfortunately, German translation is not currently a barrier for many. As a result, you not only have to master a completely new language in the game, but also learn it in English. Vocabulary is not particularly complicated, but in the end it will get the game out of the game. Otherwise, the story is told with little animation and in some places even comes with short excursions into the English voice release. The overall entertainment set is very good because the conversations are staged in a believable way and immerse you in the universe.

On the positive side, you have in your hand what kind of character Alia creates. So you will be given different options to act on the conversations. This allows you to determine how your relationship with Robot Six develops or how much you tell your professor about your travels. All of these influence your adventure more or less, but it helps greatly to understand what is going on. The fact that you can make decisions again at other points in the conversation and that you act wisely will catch you. So, I pushed the insecure Six several times to cross a dangerous bridge for him, and after a few minutes I was asked from another point how the relationship between me and the Six had developed. When asked what happened to Alia’s previous five robots, you get confused as a player, do you really want to respond or not hurt a little white lie.

For me the weakest feature in the whole game is the air travel already mentioned. Before you start, you set a goal and then go there through the mysterious rivers. At these stages you control your flying pedestal through the river currents with shoulder buttons, but since there is no challenge or genre, this movement is moderately fun. At its core, the system offers fantastic ideas. For example, you may always find hidden places on your travels or just send your Comrade Six due to lack of oxygen. The road there is mostly long as there are no other challenges other than taking the right path. Nevertheless, finding new places on the map and filling it to the brim stimulates the fly to continue playing.

Technically, the Heavens Vault is well rounded. After starting the game, you will no longer notice the loading times, and the beautiful design of the characters and the entire game world are promising on the TV screen and on the go. The lack of a German translation is annoying, but anyone with a solid vocabulary in English will not notice it. In return, Soundscape is very harmonious and he knows how to promote soft tones and sounds. These fit perfectly into the whole game world.

Finally, I would like to talk about long-term motivation. Depending on how you play, you may invest up to 20 hours before reaching the end of the title for the first time. However, after that, you should not set aside the console. Many more secrets await you in the second round and you can take with you all the words you have learned before. It opens up completely new possibilities, and you can immerse yourself a little more in the Heavens Vault world.