Each stone is locked in a dungeon, guarded by a boss and surrounded by mazes of locked doors, master keys and pushable blocks. This leads you on a quest for said Draoidh Stones, gathering them before your brother does. It creates neat themes of sibling rivalry, and saving a world that would rather you didn’t exist. You are both Bretons, a breed of humans that are considered second-class, and the injustice of that has nibbled away at your brother, forcing him to act. You play Airoheart, whose wantaway brother seems to be embroiled in a plan to wake an ancient evil by collecting Draoidh Stones (absolutely not Triforce). It might not quite have the immediate charm of that series that we will attempt to stop referencing now, but it’s far, far more stylish than most copycats.Īiroheart does aim for loftier, slightly more adult themes than you might expect. Plus it all looks so beautifully crafted, with some elements feeling directly ported, others completely new, but all of it coming together to create a dense, colourful world. You have to generate that from scratch, and Airoheart’s designers are more than capable of doing just that. Those aren’t easy to get right, and you can’t just Xerox them from an existing title. Its designers know that the secret sauce of the Zelda series isn’t just in its iconic elements and its character design, it’s in the game’s structure and world.

But Airoheart’s mimicry is backed up with some solid design. We should be damning Airoheart for all the above reasons.

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