Wings of Endless - Switch Review

I love checking out titles from countries that aren’t traditionally considered ‘powerhouses’ in the game development industry, so I was excited to try Wings of Endless, the second title from Uruguayan development studio Isoca Games.

Wings of Endless seems a brave departure from Isoca’s previous title, the arcade roguelike LootLite released back in 2021. Moving to a more authored action-RPG game experience is certainly exciting to me as a metroidvania/RPG fan, and the pixel art looks gorgeous!

The Good

In Wings of Endless, you play as Hariku, a bounty hunter who is confident of his own abilities—very confident! As the story progresses, Hariku’s cockiness often proves his downfall, but fortunately he has lots of friends to keep his ego in check. Your first companion is Owly, a small non-playable owl who pops out to offer useful suggestions as and when needed along the way. Later on you acquire more characters into Hariku’s party, and this is what sets up Wings of Endless’ hook; your playable team grows to include Hariku (who remains the main protagonist throughout), but also Makoto and Diana. Once unlocked, you can swap between each character at will and utilise their different abilities for different traversal and combat situations. Hariku is the brute with a hammer-like weapon, Makoto is more of a mage type with spells, and Diana is the ninja type with projectiles. The ability to swap between the characters makes the gameplay feel fresh and dynamic.

I mentioned the pixel art in Wings of Endless earlier and it is delightful. The bright palette will take you back to the halcyon Super Nintendo days, with each biome as beautiful as the last. You travel through all of the usual areas (forest, ice, desert, etc) but each area feels unique, and each biome has enough variety within itself so it doesn’t feel like you’re trudging along a conveyor belt of repeating backgrounds.

The story and its various tableau of characters in Wings of Endless is light and entertaining. The various interactions between Hariku, Owly and the other characters often consist of jibes and back-and-forth banter. I’ve played other games in recent years where this kind of humour quickly grates, but Wings of Endless interjects it with enough heartfelt and meaningful moments, which means the story is more engaging than most other indie games.

TL;DR

• Party-like gameplay rarely seen these days in action-RPGs
• Pixel-art is detailed and aesthetically pleasing
• Decent story with entertaining characters

The Bad

The most obvious negative to me in Wings of Endless is probably the boss fights; you expect a challenge from boss fights these days, and many welcome it (me included). However, the bosses in Wings of Endless tend to be damage sponges who can defeat your character in one or two hits. The balance just feels off. In most challenging boss fights you expect some strategy and you expect to take some hits, but your health bar should leave you a bit of room for error as a result. Some of the bosses sadly end up being rage-quit material, which makes it less likely to make you want to dust yourself off and try again and again. When fairness is removed, so is my patience.

Whilst the party mechanic in Wings of Endless does feel fresh, it still needs some refinement. For example, when a member of your party is low on health, a very loud low-health sound effect chimes on repeat until you heal them. You only hear this when you have selected said character, but often you’ll select that character to solve a puzzle rather than in a combat situation; as such, you’re unlikely to want to heal them and waste a healing item in that situation. That means you have to put up with the rather irritating low-health sound effect for the duration of the puzzle. An effect that is less headache-inducing or more visual would have been more appropriate.

TL;DR

• Boss fights feel unfair
• Annoying low-health indicator

Final Score: 7/10

Wings of Endless provides great value for money and, as a result, is a low-risk weekend pick-up for most action-RPG fans; it’s a great effort by the tiny development team from Uruguay.

There are other action-RPGs out there that perhaps execute the party mechanic more effectively (Astalon: Tears of the Earth springs to mind) but there is a lot to be admired here; the positives outweigh the negatives in Wings of Endless and that’s what matters.

Thank you for checking out our Wings of Endless Switch review, thank you to JanduSoft for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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