This is all made worse since the
Zelda connection is made a lot
when people mention this game,
but other than the style Yonder:
Cloud Catcher Chronicles uses, it
just simply isn’t a suitable fit.
You don’t go on any sort of
meaningful adventure, you don’t
fight cool monsters, you don’t
explore dungeons, you don’t do
anything other that simple fetch
quests for islanders that are too
lazy to do anything. And when
you do complete a major quest
you might be lucky enough to
open a new area where you can
do it all over again.
And then we get to the Harvest
Moon-ish sections which really
only involve you building very
small farms across the game in
designated areas. You can use the
random bits and bobs to craft
some pens and pepper your
home with farm items, but again,
there isn’t much reward in the
end for doing this. You can tame
some animals and walk them to a
pen so they can pump out milk
for you so that you can… err, do
something with it I guess? Or just
bribe people with food to run
your farm for you and do even
less.
And that’s really the biggest core issue with Yonder: Cloud
Catcher Chronicles. There simply isn’t any real reason to
play the game if you are looking for something to do. You go
collect bits and bobs, or you hang out at your farm. These
two elements just sort of feel at odds with each other here.
I even completely forgot what the main story quest was
after playing for a while. You never truly feel validated for
all the running around or rewarded for building a bunch of
farms. It all just feels like an endless cycle of collecting A to
get B, which then becomes A to get B and then repeat it all
again in a new area. And I’m not saying this is a bad thing in
general, but other games manage to fill the space in-between
A and B with something more substantial.
Yonder: Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a lovely looking game
that is quite charming, but simply doesn’t offer a lot for the
player in terms of depth. Couple this with some really floaty
platform controls and some really amazing music that seems
to cut out or dip and random while playing, and you’re left
with a pretty looking game without a lot of meat on the
bone. -J.Luis
35
GAMBIT | SEPT/OCT | 2017