Aether & Iron

A Beautifully Written Game, But Too Story Heavy for Me.

Aether & Iron is one of those games I really wanted to enjoy more than I ultimately did. Its striking Decopunk world, detailed art direction and well written characters immediately makes a strong impression. Unfortunately, after around five and a half hours across PC and handheld play, I reached the point where I simply wasn’t enjoying myself enough to continue.

But that doesn’t make Aether & Iron a bad game, and far from it. There are things here that have clearly been made with an enormous amount of care. But for me, the balance between storytelling and actually playing the game was too heavily towards the storytelling side.

A Beautiful World

One thing I can’t criticise is the presentation.

Aether & Iron has a fantastic visual identity. Its Decopunk interpretation of an alternate 1930s New York is stylish, unusual and incredibly pleasing on the eye. It’s different from a lot of games I’ve played recently, and that individuality immediately caught my attention.

The developers have created a world that feels like it has its own personality rather than simply borrowing the look of another RPG. The game’s official description places its story in an alternate 1930s where anti-gravity technology has transformed New York, and that concept comes through strongly in its environments and overall atmosphere

Visually, this was easily one of my favourite aspects of the game.

The Writing Isn’t the Problem

This is where my feelings about Aether & Iron become slightly complicated.

There is a lot of dialogue, but I don’t want that criticism to be mistaken for me saying the writing is poor as it isn’t.

The writing is actually very good. The conversations are detailed, the world-building has clearly received plenty of attention, and the characters have their own personalities. Different characters bring something different to the story rather than them simply feeling like the same person.

There are some genuinely clever ideas here, but my problem was the amount of dialogue and the pacing surrounding it.

After a while, I found myself wanting the conversations to end so I could get back to actually playing. So yes, I started skipping through sections of dialogue simply because I wanted things to move along faster.

Once I realised I was doing this more regularly, I knew the game was beginning to lose me.

I Wanted More Gameplay

Aether & Iron is deliberately a narrative RPG, with Steam itself describing it as a Decopunk narrative RPG and lists it as both story-rich and dialogue-heavy.

So I don’t think the game is necessarily doing something wrong by concentrating so heavily on its story. It’s more a question of whether that style of game works for you.

For me, there simply wasn’t enough action between the lengthy narrative sections. I kept waiting for the gameplay to provide that change of pace, but it never really happened strongly enough during my time with the game. That’s where boredom began creeping in.

Combat Didn’t Keep Me Hooked

Unfortunately, the combat didn’t compensate for the slower storytelling either.

Initially, I was interested to see what the turn based vehicular combat would offer me. It’s certainly an interesting concept, and the game officially describes tactical turn based vehicle combat as one of its core mechanics.

But after several combats, I found it fairly straightforward. The combat began feeling repetitive, and I wasn’t seeing enough to make me excited for the next one.

I feel that this is important in a game with so much dialogue. If I’m spending long periods reading and listening to conversations, I want the gameplay sections between them to provide a significant change of pace. But for me, they didn’t.

This Will Suit a Particular Type of Player

I think this is important to make clear because Aether & Iron has been well received by plenty of players. Steam currently lists the game as Very Positive, with 84% of more than 500 user reviews being positive and I can understand why.

If you enjoy heavily narrative driven RPGs, want to spend time getting to know characters and don’t mind extended conversations between relatively straightforward gameplay sections, there’s a good chance you’ll appreciate Aether & Iron considerably more than I did.

There is some quality here. But I am simply not the player who wants to spend this much of my time moving through dialogue.

What’s Good

The Decopunk art direction is beautiful and immediately gives the game its own identity. The alternate 1930s setting is interesting, the characters have distinctive personalities, and the writing itself is detailed and clearly produced with considerable care.

Most importantly, even though the amount of storytelling didn’t work for me, I don’t think the quality of that storytelling was the problem.

What Could Be Better

For me, the biggest issue is pacing. There’s simply too much dialogue compared with the amount of gameplay I experienced. I regularly found myself waiting for conversations to finish so I could get back to playing, and eventually I began skipping through dialogue.

The combat also became repetitive fairly quickly and wasn’t deep or varied enough during my time with the game to offset those lengthy narrative sections.

I’d have enjoyed Aether & Iron considerably more with a better balance between its storytelling and interactive gameplay.

Final Verdict

Aether & Iron is a difficult game for me to score because I can appreciate the quality of several things it does even though I ultimately didn’t enjoy the overall experience.

Its art direction is fantastic. Its world is distinctive. Its characters have personality. And the writing itself is genuinely good. But good writing doesn’t automatically mean I want quite so much of it.

After around Five and a half hours, I reached the point where I was skipping dialogue simply to get things moving, while the relatively straightforward and repetitive combat wasn’t giving me enough reason to keep pushing forward.

That’s where I’ve decided to stop.

Players who love slow, dialogue-heavy narrative RPGs may find plenty to enjoy here, but anyone looking for a more even balance between storytelling and action should know exactly what kind of experience they’re getting into.