*A copy of Skies of Fury DX was supplied to me by the game’s developers for review.*

Ever wondered what it’d be like to fly a World War 1 airplane? Well, for the one or two of you that have wondered that very specific thing, developers Illumination Games have you covered.

The Story

Skies of Fury DX lets you take to the skies and fly your very own WW1 fighter plane during ‘Bloody April’ in 1917. Play as either the British or German airforce as you dogfight, dive and battle for the skies.

The game doesn’t have a ‘story’ so to speak of. However, Illumination Games do include some narrative and historical context to the setting of the game. This is done cleverly through a comic book, which tells the disastrous tale of the British airforce during the Battle of Arras, in which British casualties were four times higher than that of the German Lufthansa. Fitting in with the overall comic book style of the game, I really liked that these comic slides were included.

The Game

Skies of Fury DX (SoF) has both a single player and local multiplayer mode. The single player campaign is based over five chapters or sections (six with the bonus one) that are each split into 10 levels. Each airforce has its own version of a level, therefore in total there are over 100 levels for you to play in SoF. Levels basically fall into three categories: a dogfight, an escort mission and a time trail. With over 100 levels and only three different level types, I’m sure you can imagine how repetitive the game gets. Unfortunately, the repetitiveness of the game sets in pretty quickly. What’s annoying is that because there are two different factions to play, it makes the game feel even more monotonous as you can’t progress to the next chapter without completing every level with both factions! Therefore, there were some points of the game that felt like a grind, doing the same three mission types over and over.

As with every game in the modern era, SoF has ‘an RPG aspect’. After completing mission your British and/or German pilot is awarded experience points to upgrade their skills and planes. The upgrades include things like faster reloading and better armour. The skills are what you’d expect from a progression tree in 2018, there’s nothing that unique about them. Nevertheless, I actually quite liked the progression system. Experience points were handed out liberally and it helped break up the grindy feeling of the game when you had new or better skills to use against the enemy.

Furthermore, SoF is packed full of collectables. there’s new planes, skins and crosshairs, which are unlocked via loot crates in the game. Now I know what you’re thinking. You heard the word loot crate and thought that means micro transactions. However, SoF has no micro transactions, loot crates are awarded to you every time you level up (kind of like in Overwatch).

I personally think the game was planned to have had paid loot boxes in it, but the developers then backtracked during the game’s development cycle. Maybe it’s because the game was released after the Battlefront II controversy, or maybe I’m just totally wrong. Nevertheless the drum roll, the screen shaking, the sense of ‘what am I going to get?’, it all seems to be a little over the top for a game that gives you free rewards. Naturally, I’m very happy there’s no micro transactions in the game, but I also think the developers should have removed this weird loot box mechanic too.

Finally, I have to say SoF runs superbly on the Nintendo Switch. When I first saw the game on the eshop I thought there’d be no way it’d run on the Switch without slow down or lag- there’s just too much stuff moving on the screen. However, I never experienced or suffered any problem, the game runs silky smooth and looks fantastic!

Art and Music

I love the comic book, cell-shaded look to the game. It’s both unusual and refreshing to see a game based during the WW1 look so bright and colourful. Furthermore, the comic book pages that deliver the ‘story’ in the game, also look fantastic and are a joy to read.

Much like the levels of the game, the music is good but soon becomes repetitive. Even now I can hear the melodies in my head, but hearing them over and over again soon had me muting me TV and listening to a podcast whilst I played.

Problems

Though the levels are repetitive and the loot boxes are weird, my biggest problem with the game was how frustrating it got in chapter 5. I’m going to be totally honest with you, I didn’t actually finish the main campaign. This is something I never do when reviewing a game as I like to have the whole experience before I review it. Nevertheless, with SoF I just couldn’t finish it!

Basically, as the difficulty slowly ramps up in the game, you depend more on the help of your AI pilot friends to take down enemies. However, what ended up happening was that my AI friends would get shot down within a few minutes of the level, then the enemy planes would just gang up on me and take me out. I tried flying with my allies in formation, but the sheer numbers of enemies meant that again, the AI pilots would still get destroyed. Then when trying to take out the remaining planes on my own, the battle turned into a game of cat and mouse, which ended with both the enemy planes and I flying around in circles, continually trying to get behind one and other. In a few cases this worked, I died a lot, but with some luck and skill I managed to clear the level. However, after the third or fourth level trying to do it I really couldn’t take it anymore; it was so frustrating!

Summary

To conclude, if you’re looking for a fun and visually appealing flight/dogfight simulator to play on your Switch, then I think you would like Skies of Fury DX. The time I spent with the game before the fifth chapter was a lot of fun. It has a cool RPG mechanic that makes you feel like you’re progressing through the game. Moreover, though they were delivered in a weird free loot box way, some of the skins of the planes look awesome! Bare in mind though, that the mission in the game become repetitive fast and flat out frustrating towards the end. If I was to buy the game, I would wait for a sale.

That’s why I give Skies of Fury DX by Illumination Games by score of

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