Aaero2 Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Aaero2 (Xbox Series X)

Thursday, October 24, 2024.
by Adam Dileva

Musical and rhythm based games are one of my favorite genres, and sadly there really hasn’t been many in the last few years save for a few. Naturally, I was excited to check out Aaero2 due to my love of rhythm games even though I had never played the original back in 2017 (Our reviewer quite enjoyed it though). While there’s some elements of Rock Band and Guitar Hero due to its musical nature, I found it to actually be more akin to the iconic Rez from the Dreamcast and PS2 era.

While it may be a sequel not many expected, developers Mad Fellows took all the feedback, good and bad, to heart from the first title and addressed every single piece of feedback that they were able to, within reason of course. This meant Aaero2 was to be “built from the ground up”, and it seems those improvements have indeed made their way into this sequel.

Two difficulties are options from the beginning, ChillOut and Normal, whereas you’ll need to play through Normal to earn enough stars to unlock Advanced and Master difficulties. ChillOut mode is if you simply want to play and experience the music without having to worry about scores or dying, as all the songs are unlocked right away in this mode since there’s no progression. Normal is where you’ll want to start, as that’s how you’ll start to earn a score to place on the leaderboards as well as earn XP for progression and achievements.

The biggest addition to this sequel is the inclusion of two player multiplayer. Even more surprising, it’s not just local multiplayer either, as you can jump online for the included co-op and PVP modes as well. Normally smaller games like these would only have couch co-op, so the online inclusion was quite a shock. That said, every single time I’ve played I looked for a match online, only to have it not find any matches, so don’t expect many, if any, playing online if that’s what you’re looking forward to unfortunately.

The premise of Aaero2 is simple enough; navigate your ship through a handful of unique worlds, surviving by staying along the musical path and defeating any enemies in your way. If you’ve played the first Aaero, it’s virtually identical, though slightly improved in a few areas. Survive long to the end and be accurate as possible and you’ll earn a stars and score, hopefully high enough to impress on the leaderboards.

With three different bosses, I was expecting each handful of levels to be set in the same biome, but this wasn’t the case at all. Each of the 18 songs has its own unique backdrop and stage that you fly though (on rails). You’ll traverse tundra, volcanoes, forests, caves, underwater and more. The bosses are just as unique, though I do wish there was more than three to battle against. 18 songs might not seem like much, but there’s different difficulties and leaderboards to climb the ranks of.

Completing songs earns you XP which goes towards unlocking bonuses for your profile like icons, banners, borders, etc, as well as artwork. There’s a handful of daily and weekly challenges to complete which earn massive XP increases, so they are worth working towards if you want to collect all of the unlocks for your profile. Your overall performance of each song also will get you up to five stars, and reaching certain songs later on will require a set amount of stars, so you’re going to need at least three or four stars on most songs to unlock them all. If you want to unlock the higher difficulties, you’re going to need even more stars, which is a given since it’s a harder mode.

There’s essentially two halves to Aaero2’s gameplay: The music portion and the combat half. Starting with the music part, your ship traverses through a stage on rails, but you’re able to move within a large circular radius with the Left Stick. When there’s music, you’ll see lines called ribbons, that can be straight or curved. Think of these like the singing portions of Rock Band or SingStar, but appear as if they’re floating in the 3D world as you fly through.

Your aim is to maneuver your ship directly on these ribbons for the most points. These ribbons will match the song beat and lyrics, so it really feels like you’re ‘playing’ the song when you’re doing it correctly, moving along the edges of the circle. The difficulty of being accurate with the ribbons really depends on the song, as a faster paced EDM song plays different from a Rock song with more vocals. The easier difficulties have a little more ‘magnetism’ that helps your ship stay on the ribbons, but fail being accurate and you’ll lose your combo and probably earn less stars as a result.

There’s some clever melding with the worlds in some stages, like the ribbon guiding you around an obstacle that will kill you if you fly into it as you pass by. The highlight of Aaero2 is absolutely these musical sections where you’re so focused on lining up with the ribbon and hearing the foot tapping soundtrack from Monstercat. Each song really suits the stage background as you fly through it, and while some songs are better than others, objectively, there wasn’t a single track I disliked.

The second portion of Aaero2’s gameplay is the combat. This is where it plays somewhat like Rez, moving your aiming reticule with the Right Stick, trying to lock onto enemies and then releasing missiles to the beat. As you hold Right Trigger for missiles, your goal is to try and release them correctly with the beat. There’s a small bar that will show the proper beat timing, but if you’re tapping your foot along to the music you should be able to get it roughly close. You can also use your Left Trigger to shoot your Machine Gun, which is weaker overall and can overheat, but you don’t have to worry about any timing.

Enemies fight back though, so you’re going to need to watch for the projectiles coming towards you as well. You only have a few lives, so you can’t afford to die and lose your multiplier if you’re aiming for those coveted stars at the end of each song. Bosses will have weak glowing spots that makes it obvious where you’re meant to lock onto, but the tricky part is releasing at the ‘right’ time to the beat.

Combat portions on their own aren’t terribly difficult, but where it starts to become overwhelming is where you’re having to do both the musical ribbons and combat at the same time. This means watching with one eye and moving your ship along the ribbon with one stick, and aiming and avoiding projectiles with the other, while also trying to keep a beat. This was the most frustrating portions for me, as it can become chaotic real quickly and you’ll be focused on enemies only to realize you’ve missed the last few seconds of the music ribbon. While the combat has been improved from the previous game, it was the portion I disliked the most when combined with the music portions.

While the varied environments and stylized visuals are appealing, the real star is the soundtrack of course. A licensed soundtrack from Monstercat, there’s a decent variety of genres, though I found the EDM tracks the most exciting to play and tap my foot along to. While I’m not familiar with most of the artists, there wasn’t any songs I hated, so that’s a plus when it comes to a small tracklist. If you want to simply experience the musical portion and not worry about failing, that’s what the ChillOut mode is for, but it’s clear there’s a very high bar for being skill based if you want to be successful with all the star earning and unlocks. It’s a shame I couldn’t find a single player online to test the multiplayer out with, but the fact that it’s included is commendable from such a small team, showing their commitment to the community.

18 songs may not be a large tracklist, but the numerous difficulties and leaderboards encourage multiple playthroughs and trying to beat your previous scores. It’s going to take some serious practice to meld the musical and combat portions of gameplay together without having to think about it too hard, but once it does, it feels quite good to ride those ribbons while taking out some baddies with a barrage of missiles.

**Aaero2 was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 8.5 / 10
Gameplay: 8.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 9.5 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Aaero2 (Xbox Series X)

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