[PlayStation 4] Ayre and the Crystal Comet Review

Ayre and the Crystal Comet from eastasiasoft and Gordon Little is a third-person low-poly journey of exploration and discovery. Check our Ayre and the Crystal Comet review!

Ayre and the Crystal Comet from eastasiasoft and Gordon Little is a third-person low-poly journey of exploration and discovery. You’re the titular dragon rider searching for a lost civilization, and are joined by the living last dragon. That means that as soon as you boot up the game, you can ride on top of your companion to soar the skies! She’s spent years traveling the land in search of the Skykriders, an ancient dragon-riding civilization that once called this particular area home. Can you unravel its secrets?

During your time with Ayre and the Crystal Comet, you’ll be exploring an area that is 64 square kilometers that is full of mountains, rivers, forests, ruins, and more. There’s no combat in this one and no enemies to worry about, so it makes for a chill old-school inspired experience on PlayStation. You can explore either on foot or while riding your dragon, taking to the skies at any given time. As you collect gems and find other items, you’ll move one step closer to finding out valuable information on the Skyriders. There will also be some aerial rings to find, which will trigger some timed races to test your skills.

You’ll control Ayre and her dragon with the left analog stick, as you look around with the right one. She can run by pressing the Circle button, and jump with the X button. To ride your dragon, just press the Square button. Once on top, press the X button to command it to fly. If, for some reason, you walk around for a while and can’t locate your dragon, you can whistle with the Triangle button.

While flying, you can press the Square button to jump off from the dragon and glide around. Ayre can also glide by pressing the X button again after jumping. You can press the L2 button to fly at a slower pace, or the R2 button to fly faster. When an eye icon is displayed, you can interact with objects by pressing the X button. If at any moment you end up stuck or get lost, you always have the possibility of pressing the Options menu to pause the action and then select the Return Home button on the right side of the screen.

There are many collectibles and objectives for you to work on during your time with Ayre and the Crystal Comet. There are 40 ring races to complete, 25 ancient shrines to find, 16 human armor pieces, 400 pink gems, as well as some sphere puzzles to solve. Oh, and there are also 32 dragon armor pieces to find! And yes, as you’ve probably guessed by now, locating shrines, finding armor pieces, completing ring races, and picking up gems are objectives tied to trophies.

The game features a full trophy list with a Platinum, so you’ll have to work on unlocking it after popping its 10 Silver trophies and 8 Gold trophies. You’ll have to start the journey and ride your dragon, so that you can make all trophies pop. Jump into the water, fall from a great height, obtain and equip a piece of armor, find 12 shrines, complete 9 ring races, find 10 pieces of armor – either human or dragon armor – and find 100 gems in total. If you want to speed up the process, then you can check out this Ayre and the Crystal Comet Trophy Guide.

Ayre and the Crystal Comet is an old-school infused 3D exploration game that pays homage to the low-poly journeys of ages past. Because of this, it’s a game that will either click with you right away or that will make you stay far, far away. Ayre and the Crystal Comet is available as a Cross-Buy title, so your $9.99 purchase will give you access to both the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost, and each version will have its own Platinum trophy for you to work on.

Disclaimer
This Ayre and the Crystal Comet review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by eastasiasoft.