Flying to the beat of a different runner.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game I had heard about on various podcasts before I had even seen a single screenshot or clip of gameplay. As the title has recently dropped on the Xbox One; at a very low-budget price, I decided to give the game a try, even despite knowing about its apparently short length. While it can be a bit inconsistent in regards to much of its gameplay and level design, Sayonara Wild Hearts is certainly worth the look, regardless of what platform you’ll look to play it on.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is one part racer, one part endless runner, and equal parts electronic-pop album. You’ll race alongside ever-changing neon and trippy environments, to flying through floating cities and dangerous forests, filled with robotic wolves with flashy lasers. The experience is around an hour-long, but your mileage on that may vary if you’re into gold ranking each of the 23 levels available to you or if you’re wanting to best each of the cryptic challenges that are used as a way to unlock the game’s achievements. There is certainly a degree of replayability, but it’s up to you if you’ll find it here.
There once was three divine arcana of the Tarot; The High Priestess, The Empress, and the Hierophant. There was also a fourth arcana, a cursed one at that, in Death, that with help from some of her allies, defeated the divine arcana, but not before they were able to create a heroine from the pieces of a broken heart. You’ll play as a young woman who has experienced heartbreak, that comes into contact with this heroine, which has taken the form of a butterfly, and through their interaction, she transforms into a masked heroine, portraying The Fool, a staple in the Tarot.
Sayonara Wild Hearts tells its story of this woman dealing with her heartbreak through a series of 23 fast-paced levels, each present with its own song and theme built around the allies of the cursed arcana; The Moon, the Lovers, The Hermit, and The Devil. You’ll encounter a series of characters built around each of them, and while there are moments of shooting and combat, much of the gameplay is floating or driving around environments, collecting pickups that increase your score. Some levels may have you engaging in a sword battle, ripping through a forest with a gun-mounted motorcycle, to weaving in and out of different worlds that change back and forth with a single clap. There is certainly a lot of variety here in the short experience you’ll have, such as how there is a decent variety to most pop music albums, even if the artist is the same one throughout.
Part of what makes Sayonara Wild Hearts work so well is in its amazing soundtrack. There are a few songs here that made me go back and replay it just to take them in, and while the soundtrack certainly succeeds on its own, apart from the game, it’s when combined with the gorgeous neon visuals presented alongside it is where you’ll see the bigger picture of why everything works so well together. For as good as this game sounds, its visuals are rather impressive, despite the simplicity that has gone into its overall look.
When you complete the game, you’ll unlock Arcade mode, and frankly, the game should have opened with this as the main mode and then split the experience into levels after you’ve completed it. Playing the Arcade mode makes the experience one uninterrupted experience comprised of the entire 23 levels, flowing in and out together in a way that makes the experience that much more enthralling. The default mode the game opens with is having the experience split into 23 individual chapters, popping back to a level select screen after the level ends, which can disrupt the flow of the music as each level starts where the previous one ends. Arcade mode simply feels like a more natural way to play the game and it’s unfortunate that you have to complete the game as it is in order to unlock it.
Even with enjoying the title, I can certainly see why many people may not be enticed into purchasing it or that the shorter length the game offers may scare away those wanting a longer game for their money. At $12.99 USD, the game is cheap enough to fall into that comparison of being compared to a movie or a cd’s length for its value, but again, your own personal opinion on time and value may stand in the way of what you want from your entertainment. Overall, I’ve sunk just over two hours into the title, experiencing the game in its default mode, as well as completing the game via its superior Arcade mode and I feel I got my money’s worth for sure. Its amazing soundtrack, boss encounters, and variety in its gameplay offered me an enjoyable game for sure, even if a few of the levels didn’t impress me as much as they could have. With the title being available on pretty much every platform out there, even through Apple Arcade, you can enjoy the game on the big screen or on the go, rocking out to its stunning soundtrack and trying to edge that little bit closer to hit those score targets. As a sum of its parts, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a fantastic experience that I found vastly satisfying.
Sayonara Wild Hearts was purchased by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X/S
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X/S