The Falconeer: Warrior Edition

The Falconeer is an aerial combat RPG set across the Great Ursee, a vast ocean world dotted with rig-cities, sunken ruins, and warring factions. You play as a Falconeer, a warrior bonded to a giant battle-falcon, weaving through thunderstorms and enemy fire in third-person dogfights that feel genuinely unlike anything else in the genre. The whole thing was built solo by Tomas Sala, which is either impressive context or irrelevant depending on how much you care about dev trivia. Either way, the world he built has real texture to it. Combat is the core loop and it holds up surprisingly well. You manage speed, altitude, and a lightning-based weapon system while chaining kills to charge your reload. There is no reloading in the traditional sense - kills fuel your next volley, which keeps the rhythm punchy and rewards aggressive flying. The Warrior Edition bundles in the Hunter DLC, which adds a flyable Ormir dragon class and pyro pot guided rockets. The dragon handles differently from a falcon, heavier and more deliberate, and swapping between them adds a second mechanical layer worth exploring. Enemy formations scale in complexity as factions escalate their response to you, so mid-game air battles get genuinely chaotic in a good way. Where the game strains is in its RPG scaffolding. The faction system and narrative connective tissue are thinner than the world visuals suggest they should be. You pick up missions, fly them, unlock new mounts and weapon loadups, but the choices rarely carry the weight you want from something wearing an RPG label. Character arcs are shallow. The writing has atmosphere but not depth - you get lore fragments and world-flavour rather than conversations that reward re-reads. If you come in expecting Disco Elysium with wings you will be disappointed. If you come in expecting a stylish, mechanically tight aerial shooter with RPG progression dressing, the game largely delivers. The visuals deserve a mention because they genuinely are striking. The ocean, the storm lighting, the scale of the world as you climb into cloud cover - Sala clearly has a strong artistic eye and the Ursee feels cohesive in a way that handcrafted worlds sometimes do not. The soundtrack reinforces it. What the game lacks is enough mission variety to justify the runtime at the edges. Some quest stretches feel like filler loops rather than deliberate beats, and after hour fifteen the progression curve flattens more than it should. Overall, The Falconeer: Warrior Edition is a solid recommendation for players who want something atmospheric and mechanically distinct, especially if aerial combat is underserved in your current library. Lore hunters and build-theorycrafters will find it thin past the midpoint, but anyone who just wants to ride a war-bird through a thunderstorm and laser down airships will have a good time with it. Monika, Scout Team