Sayonara Wild Hearts Review

9/10

A wonderful trip of emotions set to a one of a kind soundtrack available on just about every modern gaming platform with this review being based on the PS4 version being played on the PS5.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is an action game with a variety of rhythm elements that makes getting the beat and tempo of the music down necessary if you want to get the best scores/ranks. The narrator leads you down an introspective journey of the main character's personal and potentially loving relationships. The set up plays out as individual dives consisting of a number of multi part encounters with every connection starting with what I assume is a 'fall' and then ending with a culmination that tends to clearly show a definitive resolution to that recently expounded bond. I say 'fall' because not only does each new experience start with some sort of display of the character falling through a void, but the collectables being hearts themselves seems to point towards this being the fall one may experience when they become romantically invested in someone.

The visuals of this game are invigorating with lots of bold vectors and mood sensing stages along with camera work that plays with the rhythm, swooping around to where it needs to when pivotal moments between character's need to be highlighted. The controls are a bit to get used to but not because they are bad, rather I think it would be highly dependant on what you have recently played and felt in tune with. One day id pick it up and feel right at home and another day id feel it too slow or too fast. The stages all feel a bit different but even replaying some levels felt different control wise if had just come from a different game on stream.

The music. The strongest part of this game for me. Memorable, enchanting and powerful the whole way through. Even the title theme blends seemlessly into the main soundtrack of the game if you let it. Some of the songs from this game I listen to on their own because of how enjoyable they are.

This title took about 30ish hours to platinum on stream. 9/10