Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4) Review

Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4) Review

Date Released: 19 September 2019

Date Played: 2 December 2021

I won't keep you waiting.  Sayonara Wild Hearts is an absolute masterpiece of a game that not only dazzles you with its unique and beautiful visuals, compels you with its fluid and addictive gameplay, worms its way into your subconscious with its catchy and pumping music, but also reaches through the walls of your emotions to touch your heart in a way I've not seen many games be able to accomplish. It's a must play for any video game lover and is so good that I could see it bringing non-gamers into the fold and help them discover what a video game can actually achieve.

At its core, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game about the despair and loss one can feel after a difficult breakup.  As everyone knows, after an important relationship falls apart the depression and isolation that surrounds you can completely derail your life and drastically alter the way you view the world and all of the people in it.  It can feel as though there's no escape and that you'll never be able to find any happiness ever again.  Sayonara is an allegory for combating these internal struggles that a heart-broken person attempts to defeat during the healing process.  It also serves as a series of vignettes showing how forcing your self to re-enter the world, reaching out for the company of friends, and facing the inner demons of those who have betrayed you can help mend the broken heart.  Never have I seen a game so accurately depict what it feels like to battle your grief in order to fall back into the groove of your life.  I applaud the developer, Simogo, for their amazing achievement and for Annapurna Interactive for publishing this game so the world can experience it.  This game helped me work through some inner struggles and I know it helped a lot of other people out there as well.

You play as a woman who has been struggling for a long time with the sorts of issues I mentioned above.  One night, a butterfly comes into her room and whisks her away to an abstract and surrealistic world.  As you gain control of the character you find yourself chasing said butterfly while skateboarding along a winding path as you make jumps and avoid obstacles. As you slide and swerve through the stage, the dark blues and purples of the environment surround you and the striking neon accents highlight your objectives and add a sort of shimmer and brilliance to the darkened areas.  A EDM remix of Debussy's Clair de Lune accompanies you while you absorb the gorgeous and breathtaking experience of the first level.  As the music and game crescendo, you'll finally fly off of the end of the level to try to grab the illusive butterfly only to see a tarot card of the The Fool flash before our eyes and thusly changing our protagonist into her masked altar ego.  The metaphor isn't subtle and we know our heroine considers herself a fool for trying to chase after and catch something... or someone she knows she can't truly have.  Only through this transformation will she be able to guard herself against her self doubt and continue her journey. 

Each of the next 22 levels serves as a new chapter of this journey.  While the main component of the gameplay consists of gathering various types of hearts to increase your score and up your score multiplier to earn a higher rank, the gameplay style of most levels change considerably. You'll find yourself skateboarding down ramps similar to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, driving a motorcycle through winding city streets while avoiding obstacles, flying and dashing through tunnels a la Tempest, drifting around turns in your car as you traverse the desert at night, and more.  You'll even find yourself in situations reminiscent of a shmup and quite often you'll be in an on rails shooter scenario like Panzer Dragoon.  There is a strong rhythm-game feel to each one of these levels and along with the pop music and graphical aesthetic is one of the only constants you'll have as the game pulls you in so many different directions.  Even with these drastic and sudden style changes, the game never feels like it's spread too thinly in any section and the whole mish-mash of ideas and concepts blend together harmoniously into a exhilarating and cathartic adventure I've never encountered in any other game.  Never does the game feel phoned in or uninspired.  The brilliant and mind-bending mechanics thrown at you masterfully keep you engaged and on your toes.  Even when an idea is only touched on for a brief moment it never feels like a gimmick.

As you twist and turn through these differing levels, the camera perspective changes frequently and serves to alter what I can, for lack of a better word, only describe as attitude. You'll pull into a first person view from an isometric one.  Then, suddenly, the camera will whip around and line up in 3rd person, or even a Dutch angle.  These perspective changes often coincide with the changes in the music that is the driving component of the entire game. There's a special kind of impact of having the game switch to a heart pounding first person view right as the music hits the intense chorus. I couldn't get enough of it. This soundtrack, honestly, could be a stand alone album with the game serving as a sort of interactive music video for it.  The way both mediums work with each other to create such an awe-inspiring blend is beyond reproach. Full of tons of cool beats, interesting and relatable lyrics, and enough hooks to satisfy the most hardened pop aficionado, the music never lets up and never lets you down. The presentation is magnificent and each song suits each level perfectly. They blend so well, in fact, that it's almost indistinguishable whether the game was created to coincide with the music, or if the sound track was scored to fit the game. You'll have demure and minimalistic tracks for slower and more thought provoking stages, bumping and manic beats to accompany the hectic moments of the game, and hook filled vocal tracks to give words to the emotions our protagonist is going through as she has to combat not enemies of the game but also the stages themselves. You'll find yourself singing or humming along to these stages almost constantly. 

One the surface, the game can feel more like a music video than a game itself. Just finishing the levels doesn't require much skill and dying throws you back into the game immediately.  Even if you fail the same part several times in a row, the game will give you a prompt asking you if you'd like to skip ahead. Some of the more bitter reviewers have taken note of this and made their feelings heard. However, once you delve into the scoring side of the game, you begin to learn just how well designed and fun it can be and can stand solidly on its own in teams of gameplay.  As you gather both small and large hearts, your multiplier will increase the leads to an ever increasing score. You'll need to hit certain milestones to gain either a bronze, silver, or gold rank in each of the stages.  Crashing causes you to lose your multiplier, so if you want to get a high score, you'll need to give some effort to learning and perfecting the level. Also hidden in each level are a handful of square hearts and these serve as the game's collectables.  Finding these can be challenging sometimes; and even when they are in plain view, it can take a tricky maneuver to reach them. Learning to rout through the levels while gathering the highest multiplier you can and never crashing a single time can be tough and earning the gold medals on a lot of these levels will take some true skill. Many of these levels took me several tries to master, but it never became tedious or frustrating and all of the crashes felt like my fault. If you ignore the scoring portion of the game, you can just blow through the 23 stages in around an hour and a half or so.  Getting the gold medals and truly learning the stages will take considerably longer. 

In addition to this, all the trophies in the game are tied to Zodiac riddles.  These change the way the way the stages are played and give you alternate objectives.  These range from things like scoring zero points in a level, getting a gold medal on the same stage 3 times in a row, getting all perfects on the quick time events in a specific stage, or earning a rank on the game's endless modes. "Solving" a lot of these riddles was a lot of fun and make me look at the game in a totally different way.  The clues on how to complete these objectives and be a bit obtuse, but isn't that what a riddle is supposed to be about? Speaking of those endless modes, they are there for people who want an additional challenge.  The first of these has you playing through the whole game in one go.  That's not so bad.  The second one has you playing through the whole game in one go without getting hit, failing a jump, or crashing a single time.  Essentially a perfect playthrough...  Good luck!  These Zodiac riddles and additional modes add a considerable amount of depth and replayability to the game.  I'm thankful they are there and I was having a great time trying to complete most of them. I spent some time with the endless modes as well, but didn't want to overspend my time with the game and have it lose some of its magic.  These extracurricular modes are quite challenging and probably would take an order of magnitude more time to complete than earning all of the gold medals on each of the stages.  The only slight negative I have to say about this game is that every trophy in the game is tied to completing these riddles rather than focusing on the game.  I found it strange to have completed all of the stages and still have not unlocked a single trophy. Still, trophies are optional and at their best should serve as hints to secrets or challenges hidden in a game.  In this case, the trophies do exactly that.

So, we have a fun and fluid game that has a lot of replayability and is quite addictive. We have a stunning and beautiful presentation both in terms of the art direction, graphics, and music. And, finally, we have a metaphorical story that has something to important to say about life and confronts the issue that everyone has had to struggle with before. Every component of this game has been handled masterfully and with a sense of compassion, empowerment, and care that caused me to be truly taken aback.  During my first playthrough, I went from feeling wistful, melancholy, invigorated, and revitalized within the span of a couple of hours.  There aren't many movies I've seen that can do this and I actually cried tears of joy for the heroine of this game when it came to its conclusion.  It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a masterpiece by any metric... and can stand proudly along side the other greats of the video game world.  It rivals the best experience I've ever had playing a game and won't soon be forgotten.

Oh, and Queen Latifah narrates the game!

Final Status: Beaten (All gold medals and collectables found.  Almost all Zodiac riddles completed)

Final Score: 10/10 (Masterpiece)