A Highland Song

While platforming, rhythm, and navigation mechanics might clash at times, turning the map upside down reveals a game that puts all in service of nature and experience.

A mismatched mix of genres grafted onto a moving, beautifully presented story.

A Highland Song is a beautiful snapshot of wild places and wild stories, but it stumbles a bit in the process of encouraging you to run into them.

A Highland Song's folklore-infused adventure takes "walking simulator" to the extreme, as you pull its teen runaway Moira up and down the cliffs and mountains of the Scottish highlands, finding treasures, music, and magic along the way. But its repetitious nature wears away the joy of exploration, and further playthroughs are a struggle between the thrill of new discoveries and the tedium of having to retread old ground.

A Highland Song successfully brings the awe-inspiring freedom of Breath of the Wild to the Scottish Highlands.

A Highland Song is a wonderful adventure through mountains that were old before people arrived and will be there long after their ruins have eroded away. Moira's journey is as much about the Scottish Highlands as it is about her life so far, with history and myth being equally important to both. It can sometimes take some thinking and experimentation to find the way through a new area, clambering back and forth over rocks and cliffs to find a clue that points to the path forward, but the information is there for an attentive explorer to uncover. It all comes together to make for an engaging, unforgettable and frequently musical trek you'll want to make several times over to learn the histories and hidden paths of Moira's mountain home.

A Highland Song combines 2D platforming, adventure game elements, survival mechanics, and rhythm sections into a compelling but occasionally confusing package.

A Highland Song has amazing atmosphere and audiovisuals in general. The rest is quite lacking in direction, though.

While playing A Highland Song we were immediately captivated by its graphic style. The hand-painted Scottish countryside enticed us to travel the moors and hills together with Moira. The hidden objects and stories surrounding these landscapes encourage deeper exploration. The system of finding maps and the points indicated on them is an interesting diversification and an ingenious idea to give our journey a destination. The accompanying music fits in with its calm gameplay, while the rhythm game elements could have been better realised, perhaps by aiming for a different difficulty threshold: two-button combinations are not enough, and in the end A Highland Song is too easy. The plot is simple but clear, and the stories of Moira and her uncle that accompany the game perfectly complement the story. The voice acting is excellent, and we enjoyed the Scottish accent of the main characters. It's just a shame that there is no Italian translation available, which does not make A Highland Song easy to enjoy for those unfamiliar with English. A Highland Song deserves players' attention. The market needs games of this kind: simple, with a good story and attractive, stylish graphics.

A Highland Song is frequently beautiful, elegiac and magical, but one’s tolerance for its somewhat uneven gameplay will impact enjoyment.