Review: Winds of Change (Nintendo Switch)

Winds of Change is a fantasy visual novel in which you play as a Seer (or Seeress) whose job is to lead a Rebellion against the unjust leaders of your land. You will have plenty of people to meet throughout the story, as well as plenty of decisions to make. Based on your choices and how you communicate with the different characters, you determine the relationships you build with them.

The fun thing about Winds of Change is that even as you read along and work your way through the story, you can examine rooms, read side stories, and discover more information through books you can find.

The story begins with you waking up to your village being burned to the ground. Your “scribe” greets you as you try to remember who you are and who are the people around you. Following the characters Valessa and Ulric, you soon come across Sovy, who seems to be behind this whole mess. Carrying some special blade, he stabs you, which causes you to wake up and realize this was a vision. Your next step is to figure out how to prevent the scary prophecy you just had. This is where you are finally able to explore more areas, meet new people, and find out more about your land.

The controls for this game are pretty straight forward. If you do ever get confused, the plus button will take you to the settings for help. Here, you can also access audio controls, your save games, and much more. A nice feature here is the ability to reread any conversation you just had in case you clicked a wrong reply or missed something important.

Outside of the settings, you can interact with anything in the background as long as a speech bubble appears.

Around the screen are different characters with whom you can speak or listen in on their conversations with each other. The game lets you know early on that once you get characters in your party, it’s good to talk to them all, and revisit old areas to talk to new people you may have met.

When talking to the characters, you will see that the entire story (besides the narration and your thoughts/answers) is voice acted, and surprisingly well. While this is super cool, I did have to skip through after a while as I read faster than they talked. However, the characters also have a wide range of emotions and poses which help the story to feel more natural.

The scenery in this game is also super pretty with lots to look at and discover. The music is nice to listen to and does not distract from the narrative.

Winds of Change is a really good story with a lot of cool characters, though there does seem to be a lot more men than women, especially in the beginning. This could be a downside depending upon with whom you’d like to flirt, but otherwise isn’t a problem.

Playing as the main hero, the game really does make you feel important, and helps you to empathize with those around you, as it’s your job to keep them safe.

Winds of Change digs deeply into friendship and spirituality. This keeps the story interesting and fun to play, but also challenging as you want to make sure you make all the right decisions.

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