Aura: Fate of the Ages Image
Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

  • Summary: Aura's powerful story is based on an ancient legend that decrees that four sacred rings will bring great strength, power and immortality to he/she who collects them. Players must embark on a journey across four magical worlds as they search for the elusive rings. As they find each ring, another world opens up en route to completing this mystical quest. Aura is a challenging first person puzzle exploration game that uses an easy to navigate mouse driven, point and click interface. Players will need to solve a variety of ingenious fully-animated puzzles using logic, reasoning and common sense. [Adventure Company] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 26
  2. Negative: 3 out of 26
  1. A stunning journey, more so in its visual splendor and complex gameplay than its weak narrative, but a journey that every self-proclaimed adventure gamer should experience.
  2. Clever and surprisingly rational, Aura is only let down by plot and game length. [Oct 2004, p.96]
  3. 73
    What little Aura does to advance the genre it does remarkably well. In an age when encountering logical puzzles is as rare as pooping out gold nuggets, Aura shines as a game that attempts to bring a little reason into the mix.
  4. It's not all bad. Apart from the acting and character animation. Oh, and the interface. And the story. True, some of the puzzles do make a twisted kind of sense. But there's nothing gripping about it. Life's too short, basically.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 3
  2. Negative: 1 out of 3
  1. 7
    This is a very good Myst clone combining sci-fi & fantasy environments. If fact, I was very surprised to see this was not made by the developers of Myst because the similarities are so striking. The story is weak and the storytelling is worse, but the puzzle adventure aspects are superbly done and make up for those shortcomings. Expand
  2. Definitely one for Myst-heads, but for the rest of us, this "puzzle" genre of games has some nice points but equally some annoying ones. For the nice points, it is very Myst like, looks good for a 2004 game, and has a strong emphasis on puzzles. For the annoying points, you spend the first 2-3 hours of play trying to solve puzzles that simply cannot be because the order is wrong, and doing a lot of screen scraping to make sure you find everything. I use "puzzle" in quotes as the definition of puzzles here is to find one obscure item, plug it into another that may or may not make sense, and then move along to start on the next obscure item. There is no real coherent reason why most puzzles are even there, which brings me to the last point, the story or lack of. It is such a light story that you never really feel part of anything at all. Again like Myst, I felt I glided through the game, separate to it, not acting as a character in the game. A fine game for for Myst heads, for the rest of us, well, there's a reason why this genre of puzzle/adventure games are niche (and probably extinct) at this stage. Expand
  3. 4
    A Myst clone, and not exactly a good one. Rather than solving puzzles, you spend most of your time sweeping your cursor over every inch of the screen, hoping that there will be something you can interact with. The story itself was completely unengaging. Pretty for 2004 standards, but it doesn't do well on a modern PC. Expand