Asterigos: Curse of the Stars – Review

Many games borrow Greek myths for their settings, and although this is common practice, only a few games truly stand out by employing their source material properly. Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is a recently released game that also employs this mythology while applying a few changes to spice things up. However, does it truly utilize the wealth of content featured in Hellenistic culture, or is it just mere dressing?

Story

The game’s story follows a young warrior named Hilda as she delves into the ruined city of Arges in order to find her father and his troop. Along the way, she discovers the inhabitants of the city have been mutated by the titular curse of the stars brought upon the land by the city’s tyrant king. Working with an underground resistance, Hilda will slowly uncover the causes behind the mysterious stars while finding clues about her father.

Overall, Asterigos’ story is somewhat bland, only featuring a hook while mostly being divided into disconnected chapters. The actions taken in one chapter barely affect anything else, only serving as diversions from the main objective. Being constrained to help the resistance for most of the game means Hilda’s search for her father is completely relegated to the background, with the other narratives taking the front row instead.

Graphics

Asterigos’ graphics consist of pretty decent 3D models with somewhat bland textures. Featuring a decent amount of setting and enemy variety, the game’s overall cartoony look somewhat subtracts from the attempted serious atmosphere. Besides this, the areas in the game feel rather dead, with low amounts of NPCs, with those that exist being completely static and bland. Although there’s the aforementioned setting variety, when you’re inside the areas themselves the world becomes rather confusing due to the utter lack of memorable landmarks and paths all looking the same.

Sound

The game’s sound design is pretty decent, with a serviceable soundtrack that does not particularly stand out and alright voice acting that gives a bit of life to the characters. That said, nothing is really unique or serves to elevate the experience. Everything is simply alright and easily forgettable.

Gameplay

Although Asterigos is tagged as a Soulslike on its Steam page, the game feels more like a poor imitation of the genre than a real one. Borrowing the stamina, checkpoint, and dodge-roll systems, Asterigos sets out to make the experience more streamlined by providing a set of six weapons Hilda can use from the start while also adding a perk tree.

While a fixed set of weapons does allow players to familiarize themselves better with a particular fighting style, it also has the downside of not changing even in the later parts of the game. Making things worse, upgrading Hilda’s weapons requires considerable amounts of materials, thus making swapping back to alternatives even less optimal. Furthermore, amongst Hilda’s arsenal there are weapons that are leaps and bounds more powerful than others. Featuring bracelets, a spear, a hammer, a staff, a sword and shield, and daggers, only the latter three are particularly effective. Being a ranged weapon with fast attack speed, the staff is easily one of the most powerful options, requiring little more than button-mashing and maintaining distance to cheese bosses and normal enemies alike.

This difference in strength combined with the lack of variety makes Asterigos’s combat rather bland. The stamina management from Souls games is limited to little more than not dodging too much in a row. Only the weapons’ hard attacks consume a reasonable amount of stamina, which is easily offset by the fast regeneration.

As players progress through the game, they’ll also begin unlocking perks that will strengthen their build. This is achieved by leveling up through monster hunting, which grants a perk point and several stat points. Even with this perk tree, the status quo remains the same, possibly even making swapping to uninvested weapons worse, since they won’t have their perks and special attacks unlocked. While said special attacks can be used regardless of the main and secondary weapons equipped, investing in the branch for a weapon that’s not in use will only hinder players. Funnily enough, this issue disappears as the game progresses with perk points being relatively easy to attain and plentiful enough to max out everything.

The stats that can be increased in Asterigos are also a simplified version of a normal RPG, being limited to damage, health, and resource regeneration. Despite requiring some investment in all three to make the experience smoother, glass cannon builds are somewhat encouraged by enemies dealing massive amounts of damage and defense items not existing. Although a few trinkets can be crafted in the blacksmith, they only marginally increase Hilda’s overall resistance. It all boils down to raw health points being the only measure of defense.

Conclusion

Overall Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is a rather bland and harmless game that doesn’t bring anything new to the table and seems to squander its influences. While it might be entertaining for a while and perhaps a good starting point for those looking to get into Soulslikes (albeit a dumbed-down version), it doesn’t offer anything that other games haven’t done better. Sold for €/$34,99 or £29.99, it is hard to recommend purchasing the game at full price.

Personal Opinion

“Honestly, Asterigos is incredibly bland and forgettable. It feels like eating oatmeal, which fills you up (in this case it fills your time) but doesn’t really offer much more than fiber, thus being easier to evacuate later. Having invested a good bunch of hours into Asterigos has left me without any particularly strong feelings about the game, especially since about 6 hours in I just tuned out and started listening to podcasts on the side, with the story having nothing to offer. I was honestly disappointed with the handful of side-quests in the game offering nothing substantial. Would I say the game is bad? Certainly not, but it definitely is mediocre at best.”

Noparg

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No longer writing for the site, pursuing other things.

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