Asterigos: Curse of the Stars Review – A Proper Imitation

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is a Souls-like Action RPG from Acme Gamestudio and tinyBuild Games. You might have seen our coverage of it earlier this year when Keith and I got to play it at PAX East. Although we experienced some issues with the demo at tinyBuild’s booth, we both felt it had potential. Thankfully, it feels like we were right.

Developer: Acme Gamestudio
Publisher: tinyBuild Games
Release Date: October 11th, 2022
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Aphes, Fathers and the Curse of Asterigos:

Asterigos picks up just as the game’s protagonist, Hilda, washes up on shore after her ship capsizes off the coast of foreign lands. Determined to locate her father and bring her home, Hilda gathers her gear, in hopes of finding a way into Aphes. Upon entering the city, however, she finds it abandoned, only finding small clues as to what happened to her father and his soldiers.

Soon after, Hilda is captured and presented to some of the survivors of Aphes. After informing them of who she is and of her mission, she makes a deal with the surviving members of Aphes. By helping them to survive and potentially break the curse of Asterigos, they’ll help her locate her father.

There isn’t always a lot going, but Hilda often keeps you paying attention by narrating what’s going on in her surroundings. Heading back to your hub area is where you’ll get most of your information dumps, as well as perform general self-maintenance. Sometimes you’ll run into someone outside who will provide you with new story elements as well.

Hilda is a likable protagonist as are the people she meets along the way. As for me, I was genuinely interested about Aphes, the curse, and the fate of the Northwind legion. I felt it was a story that was intriguing and serviceable enough to keep you on the hook.

How Asterigos is Similar to Souls-Likes:

There are quite a number of mechanics from the Souls series that have seemingly inspired Asterigos’ gameplay. We’ll start with the overall world design. It features a hub area, and connected to it are these paths that take you to different parts of Aphes. When you start out, Minerva, one of Aphes leaders, tasks you with visiting one area. Once that area was completed, I was allowed more access to Aphes with three new areas opening up. Each one sporting a specific objective.

Exploring these locations oftentimes led to new sidequests, shortcuts, and conduits that function like bonfires. Sidequests are given by NPC’s or doors marked by a lit candle, and their requests range from simple to long-term chores. Player action might make some side quests incompletable, so it’s worth taking note if you’re reading this right now. I accidentally killed an NPC I thought was an enemy, which led to my quest NPC despawning entirely. I do not think that was a bug.

At your hub area, you’ll interact with story-specific NPCs, manage your inventory and upgrade Hilda’s arsenal. Through exploration, you’ll discover items that can upgrade your facilities. Fast travel is unlocked by completing story objectives, which allows Hilda to jump around from conduit to conduit.

How Asterigos Differs From Souls:

For starters, Asterigos is a much easier game to play and it sports a difficulty selection you can change at any time. For me, I found normal to be quite easy in most areas aside from the bosses. They’re often hulking creatures that will punish you for your mistakes. However, they never felt unbeatable.

Where death is concerned, it works in a similar way, where death will take you back to the last conduit you activated. All enemies respawn as well, but you don’t lose all of your Stardust, which works as currency in Aphes. Instead, you only lose a small portion of your dust, and there’s no need to retrace your steps to recover anything.

Defeating enemies will earn players experience points which Hilda can use to level up. Leveling up will earn players skill and talent points that go into increasing stats as well as unlocking new skills. Hilda can access new perks that increase her health, and some perks even have negative effects for a “risk versus reward” situation. Do you want to find more loot? You can do that, but you’ll have to be okay with carrying fewer health potions, for example.

Weapons aren’t earned from bosses, purchased or looted. Instead, Hilda gets them at the beginning of the game, and you’ll upgrade them via collected materials and stardust. Applying skill points to their weapon trees will also make them more effective in battle. For instance, I mainly used the staff, which could be improved upon to require fewer resources and expand its combo chain.

But How Does it Run?

One of the first things I noticed about Asterigos was its lack of animations. Not where bigger details are concerned like weapon attacks or anything like that, but in the smaller details. For instance, Hilda’s mouth doesn’t move when she talks outside of conversation. The same goes for how animated she is during conversations, if she moves at all. Those are little pet peeves, but they did bother me.

Enemies that are farther away on screen tend to lack any kind of framerate. You’ll often notice them lumbering around like they’re animated by a slideshow. That being said, enemy designs are fun and varied. You’ll fight werewolves, harpies, automatons, etc. There’s just a fun mix of fantasy and mythical creatures in the game.

Aphes also benefits from the developer’s dedication to variety. Hilda will venture into the heart of the city and beyond. You’ll visit a bazaar, a military academy, decrepit prison, and the wilderness surrounding the city as well. Much like Souls, it’s all connected in a fun way as well, and it’s easy to wander off the path and into another zone. That being said, the textures do look a little muddy at times, some surroundings do blend together slightly.

Should You Play It?

I found it very easy to lose time while playing Asterigos. Personally, I appreciate Acme’s focus on delivering a solid narrative experience while making the formula a bit more approachable for casual players. The downside is that it doesn’t necessarily offer the same challenge as other games it tries to imitate.

It doesn’t elevate the genre, yet for what it does, it does it well on a solid foundation. If you’re looking for a game that will make your cheeks tighten and your palms sweat, you won’t find that here. However, if you’re an aficionado of Souls-like games, Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is worth the experience.

Review Disclosure Statement: Asterigos: Curse of the Stars was provided to us by tinyBuild for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info. 

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