Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is a new action RPG developed by Acme Gamestudio and published by tinyBuild. The game takes heavy inspiration from Greek mythology and delivers on crafting a fully realized 3d world that can provide a fun 13-15 hour adventure to players. However, the gameplay often falls short of its full potential and failed to give me a truly satisfying experience throughout.

The story of Asterigos follows the young warrior Hilda, a member of the prestigious Northwind Legion. She is sent on a mission to find her father, (a commander of the legion) after his forces go missing in the cursed city of Aphes. The curse that afflicts Aphes causes the denizens to mutate into many horrible monstrosities. After allying herself with an Aphesian named Minerva, Hilda finds herself traveling to many areas of the city to solve various problems, all while inching ever closer to discovering the true nature of the curse.

This is certainly an interesting enough premise that utilizes its mythological inspiration well. The characters you meet along the way are memorable, with distinct personalities and motivations. Hilda herself, however, often comes off as whiny and the writing can feel amateurish at times. I also enjoyed exploring the city and finding hidden lore details scattered around each area. I wish this environmental storytelling was utilized more heavily, as much of the story is conveyed through massive dumps of exposition that were a little tedious at times.

The gameplay is centered around exploration and combat. Hilda can equip two central weapons from an arsenal that is available right from the start, allowing you to try out different combinations. As you gain experience and level up, each weapon can also be upgraded to increase damage or unlock unique skills. Combat is relatively simplistic and usually boils down to mashing a single combo over and over while evading enemy attacks and employing weapon skills to increase damage. This is accompanied by some extremely clunky mobility mechanics that often turn easy encounters into something irritating.

The hitboxes and animations are some of the biggest hindrances to this combat system. It can be extremely difficult to evade some attacks efficiently due to the often awkward animations from specific creatures. Additionally, getting hit by certain attacks will leave Hilda trapped in absurdly slow stun animations that allow enemies to continue draining your HP. This was incredibly annoying and often caused me to die feeling as though there was nothing I could have done to prevent it.

Exploration is another key aspect of Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, though it often feels lacking from a reward standpoint. Many of the hidden treasures I discovered in each area did little to help me on my quest. As a result, I often found myself more interested in heading straight to the next boss.

Another big issue is how linear Asterigos is. Although every level feels distinct in terms of visuals, enemy types, and boss encounters, the gameplay is always a rinse-and-repeat of repeated combat encounters. It would have been nice to have some puzzles to help spice things up once and a while.

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars was also quite buggy at times, which is a shame considering the visuals are one of the strongest parts of the game. Pop-in was often common and I had a few visual glitches while Hilda remained idle in the world or during combat. One particularly frustrating example occurred in a mine where an enemy’s ranged attack phased through the wall and hit me. The resulting hit stun animation caused my character to fall to her demise out of nowhere. Fortunately, these issues should be easy to fix with a patch and often don’t do much but hurt player immersion.

My favorite thing about Asterigos is the music. There are some wonderful compositions here that provide solid background tunes for each area and help to increase the visual distinction of each new environment. The sound design is also solid with attacks that manage to feel appropriately weighty.

While I appreciated the worldbuilding and ambitions of Asterigos, I was less than impressed by the gameplay and story choices that often felt outdated and needlessly contrived at times. This game occupies a similar space to many other titles but never succeeds in delivering something truly original. It can certainly be a decent addition to your library if you can get it on sale, but I wouldn’t go in expecting something truly revolutionary.

   A PC review copy of Asterigos: Curse of the Stars was provided by tinyBuild for this review. 

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Asterigos Curse of the Stars

34.99

5.5

Score

5.5/10

Pros

• Nicely rendered world
• Solid music
• Interesting Enemy Design

Cons

• Clunky movement
• Hitboxes are frustrating
• Linear gameplay