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Genre: Souls-like action RPG
Developer: Acme Gamestudio
Publisher: tinyBuild
Release Date: October 11th, 2022
Edited by AlexKnight2005
In today’s installment of which tinyBuild game I’m reviewing, here we have Asterigos: Curse of the Stars. It is a souls-like action RPG game developed by Taiwan-based Acme Gamestudio. The studio’s first Steam title ends up being yet another title in a rather long string of interesting tinyBuild games.
You play as Hilda, a young female warrior, on a quest to find her father, who had left on a mission, leaving Hilda behind. It is up to her to journey to the cursed city of Aphes to find him and discover what happened to the city. As soon as you reach Aphes, though, the plot thickens — the titular curse of Asterigos has somehow cursed the citizens to be immortal, but with a vicious need for stardust.
At some point, you are captured and basically forced to work with a series of these cursed citizens in a hidden shelter — though you do maintain a degree of freedom to explore, limited based on the technical design of the world. You have to accept quests from Minerva, the so-called leader of this underground cabal (for lack of a better term), before you can then explore the city of Aphes and complete these quests.
Before all that, there is an introductory section that teaches you the main things to do in this game. Unsurprisingly, it is pretty combat-based. You spend the first period of time acquiring (or rather, re-acquiring) all your weapons. Eventually, you get a full set of 6 weapons to switch from, with only two being able to be used at any point in time. There are also auxiliary weapons like bombs and throwing knives, though I generally barely use these, either.
For the most part, you at least do have some freedom in your playstyle to pick a specific series of weapons. My main combo of choice ended up as the spear and the staff — a combination where I can deal close-ranged damage or long-ranged damage. This is especially useful when it comes to dealing with incredibly tanky enemies that hit like a truck; I can simply kite them, hang back and whittle them down with ranged blasts from my staff before moving in for the finishing blow with some good melee strikes.
The bulk of the game, thus, is to navigate the sprawling and large world of Aphes to complete these quest objectives. On your way from point A to B, there are bunches of enemies to either take down or get the heck away from. At designated points, there will also be large and challenging bosses to beat the crap out of. There are semi-regular save/respawn points throughout the world too, where you either load from or respawn if you fall in battle (along with the slight loss of a currency).
Leveling up gives you a small amount of talent and ability points to spend. Talent points are key here, as you have to spend them in a manner that benefits your main choice of weapons. Because of the small numbers you get, there is no point in, say, spending talent points on the dagger’s side of the skill tree when you are using the spear. At least there is an avenue to reset them. Unlocking these talents helps to unlock further the potential of your chosen weaponry, which is pretty neat.
Coupled with the surprising and incredibly extensive story, this world is incredibly fleshed out. There is a ton of dialogue going on in the game, with immense amounts of lore to read through. This is localized well for the most part. However, as Acme Gamestudio is based in Taiwan, there are expectedly a few gaps here and there, where the localization quality ends up tying a few awkward grammar knots.
As for the bosses, they are generally unique and varied. All typically larger than life, they have intricate sets of abilities which you must carefully figure out how best to dodge. Easier said than done in most cases, but at least you can pick from 3 difficulty settings before you start the game (I picked the middle one, so I’m doing decently enough, falling once in a while but not too much to get me too frustrated altogether).
It’s a bit of a shame that exploring ends up becoming a chore after a while. The audiovisual aspects of the game are excellent! The graphics are incredibly gorgeous, the world designs are incredible, and the music is pretty fitting (if subdued), but then you marry it to an insane amount of backtracking and exploration needed, which saps the experience slightly. You aren’t even given any map feature either, so you’ll have to try to memorize best where you have been and where you have not. On top of all that, enemies also tend to respawn when you leave and re-enter an area, forcing you to either battle through them or attempt to run past them, neither option of which is particularly fun. It’s interesting the first time until it outright devolves into button-mashing once again.
Asterigos is also recommended to be played on a controller. However, I played it just fine on the keyboard and mouse. It’s not perfect, however. Some of the bindings are questionable and make my fingers reach places I’d not normally reach in other games.
Pros:
- Challenging boss battles
- Toggle-able difficulty settings
- Stellar audiovisual aspects
Cons:
- An absolute chore to explore
- Occasionally questionable localization
K3W3L gives Asterigos: Curse of the Stars a Drastik Measure of 7.0 out of 10.0 (70)
Even at $34.99 on Steam, Asterigos: Curse of the Stars has a solidly decent runtime — something to look into should you tire of the more well-known souls-likes. There is a DLC in the works, but egregiously, no upgrade path for the more expensive deluxe or ultimate editions, shafting consumers who only got the base game.
