AETHERIS

Rarely do I bother to write a review, but I feel like this game deserves one. I gave it a few runs and a fair shake, but the game balance and RNG can be incredibly brutal. I normally don't really mind that in games, but I feel like this one just really does not click with me. Unlike most of the recent reviews, I've not really run into any performance issues aside from a bit of minor lag here and there. Let's start with the good: Aesthetically unique and beautiful. Graphically it can be a little busy, but I do think it has a wonderful amount of character. The colors are vibrant and lovely, the animations have a kind of shadow puppet vibe? It's very cute. The neutral: The music is... fine. It's just fine. I turned it off to play to my own music after my first run. The bad: Alright. Here we go. I wouldn't have written a review if I didn't have Opinions. 1. The RNG. Absolutely brutal RNG sometimes--the equipment that drops, the skills you get... it could end up that you're through the first area and you just don't find anything that's particularly helpful. Having some early weapons drop with absolutely crippling skill debuffs like a whopping -40 accuracy and -2 movement and finding absolutely nothing else helpful, or just finding absolutely no ranged weaponry whatsoever... building a character for magic attacks but finding no reusable skills. I found it quite difficult to get an alright build off the ground. 2. Enemy summons. They can act the turn that they're summoned, resulting in some absolutely brutal snowballing. In a game like this, where action economy is king, the enemy summoning several allies and completely bloating the action economy feels incredibly difficult to recover from, especially when each enemy that gets summoned has the potential to shank you twice, or completely cripple you with debuffs. I would probably suggest not allowing enemy summons to act the turn they're summoned, or move the summons to the very end of the initiative track, at least. I've run into several infuriating fights with enemies rolling 22+ on initiative, summoning several enemies, and then absolutely dog-piling one single character before I could even act to do anything in response. 3. Unclear interactions. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the heck is up with tall grass. My best guess is that I can't target things inside tall grass with ranged attacks? It would probably benefit from an explanation somewhere. 4. Movement. Occasionally, movement on the hex tiles is slightly blocked by enemies, making you unable to click on certain hexes in your movement range. Additionally, you cannot move through your allies, resulting in some incredibly awkward placement on maps. 5. Spirit points/SP. You can only regenerate these at campsites, but in later areas it feels like every freaking enemy has some way of draining your SP. Going back to the aforementioned magic-based characters finding nothing reusable--there are some reusable spells that cost turn-regenerating resources to use, but occasionally you will build a character for magic but are only able to find magic spells that cost SP. Enemies draining SP when it's already such a limited resource (you use it to reroll your level up stat bonuses and skills, too! It's very important!) makes this resource scarcity go from Feels Bad to Absolutely Infuriating. 6. The spirit system. I'm... logically okay with the spirit system, but... and it could simply be because I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how to play the game. That's possible. But it seems like the game encourages you to play without spirits because you unlock more achievements/skills for defeating certain enemies without spirits equipped. But there's no way to get more villagers? So once you lose your villagers... I don't know? I have yet to do a run using spirits because I feel like I'm supposed to be going spiritless to unlock more new skills. It just seems like a very odd system. Not my favorite approach to meta progression. 7. Slow pacing. The characters walk in a straight line, and I feel like I would almost prefer if it just skipped from one node to the next. The walking in-between makes the game feel bloated and slow. There are too many loading screens that require me to click to proceed. 8. Sluggish UI/annoying UI design. I'm not a big fan of the menus, either. I wish I could drag and drop accessories into the slots, and I often click an accessory and miss the secondary prompt to actually equip it. I don't need to watch XP being allocated. The level-up screen takes a hot minute to show up, as well. Resting takes quite long. Just a lot of small things that add up to making the game feel quite bloated. 9. Winning feels sluggish. Losing feels sluggish. I've not really had a single fight where I felt like I was really powerful. It often feels like I'm chasing highly mobile enemies around on the map, with a distinct lack of ranged options at my disposal. And when I'm losing, it also feels like a frustratingly slow death march where I know I can't win but the enemies draw it out as long as possible. I really cannot explain why, the pacing just feels off no matter which end of the win/lose spectrum you're on. Now it might sound like I hated the game, and that's... not strictly true. I think there's the basis of a good game in there, but it really does need a bit more polish and love to get there.

有点意思，不过比很有意思还差点意思， 最后只能随便意思意思.. -养成方向，无局外+少继承+流程短+加成弱，突出一个力小砖不飞； -战旗方向，怪物数值高+很难随出需求技能，硬是打不过如之奈何； -RPG方向，流程固定+属性低时固定负面事件，几周目下来心力憔悴，毫无进步。 美工和音乐可圈可点，总感觉怪物下回合就会滋哇乱叫， 最终还是自己被怪打的咕呱惨叫.. 说到底 RPG/战旗 是一种耗时长，要求高的游戏大类， 内卷严重，最终只有 超厉害值得一玩，和平平无奇浪费时间两种判断标准，令人唏嘘..

No one denies that the game is beautiful, it really is. But it is also very boring and frustrating. The combat is sluggish and I found myself rarely using a special ability over auto attacks. The resource management structure of your mana/spirit/HP is frustrating. The only way to restore HP or spirit is by resting, and you can only pick one OR the other... meaning if one of your dudes is almost dead and the rest are full HP, you either run the rest of the battles with the low HP guy in the back doing nothing, or you full heal him and forgo restoring the spirit resource which is the main way to cast your alternate non-auto attack abilities. Same goes for spirit, if you manage to get an ability that isn't worthless, you're penalized for using it because spirit generally doesn't regen and is only gained from resting. I reached the 5th stage and suicided my last remaining character (I reached a level where the mobs would infinitely respawn but they couldn't damage my tank) in hopes that there were new character creation options upon a fresh playthrough. However, I didn't see any indication that told me this next run would be any less slow and boring as the last. The event RNG was frustrating, items were either useless or obvious upgrades, and when a party member dies they're gone.... might as well restart at that point. I didn't have fun playing this and it made me sad they didn't playtest this game more before release. It could have at least been decent.

Game could be good but too many issue to recommend it - RNG is always against you. - The view on battle grid is bad and you can't see very well where you are on it when too many enemies are around - The AP (mana) can only be recover if you rest mana at the camp. This become even worst later in the run as most enemies are stealing AP. - because of the Above, any type of mage is useless as you never have any mana to use skills. - The Order of the boss are always the same. Advise to make the game more enjoyable: - Fix the RNG. You cannot miss 90% three times in a row. - Make recover of mana (AP) and health at the camp when - random order of the boss. Make choosing the path - Boss cannot summon and attack on the same turn.

Great & short Roguelite. Enjoyed it from start to finish. Much skill synergies and build variety. Best part about the game would be event and item variety. Even after 60 hours of gameplay there are still new items to find. Low note would be the overall lengths of the game, not that its bad, i just wish it was longer in some way Had fun 7/10

I have no idea why people are complaining so much about the combat being boring. You might just be a boring person. I found tons of fun and interesting ways to make effective parties. This game is beautiful and every last pixel was crafted with love. Bravo, Wild Wits. Do more co-op like this, i will buy at least two.

Very charming game. I love the maximalist, ornamental, handmade art style, and I like that it's a tactically engaging game that isn't very demanding that I can enjoy with friends for a welcome change of pace. We don't really care about the difficulty so far, but maybe that's because a) we haven't had to do many runs yet b) half of the gameplay for us is playing dolls with our Vazzards, they're just neat little guys

画风就是色彩堆砌，花哨但并不好看。玩法随机性太大而且不平衡，从平常的事件选项到战斗、升级，自己能掌握的不多，靠运气。

Aetheris has really interesting visuals and a unique character progression system wherein you can choose from a group of abilities partially unlocked from defeating monsters with said abilities or accomplishing other achievements. The combat is a little slow and there isn't another permanent progression mechanism, so the $25 price tag is fairly wild. Get it on a deep sale if you're into this style of play.

Unfair strategy game ... In most strategy games, when an enemy summons units, the summoned units are SUPPOSED to disappear when they die, same as for the player. If a player dies, he loses, but this game concept seems to go beyond what's normally accepted as a norm. Also, too much RNG also. Not enjoyable in the least. Played the demo, bought the game, continued my first run, refunded. Cya NEVER. Also having a trash enemy that's not even a mini-boss able to literraly 2 SHOT one of your party members that is TANKY AS HELL for NO REASONS, forcing them to revive, then to get TWO SHOTED AGAIN (IN THE SAME TURN BY THE SAME ENEMY WHO CAN ATTACK 4 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TIMES IN A ROW) and permanently dying. Naaaaa, that's BS ! Take that ♥♥♥♥♥, and shove it up yo ass :) Go play Aethermancer ... SO MUCH BETTER, SO MUCH BETTER BALANCE AND FUN BUILDS TO DO WITHOUT GARBAGE RNG. (Only a demo right now, but even a demo is better than this game).