Aethermancer

First time writing a review and it's for a game I adoreee! If you guys cannot tell already by the playtime, I am obsessed with Aethermancer. I stumbled upon the demo, played it and just fell in love with the game immediately. I haven't played too many rougelite monster catchers like Aethermancer, but I'm kinda hooked on the genre now. What I love about this game are its music, pixelated art style, the diverse battle system and creatures. That's not to say it doesnt't have its flaws but since it is still early access I still have high hopes that the devs will turn it out great!

Like Monster Sanctuary meets Hades but minus the fun, at least not to me. The balance is whack and variety is garbage. 40 monsters just doesn't cut it honestly, and even the 60 planned on "full release" sounds pretty terrible. If you want to scratch that Creature Collection itch, and haven't yet, play Monster Sanctuary. It's pretty great

Overall an ok game, but pretty repetitive and very slow with adding new content. There are spots of dialogue that are extremely awkward shoehorned in politics that really make me question the judgement of the devs.

If you enjoy roguelikes, creature collection and teambuilding - then give it a shot. Its a fantastic game!

This game had been appearing in my queue, it was on sale, reviews were decent. I looked at it and thought "Oh, so it's like Wizard of Legend + creature collecting? I can dig that." Besides I hadn't found anything else during the last steam sale that I was really into, and just wanted to come away from it with something. Maybe I should've just let the sale slide and kept my $20. The problems with this game can be tied to one key word: Progression. Interestingly, I mean this in three ways: gameplay progression, plot progression, and political progression. Gameplay: I did binge-play this game for a few days, I will give it that much. I did have to crank up the combat speed in settings to offset how slow it felt, but otherwise in many ways I enjoyed the tactical RPG system, which was sort of a combo of various other systems I'd seen implemented, between its emphasis on buffs/debuffs, breaking mechanics, and points-based skill usage. That being said, a lot of battles end up turning into a grind when you just don't have the means to quickly or efficiently stagger foes. Against bosses, staggering feels especially unrewarding. The concepts are all there, I think, they just lack proper execution. Perhaps in time, since this is still early access, the devs will do something to make each encounter more diverse and fast-paced. Right now though, it feels very grind-y. And the bosses (the two that I have been able to encounter, anyway) are way too strong and have ironically godlike mechanics. Plot: Wait, what? There's a plot to this game? I never would've guessed. There's just no background, no proper exposition, no context; characters reference other characters and you just have NO CLUE who or what they are talking about. It's like you went out to lunch with your new friend and your friend's childhood friend, and the two of them practically share their own unique language and you are left on the sidelines. Political: Okay seriously, even to many people on the left, this game has WAAAAY too many they/them pronouns. Forget the political statement you're trying to make or the worldview you are attempting to represent; this is just really bad for storytelling. Again with the plot problems. I reached my limit of -trying- to comprehend what was going on when this old aethermancer ghost appeared and started chatting with the protagonist after I got WIPED by that beetle boss guy, and there is just NO WAY to piece sense together from their conversation. Also my limit for playing the game in its current state, for all of the above reasons. I do want to like this game. I like roguelikes and I like creature collecting, and in theory I like them both together. This game just needs some work done. I do hope the developers pay attention to everything players are saying about the early access version.

So ugh.. I renamed Cockatrice to C*ck and I'm not sure how to change the name back 🤣 Pretty fun game though

Finally, a roguelike "deck builder" that isn't based on cards!