Apotheon

"The earth dies, Nikandreos, and Olympus has turned its back on mankind. With no salvation left in the hands of the old Gods, you must ascend and take what is theirs by force. You must become the new vessel... You must become the Apotheon."

As an archaeologist, my favorite part of Apotheon is how uniquely it brings Ancient Greece and its mythology to life. The visual style feels like stepping into an ancient Greek vase painting. While the myths are not presented as strict historical reconstructions, the game captures the spirit of Greek mythology very well. Meeting the gods, exploring their realms, and becoming part of their stories is a genuinely enjoyable experience. A unique game that every mythology enthusiast should try.

I was originally struck by Apotheon's art style, which emulates Ancient Greek black-figure pottery painting. It might look like a Metroidvania, but actually plays more akin to a side-scrolling twin stick shooter, with physics simulation. Ranged weapons and thrown projectiles will arc semi-realistically, while hits from heavy weapons and explosions can send your enemies (or you) flying across the screen. Weapon decay is also a major factor, so you'll often be swapping in new kit in the middle of a frantic melee. Took me a while to get the hang of things, but once I did, it was very satisfying to tear through even the biggest baddies with well-placed tripping attacks and head bonks. The story is very straight forward: The gods have abandoned humanity, so go kill them and take their power to save the world. Your player character has no voice and little agency beyond being told where to go and what to do, but there are a lot of optional routes and side activities to explore. The script is suitably mythic and the entire cast do a terrific job setting the proper tone for this adventure of wrath and retribution. A relatively minor gripe: While the vector-based art looks great at 4k, UI elements were seemingly made with raster graphics which will be almost illegible at any resolution higher than 1080p. Sadly, where Apotheon falls down is in performance. It is frustratingly unstable and crashes a lot, like, constantly. The danger is in moving from zone to zone, so always make a manual save before entering any door or magic portal, because you should never lose over an hour of playtime just from picking up a mission objective, which then instantly warps you to the next level. This bug plagued me increasingly over the course of the game such that I was afraid of not even being able to finish my first playthrough, because it would CTD every time I tried entering the final boss zone. I eventually forced a workaround by buffering all three autosaves across different hub zones, then reloading to a manual save right before the endgame portal, but that all might have been a fluke. Trying to get the last achievement for beating the game of the hardest difficulty, which only unlocks after completing an initial playthrough, opened a new can of worms unto itself. Due to all the problems I ended up having, I'm hesitant to recommend this, but if you can get it at a deep discount and have a lot of patience for bugginess, Apotheon may still be worth your time.

it's a very good metroidvania-like 2D platformer with a stunning artstyle and voice acting. the gameplay is very fun as well. slight issues with unresponsive button imputs and occassional crashes.

the concept and visuals of this game are absolutely amazing, too bad it crashes so often i can't enjoy them

Best art design ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apotheon is a mixed bag. The art direction and soundtrack are perfect. The story is good, and the way they integrate the story into the gameplay is, for the most part, very creative. The problem with the game is that the combat is not very interesting. There's so much healing that you can tank any fight, hitboxes are not precise at all, and the enemy variety is extremely low. Platforming isn't that great either, since there are barely any movement mechanics or upgrades. There are MANY bugs and the game crashes every 20-30 minutes when transitioning an area. This is not a big deal since there are autosaves, but it is very annoying. Overall, I enjoyed my time with Apotheon, but I wish it was more polished & refined.