Asterigos: Curse of the Stars

花了一半的時間在迷路 不玩了

I just can't get into it. I got this in a Soulslike bundle from Humble, and pretty much everything in that was ... mediocre at best. And I've played so many of them, I feel like I can at least decently gauge if a game has potential or not. Asterigos does not. It's just ... boring and clunky. The most important parts about a Soulslike are: - combat - exploration - build variety - fashion (!) Combat is self-explanatory. Is it fun to fight even the lowliest enemy? In Dark Souls 1 the first thing you encounter is a hollow. Even that enemy has more nuance and is more fun to fight than whatever this game throws at you for the first 2 hours. Everything here is so clunky and unwieldy, nothing feels fluid, save the animation cancel, which I guess they really needed here. There is no meat, no weight to the combat. No matter which weapon you choose (you can freely choose any of the 6 weapons, but only activate 2 at the same time, but since the game let's you pause in menus ... what's the point), they don't feel fun to use. Hide behind a shield? Okay. Parry only with the spear? Great, so now you're locked into the spear moveset. The only ranged weapon is a slow staff? Great, but you basically need a ranged option to kill out of reach enemies or single out enemies or just because the boss is taking 5 minutes to "breathe", but you can't attack them in melee. All in all it just doesn't feel right. Even Steelrising or Enotria have a better weapon feel. A far better weapon feel. This doesn't feel like a soulslike but more like an early 2000s action slasher like Darksiders, only when you get hit you lose half your health and healing takes forever AND is only a heal over time. Exploration. While there is some exploration here, you basically have a "hub" area with annoying NPCs that give you missions. Then you somehow go out into the map and find your way around. The way forward is always marked with blue arrows in the walls ... there are some things to find, but like so many other soulslikes they just can't compete with DS and its like, because the items you find are just boring. You don't get any new weapons, no spells, no fun consumables, no armor, nothing. You find notes you don't care about and materials for something. And since everything looks a bit samey exploration in the first few areas just didn't feel rewarding. Dark Souls starts you off in this intricate castle in which you can get lost in, but you don't really FEEL lost, because everywhere you go new challenges and interesting vistas await. The one annoyance about Dark Souls is the lack of ANY kind of fast travel at the beginning, meaning you can kind of soft lock yourself or have to go a looooooong way back, so a mini guide of the recommended route at least was helpful. But every nook you explored felt like you actually did some exploring. You stumbled across key items, new weapons, spells, armor, blacksmiths ... here, there is nothing. Build variety. You get to upgrade your weapons in a skill tree. There is some variation, but mostly these trees are pretty linear. You will upgrade the one whose weapon you use the most first. That's your build variety. Then, you will eventually unlock some new active skills. The rest of the time you will use the same 3 attack combo for every enemy. Dodge or parry, rinse, repeat. Fashion. I haven't spotted any outfits yet. There is no armor, so my assumption is that there is nothing here. I could turn down the difficulty to easy to maybe blitz through it, but I'm also not struggling at all on medium, unless I accidentally get hit by something, then I'm 2 shot ... no points in Con, though, everything into attack. Speaking of levelling up: that's it: HP, damage or mana ... yawn. I might have even considered it were it not for the atrocious story you have to suffer through. You can skip most of it, thankfully, but it still requires some button presses and you will completely lose the plot as it is and potentially just don't know what to do next, but I simply cannot listen to these ... characters ... talk anymore. It borders on aggravating. They talk SO much, but say SO little of consequence. It's like "my first writer's room" level of trying to write a story, only to be so boring and "safe" that nobody who is past the age of adolescence will even consider that idle prattle worthwhile to listen to. On top of the bad story, the bad audio design, the boring bosses, the clunky combat and the wonky movement, the camera just tells you to f right off, worse than Dark Souls ever could. It literally gets stuck on walls and since the game has lots of tiny rooms, you can imagine how fun it is to fight in them when the camera just refuses to show you anything. Sad, because I WANTED to like this game, but after 2 hours of utter boredom and bad combat I simply cannot imagine that it magically gets good soon. And since it takes 20+ hours to complete ... nah, pass. Oh, at one point I got a quest item (?) I was supposed to bring to a person, Quintus, so, thinking I was smart, I backtracked all the way to said person, but couldn't give him any item. Met him later in the story again, couldn't give him any item. Not sure if that's a bug, but come on. After finishing the first story quest, there is no way to get back to your base, unless you use a TP scroll or run ALL the way back to the very beginning of the game proper (not the tutorial area).

I recommend the game but i really dislike it due to many reasons. Sprawling maps with lots of items hidden around but not open enough to give a sense of freedom so finding all the items and getting around is just tedious. Some gaps you can jump and some elevations you can climb but the distinction between which you can and can't aren't always very clear. Hidden easily missable objectives for a hidden ending. Talking to "doors" instead of npcs, while it does spare the devs from developing models it just feels bad for the player. A journal that is written like a journal instead of clear quest objectives. And many more things that just makes the game feel like something from a gaming age long gone that really should be forgotten. At least that is how i feel about it.

Overall below average. I found it boring and not enough there to keep me interested. There's no map. I found myself wandering around and not knowing where to go next.

um bom jogo de aventura com a pitada certa de soulslike. uma historia boa, uma jogabilidade bem fluida e com graficos bem bonitos <3

Good.

6-29-26 Good game. Mostly story driven and linear path. Magic and swords. Console port. Good graphics and good controls. No Jumping. Boss fights. Magic system.