Athenian Rhapsody

People are going ABSOLUTELY INSANE saying ♥♥♥♥ like "Athenian Rhapsody tries too hard to be the next undertale" and "it doesnt even take itself seriously"... Did you even play the FREAKING game?!?!?? if you do all the endings you'll see that everything makes sense on its own way, it doesnt go "silly and stupid to serious suddenly close to end" its the THING of the game dawg. EVERYTHING is ALWAYS silly and stupid. I'm an old undertale fan and one of my favorite games is deltarune, but this is just not fair. People treating Athenian Rhapsody like this... it's so, SO good. Like, i would put this in same tier as undertale, seriously. Obiviously undertale was revolutionary, but that doesn't make this game any worse. Also, a bonus fact i like about the game is there are SO, SO MANY REFERANCES. LIKE. WOW MAN. THERE ARE PRETTY MUCH NICHE ONES TOO, AND WHEN YOU SEE THEM -IF YOU KNOW EM- I KNOW YOU'LL BE FREAKING PROUD! EVERYONE THINKS ITS FUNNY UNTIL ITS NOT

Athenian Rhapsody is a tough one to talk about, and that's probably by deign. Like some others have pointed out, this really feels like it wants to be the next Undertale/Deltarune. Like the parallels are really obvious, it wears its inspiration on its sleeve. But to me, it comes across as an experience that wants to have its cake and eat it too. You'll spend hours slowly walking around and getting into battles with wacky creatures making dog bark and fart noises, but then after 9ish hours they want to have a serious discussion on the merit of your soul and the fate of the universe and such grand topics. There are some attempts at soft humor but it feels like there's a pretty significant tonal shift that does not feel earned by this narrative, and that just rubbed me the wrong way. More than that though, I can't say I really enjoyed playing through the bulk of the game in general. I didn't absolutely hate it, it was tolerable enough for me to play and get the "True" ending, but I didn't really like it. The combat feels clunky, the humor gets grating, and there ends up being a lot of backtracking through areas with nothing to do but to slowly walk just so you can get one interactable thing. I think just one upgrade to your movement speed would have made moving around less of an issue, but that's not the game that we got. Specifically for the combat, it feels like a much worse version of Undertale's fight/mercy system. I can't speak on the fighting since I went for a mercy run, but trying to befriend everything was a massive pain. Not only does it usually take 3-4 turns to mercy an enemy, but they also randomly change what options you have for mercy and you have to keep trying things to see if they work. Sometimes actions have followups that fill the bar more, sometimes they don't. A combat can get dragged out to 7-10 turns if you always choose the wrong things, and that just becomes grating. You're better off running from most fights after you get the initial befriending because otherwise you're wasting your time. The boss fights are a bit better, as most of them just operate on a timer, but the way the hitbox of your character works was a constant issue and I regularly felt cheated by the hitboxes of the bullets. There is an option for casual mode, though I don't know if choosing that locks you out of anything as it does put a permenant mark on your save file. Now, I will say that one of the primary focuses of this game is the replayability. I don't know how much can possibly change beyond the genocide/pacifist choices, but the customizability of your rhapsody and the ability to exchange those experiences between players is a pretty big part of the menus and the dialog at the end of the game. I have only completed one playthrough, but I'm not exactly itching to go back quite yet. If I do go back and my opinion changes I'll adjust this review, but for now just know this is how I feel based on a single playthrough of the game. Overall, I would not really recommend Athenian Rhapsody. It is an okay game that tries its best, but doesn't really end up paying off the time invested in playing it. If you're really itching for another Undertale experience with different characters, you might find some fun in this. But if you're on the fence about the humor or the combat, I would probably look elsewhere for now.

I think the game is fine overall - it's just not for me. There's clear effort and labor put into it, it's clearly well loved and a passion project, and it is, for the better or worse, unapologetically itself. If you've loved undertale and wanted it dialed up to 1000%, then this will definitely speak to you. The game is so absurd and surreal, it's like if you put all the most wacky and stupid moments of undertale together, and made it the baseline, the game only gets more silly and parodic than that. However, for me, I thoroughly enjoyed the more grounded and somber parts of Undertale. It made the story have highs and lows that carried it all the way to its ending. From the short time I've experienced Athenian Rhapsody, it felt like I was being bombarded by memes, jokes, and nonsense every 30 seconds. There was no time to breathe or take in the situations, if a joke flopped there was another coming 5 seconds after. The pacing is just crazy - and again, some people will likely love it, but for me I was getting annoyed fast. In the end, I've chosen to refund the game after an hour, as I just didn't see myself dealing with the constant joking and memes for the full 7+ hours the game has to offer in content. But I would still recommend the game, it's not bad, it's clearly well designed and well made, I just didn't mesh with how the game is presented and experienced.

I hate everyone in this game its really hard to spare them 10/10

A lot of the emotional moments dont land (aside from a lot of true ending content) and is too similar to Undertale in a lot of cases but I still highly recommend just for how damn funny this game is. The humor rarely misses. A playthrough is worth it for the humor alone.

I picked this game up after seeing a youtube short. I didnt expect much, but this is one of the best games I have ever played.

quirky undertale inspired rpg

I love graphic but why there's no mute option or a skip button? I have to read all of those dialogues

First of all, no option to mute or lower the volume of music. Second of all - this game is very boring, writing and humour is cringe and not interesting, lots of interruptions, the battles are super simple and overall gameplay is repetitive and just not fun for me.

The game is enjoyable and the characters are fun. People are a bit too hard on this developer since this is his first game he ever made and this is ambitious title for a first game. The humor isn't my flavor of tea but it still squeezed a laugh out of me occasionally just by being so over the top dumb sometimes, coming back to this after playing deltarune chapter 3 and 4 I think people using those games are a comparison is unfair and I think there's a cult of personality thing simply because it wasn't made by Toby Fox. I found this to be more enjoyable than the recent installments of Deltarune. I don't understand the who trading card business with the saves however. I'm eager to see what improvements await the next game he makes.