Dungeons of Aether

Great, small game with deep, tactical puzzle-like combat. Set in the Aether universe, which is quite rich in lore, story is really nothing special. While the focus is on the characters, the things said or that happens outside the story are more than the one happening in the game. I may seems too critical, but to be fair I enjoyed it, and all character feel pretty unique. Especially loved how Fleet doesn't stay ubiquos for all the game, and there was a satisfying ending! But the focus of the game is mostly on the gameplay. Dungeon exploring is pretty minimal, even finding all the lore pages was quite easy. All the juice is in the combat. To me, it felt like a puzzle game that you try to solve, each encounter. You draft dice with the opponent, assigning them to your stats, and then choosing an abiility based on your SKILL (one of the stat) value. It's incredibly rewarding as there are no surprises at all: you can see the skill chosen by the opponent in any moment, and the order in which the ability are resolved is based on SPEED (another stat). Equips and personal ablities complete the frame, and are up for a great experience. I haven't got bored from a single fight (playing on har…

I went into this not knowing much about it, and it completely blew me away. The narrative, the characters, the writing... all of them really stood out and elevated what was already a fun and fresh RPG. I played on Hard and got the deathless achievement, so for what it's worth I think it's really well-balanced, too.. I'm a big fan of MtG drafting, and the dice drafting is obviously a lot smaller-scale than that, but I think there's *just* enough variance and strategy in it that it keeps the game feeling interesting. I had some fun builds with each of the characters, too: - Fleet did Snipe spam with stamina dice synergies. - Slade alternated between Slash if I needed stamina or Steal otherwise, and lots of free dice for evasion. - Hamir had this awesome oneshot build that aimed to Quake and recoup 3 stamina using the Poison Gem (which is super duper strong). - Artemis aimed to greed on 1HP for her kit's synergies, and just keep chaining hits to get value out of Break. I wanted to give a particular shout-out to how well-explained everything is! The UI is really clean, it's got lots of little helpful elements like icons if you're not hitting stat breakpoints, and absolutely everythi…

A keeper for sure, especially if you love the "Aether verse" lore, and that slammin' soundtrack, especially the battle songs!

Although i recommend this game, in my view is only decent, line a 6/5 score, iniatially the game and concept are pretty fun, but it gets old very fast, since you don't progress anything, enemy variety is pretty barebone, and the items are pretty repetitive. its a fun game but maybe for only 3/4 hours. I didn't check on the dungeons but if the main campaign i would see pretty much everything i can imagine the dungeon would be the same

Dungeons of Aether is surprisingly more engaging than I had anticipated. Combat is not complicated but the nature of turn based selection gives way to a rather interesting and deeper strategy than expected. Do you claim the defense stones or prioritize speed knowing the ones you don't pick can end in enemy hands. There is as a result a large amount of time spent simply defending as attacking without sufficient defense can result in injury. Character design is what stood out the most. Each protagonist has their own special abilities and limitations. Regeneration, thievery, defense, and initiative are some of the differing aspects of each character. It makes the play style different for each new segment keeping the combat engaging for a bit longer. The equipment selection also provides a means to personalize each character. Using the bank you can outfit the same equipment on each character or try different builds. Though the pan and apron are universally useful as recovery devices. The story is largely predictable with characterization pointing to obvious outcomes. A hyper-eager hero, 3 other protagonists with their own agendas who are all guided by a mysterious old man who sugges…

Nice little "yahtzee" game