Aluna: Sentinel of the Shards

A light top-down hack and slash game that can be compared to Torchlight. The game itself is looks great and is relatively cheap in price. It contains the usual leveling up of character, Loot system, skill trees and boss encounters. The player has the option of choosing between different combating styles, being Melee/Ranged/Magic and part of the game’s charm comes from exploring and mixing between styles to see what works best. I highly recommend rebinding the games controls (instead of using number keys 1-5) I changed mine to WASD + Q+E which made the game combat controls heaps better. Overall, the game doesn’t offer anything new to the genre, but I enjoyed my time with it.

It is an okay ARPG to play but you need to think about choosing skills and respec Aluna often to find the right build for each stage or enemy type (Respec cost is not expensive anyway.) Difficulty is not well balance throughout the entire game, as if Dev has no play testers to polish this aspect. Ranged/Mage mobs are very deadly if you stand still for too long (I mean 2-3 sec). Their skills and damage are insanely strong that can one-shot you often. If you do not want to frustrate while playing, I suggest playing the first run in Easy difficulty and change it to normal once you have enough skill points to handle those ridiculous damage from mobs later. Still, they can kill you really fast if you are not careful though. Stability also a little issue here, I experienced crash few times while fighting some elite mobs and trying to continue game from start menu. Luckily the game has auto save quite often, Other aspects are nice, it has beautiful levels. Cool artworks and okay story IMO.

Aluna has a neat concept and setting. Unfortunately, the game has been abandoned and is no longer being updated or managed. The last contact with the developers was in September 2022 with a promise that an update is coming about the future of Aluna, but nothing has come of that.

Short review after completing the game on Hard difficulty without changing it: one of the hardest game to recommend beacuse of just how inbalanced it is however the care and the visual theme and enviroments do sell the game for me altough not the best indie ARPG out there. Pros: - Great graphic for an indie title with beautiful incan/latin/spanish theme and enviroments set in the conquistador arrival on the new world - Good music and good voice acting and a lot of it for your main character and npcs, even mobs have some voicelines midcombat, very impressive for an indie title - Cutscenes told by awesome comic sliders giving the game its own flair - A function dodge roll that works, indies got it right before AAA - You can refund your skill points anytime for a small gold cost Cons: - No balance at all in loot (way too many drops and only 2 real tiers of loot, magic and legendary and no sets sadly) - No balance in your own skills (some skills have no cooldowns at all making them broken), some skills have way to long animation lock, the funiest one is the meele highest lv skill which pulls and damages all enemies to you...and while you are animation locked if those pulle…

Cool Hack n' Slash. Standard gameplay in a rare setting with an excellent implementation. Aluna doesn't reinvent the wheel, instead it satisfies the genre expectations. - Fluid controls, though the dodging is odd and the least likely way I would choose to do it. - Varied mobs, clearly separated by looks, biome, abilities and modus operandi. They often fight each other, to rob you of the XP. - Lively scenes. Level design is old-school, linear yet tortuous. The map overview is terrible though; the only real flaw of the game. - Colorful world and art, highly enjoyable. A zoom lets you ogle the details; I always appreciate such feature. Animations and sound on par with visuals. Polished low budget, talented team, excellent value for money. - Good loot, unusual in the genre. Classically over-itemised, but easy to compare once used to it. Abundant drops; well balanced rate and scale of improvement; specials that actually feel special... Rarer yet, the merchant is useful. Can't remember last time I had bought gear from a Hn'S - or even an RPG - vendor. - Powers are fun to use and make you feel mighty. Rate of acquisition is well-paced. You can also respec. - Even the boss fights are well…

- So fun to play, rating 91/100