Avernus

Let’s make things clear from the start. Avernus is not a good game. It seems like its creators took notes from Demon’s Souls and decided to implement its worst elements in the most annoying ways possible. Perhaps they lacked beta testers who would inform them just how aggravating their ideas turned out? But let’s put things in order (or you can just scroll down to pros and cons). Souls mechanic nr 1 (bad) There’s the old stupid thing when you lose all your exp upon death and have one chance to retrieve it. Only in Avernus you need to know the game well enough to actually get to the point you died and retrieve your exp. That’s why you will be losing all your hard earned exp over and over again especially at the beginning when you most need it. Unless you abuse the ‘quit game’ system. If you see you’re about to die, you can quit, which will respawn you in the hub area, but with all your exp intact. I found myself using this more often than not. Souls mechanic nr 2 (bad) Instead of a stamina meter, the player has stamina charges which allow dodging (attacking doesn’t use the charges). The player can have a maximum of 3 charges, but only 1 recharges by itself. If the player wants m…

Avernus is an isometric Souls-like game. You found yourself as a reanimated guardian. And in order to save an ancient tomb of a dead god you need to go through hordes of enemies. To fight you have weapon for a close and ranged combat, and reinforced close combat sword. Also you can heal and dodge using ambrosia and stamina. After you kill an enemy or destroy environment items (mostly jars) you gain ambrosia and experience points which you can spend on developing abilities like more health, more stamina, more damage. The difficulty of the game consists in that enemies deal a significant damage to you and to defeat each type of enemy you need to use different tactics. Also quite a lot of bosses here and there. After you die you need to start the level from the beginning, if you opened new areas they remain but all enemies are on their places again. So you have to master all the same places till you finally can proceed further. It was frustrating for me. I can be ok with difficult games but not when it almost completely erase your efforts. So in 1.5 hours I barely finished a half of a first level and finally abandoned the game. The artstyle looks awesome. It's kinda ancient Greek-lik…

Great spin on the souls-like formula ! Solid et well made combat. Hard but faire difficulty. Gorgeous world and design. More people need to know about and play this game ! Congratulations to the Subsolar team for their first game, can't wait to play more of them.

This one's a gem: a sleek, smooth playing and elegant little action game that guarantees a good time with minimal commitment.

Not good. Not sure what they think they are going for. Half ass souls'-like with out the charm. Doesn't do anything to make me care about the lore of the game or its world. Graphics as you can see in the video, are nice. Kinda dim though...just feels dismal somehow even when I turn up the brightness. Difficult for the sake of being difficult instead of fun and challenging. For example: You have three basic attacks. One uses energy (not stamina) that does not seem to recharge and its just a quick thrust attack not sure why it's energy dependent, you waste it before you even know you used it, the other two are your melee sword and your sling (ranged) attack. The sword attack is fine, boring but fine. No heavy and light attack, just the one button. Three swing combo with locked animations like a Dark souls game. However the dash move sucks. Maybe it gets upgraded as you progress, but as it is now, it's too short and it kills the flow, there is this little pause after the dash that just feels bad and is only there to penalize the player for using the mechanic that is supposed to make the game more fun and offer strategic options for defense. Also, you get two charges to begin with…

i recommend this game if you're into weird games that are interesting, there's so many choices in this game that make it more frustrating than other games for honestly not a great reason but i had a fun time overcoming that challenge. i especially recommend this to people who say they want more obtuse games that are rough around the edges, cos this reveals what a game that looks like that actually feels like to play (and you might not like it! i don't think i do but i still think it's worth playing!)