We tried Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, action RPG inspired by Ancient Greece

demo catalog Steam Next Fest it always hides some interesting news, some for games that will remain in development for a long time, and others instead dedicated to games around the corner.

An example of what we’re talking about today is Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, a new adventure and action role-playing game that is also inspired by the spirit-like world and combines everything with a fantasy aesthetic. Inspired by ancient Greece.

You’ll be able to try the Asterigos Curse of the Stars demo until October 10, and the next day the full version for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X | It will be available for S. First impressions of the last effort Acme Game Studio Therefore, they will be the basis for convincing many to give this new game a chance or ignore it without reservation.

If you want to know what we think, keep reading ours. The Asterigos Curse of the Stars was tried.

A girl against the world

Asterigos Curse of the Stars not like soul, even if the developers wanted to put the custom tag on the (perhaps a bit outdated) Steam page. The first difference from an average soulmate is that we couldn’t create our character: we’ll be Hilda, a girl from the Northwind legion who finds herself after being left at home by the rest of the team because she’s still too young. he has to follow in his footsteps to help him.

Northwind’s legion is gone and everything city ​​of alphesA metropolis inspired by Ancient Greece where a strange curse seems to have fallen. The demo doesn’t tell us much, except that people in the city are turning into monsters and panic is rampant.

We know the Asterigos Curse of the Stars. will not have a linear textureSince it will be possible to make a series of decisions that will “change the course of history”: How deep and varied will these choices be? It’s impossible to say for now.

What we can say is that the plot is told more directly than the spirits at Miyazaki and FromSoftware. The hero speaks to give us direction, commenting on what’s going on, and there are purely narrative moments where we see echoes of the past hanging in the air throughout the city. We can’t comment on the quality yet, but for those looking for a single action game more classical and linear plotThe Stars Curse of Asterigos satisfies the requirements.

trade weapons

As mentioned, the demo is short, with only a few common enemy types and a few boss fight (Of the 22 that should be in the base game), but it’s enough to give us an idea of ​​what the fundamentals of game systems are.

Hilda, from the beginning multiple weaponswhich must remain constant throughout the adventure (we will unlock items like fire and electricity, but not new weapons). There is also no real armor to find and equip, only cosmetic costumes and accessories that provide defensive bonuses. This means that the equipment will not be a deep RPG management: the priority of Asterigos Cursew of the Stars is to make the whole build leaner. Character evolution is also simpler, with only three stats to upgrade (level up live and safe skill points to spend whenever you want without having to reach the “bonfire”). Then there are the simple constellation-style skill trees that give various types of bonuses and can also change some of the hero’s abilities.

The weapons available are sword and shield, double dagger, spear, hammer, magic wand and magic bracelets. Each weapon has a three-shot combo, a special move (sword and shield parry, spear parry, dagger attack shot…) and can be used with any other weapon. Hilda can change equipment freely, but he has two weapons assigned to so many keys during battle. However, if you start a combo with one weapon, you can finish with the second, thereby activating a single shot.

Therefore, various combinations This can be used to get better in any situation, also mainly thanks to the fact that there are various offensive skills that consume the action points that need to be charged by attacking the enemies. These offensive abilities can be very useful and can activate additional defense, special effects like a kind of black hole that draws nearby enemies towards you, or simply stun and knock out opponents. In our short test, we quickly realized that between these fouls was a very strong foul, in which we dealt massive damage to the bosses. The menu shows that there are many of these attacks: we must hope that they are all more or less effective, otherwise the player risks fossilizing the two or three most useful and ignoring the rest.

In short, the combat system looks potentially very diverse because even if you don’t have a special weapon, all of the attack moves are available. The pace of the game is a mix of dodge, attack, offensive skills and repositioning. this boss of the demonThere are even special effects, only one of which is a formidable opponent, with a variety of melee and ranged moves, making the battlefield dangerous. We’ve seen little to confirm that Asterigos Curse of the Stars is excellent, but if the facilities were good and the level of boss fights were at least equal to what we tried, we could face some interesting battles.

However, we repeat that for better or worse, Asterigos is not a true soul-like. For good because he proposes various difficulty levels, to meet even those who are not particularly good at fighting. Good (again) because while it’s unaffected by basic attacks and attacks, it’s much more permissive with stamina depleted only by dodge and special weapon attacks (parry, parry, dagger throw…). thus allowing you to be aggressive without risking getting a sword in your face as resistance ends at the worst moment.

It’s bad because it doesn’t offer an Estus-style cure system, so we’ll have potions specifically to be found in the environment and won’t charge at checkpoints. To get more, it is necessary to defeat common enemies: if the less skilled get stuck in front of a boss, there is a risk that they will spend some time “collecting” improvements; Bloodborne should have taught us that this isn’t exactly a good idea. Bad (again) because the area we tested highly linear: We hope the full game has some more structured chapters with various passages and perhaps soulslike’s beloved shortcuts.

Finally, a short comment graphic and on sound. We can’t definitively agree with what we see as a demo, but considering it’s only a few days away from release, we assume the differences will be minimal at best. On a technical level, Asterigos Curse of the Stars is a simple game with a nice cartoon style that doesn’t show any distinctive features in the demo. However, we repeat for the tenth time that the demo was very short and we saw very little (literally a forest and a secondary road through the city). What currently doesn’t convince us is the English dub of Hilda, which is a bit weak from what we’ve heard.