Asterigos: Curse of the Stars Gameplay Preview
As someone who loves the melding of classical myth and epic fantasy plus keeps having netflix recommend him shows with a strong female lead astarigo's curse of the stars easily caught my eye when it was announced last fall i was recently sent a demo build of an early segment and while it may not be as polished as it could be i definitely put down my controller curious to see how this fantastical adventure inspired by a combination of greek and roman mythology will come together.
Astarigo's cast you is hilda a warrior of the north wind legion as she investigates the ancient city of aphis in search of her missing father and its long-buried secrets the city is said to have been cursed by the gods for its careless overuse of the world's magic which hilda herself seems to be able to harness though whether this is for her people or she's just extraspecial is unclear and the once great ruin is now filled with dangerous beasts and monsters now i initially thought astaregos was presenting itself as sort of a family friendly from soft homage you collect stardust from every enemy you defeat and once the initial movement tutorials faded off screen the next thing you learned after chasing after this weird little crow squirrel thing was about how you can rest at these magical conduits to create a checkpoint and refill your hp and mana reserves but that doing so would respawn any enemies you defeated since your last rest you'll also restart there if your hp drops to zero an emergency teleportation they call it making very sure to be crystal clear that you have not died however that's about as far as the kids souls comparison goes it seems yes dodge rolling is important and taking enemies on one at a time seemed to be the best strategy to avoid losing any health but respawning loses you just a fraction of your collected stardust which i'm told you only use to buy and upgrade gear at merchants and aside from the last boss i encountered i was hard-pressed to find myself being sent back to the last checkpoint the higher difficulty mode did feel different with basic enemies introducing new tactics and boss creatures definitely hitting a lot harder though even here defeat was rare that's not a bad thing of course as someone who barely made it out of limbgrave and eldon ring i'm the last person to say that a game needs to be difficult to be enjoyable as such asterago's combat system is relatively simple but pretty fun you can equip two magic infused weapons each of which has a unique ability in addition to its basic attack combo the classic sword and shield for instance lets you parry incoming attacks to leave your opponent momentarily open to a counter well hilda's bracers allow for both close and mid-range magic attacks and also.
Let you drop arcane landmines which was especially useful for dealing with the cadre of melee-centric monsters that i ran into the biggest hurdle to get over during the roughly half hour demo was its control scheme while not inherently awful there were definitely some choices that made guiding hilda around the world feel a bit unwieldy not being able to jump without holding run and having those buttons mapped under the same finger for example made fluid exploration tricky and having to open a radial menu before using one of hilda's weapon skills causes the flow of combat to stutter a bit that clunkiness did get better as i became more comfortable with the controls but never went away completely however the skills themselves seem to provide a wide variety of options the demo powers ranged from simply doing a big hit to creating a temporary shield around yourself to absorb damage or creating an arcane lightning storm that tracked enemies to deal damage over time and trailers have shown some more complicated maneuvers that assumedly unlock as you level up stack those alongside the wealth of passive perks and buffs you can acquire and players of all fighting styles should have lots of tactical options yes it's still a bit rough around the edges with some lurching animations and unsync dialogue not to mention them more than a few crash reports i generated but overall i'm curious to see how the full version of astaragon comes together odds are my issues with its button layout will be alleviated once we're able to configure our own control schemes and hopefully the story in action will be as compelling as its novel art style its greco-roman mythic fantasy vibe is one that i can easily see myself getting lost in and i'm always game to tanker with a litany of tactical options to hone just the right build for my arcane war maiden in what was ultimately a promising if simplistic combat system for more on asterigo's curse of the stars check out the latest gameplay trailers or if you're into other animated mythic fantasy games check out our reviews of immortals phoenix rising or kennabridge of spirits for all your other franchise colon subtitle new stick with us.