Apotheon

The first thing you should know about Apotheon is that the opening hour of the game is bad. It's so bad, in fact, that my notes for the first hour consisted entirely of one underlined, capitalized phrase simply reading "UNRELENTING MISERY." The second thing you should know about Apotheon is that it does get substantially better with time, to the point that is it actually quite enjoyable by the end. Unfortunately, poor controls and unrelenting technical issues hold it back from being a great, or even a particularly good, game. Like the Greek gods it depicts, Apotheon is simultaneously both awe-inspring and deeply flawed.

The graphical style is a perfect example of this one-step forward, one-step backward delivery that plagues Apotheon. Styled to look like ancient Greek vases, it has the benefit of being undoubtably unique. It's refreshing to see a developer actually try something new and interesting as opposed to loading up on voxels, particle effects, or whatever other graphical buzzword happens to be in vogue. Some of the fights against select gods, who can fill the screen with their massive size, are particularly effective at feeling both epic and giving you a distinct David vs. Goliath vibe as you struggle to find a way to hurt them.

On the other hand, the uncompromising dedication to the art style does lead to some practical problems. The color palette is considerably limited, and the moving-vase style leads to some awkward character animations on occasion. Additionally, many of the icons for weapons and health/armor pickups are quite small and tend to blend into the background, making them hard to see. Ultimately, I vacillated back and forth quite a bit on whether I liked the art style or not. For every moment I found myself thinking it was really cool, there was another moment where I thought it looked like a cheap Flash game.

Of course, it doesn't help that the game often runs like a cheap Flash game, as Apotheon contains a panoply of bugs and technical problems. First among these was the inexplicable slowdown I suffered at various points during every single play session. At random points, the game would slow to a crawl and suddenly look like an ultra-slow motion replay from a Sunday football game. And the gameplay isn't the only thing suffering from slowdown - the load times are noticeably long as well. This makes certain levels that require frequent room transitions much more of a chore they than they should be. The Poseidon level, which involves sailing a ship between screens via a sea chart, was a particular offender in this regard. While obnoxious, you may be able to soldier through these issues, depending on your tolerance for such things.

Harder to soldier through are the crashes. The game crashed on two occasions while I was playing, abruptly dumping me to the PS4 home screen. On another occasion, I suffered a bug where my character was transported to a pitch-black version of the world where all I could see was the ground and my character's torch, which failed to light up either my character or the surrounding environment. Reloading didn't help the issue and I was forced to pull up an earlier save. Other, more minor bugs are also present; the map failed to load properly on several occasions, and a necessary platform in one of the boss fights disappeared from the arena, forcing me to restart the battle. The sheer volume of such issues would be hard to overlook even in a much longer game, and they become even more problematic in an 8-10 hour downloadable morsel.

Gameplay wise, Apotheon is an equally mixed bag. For a seemingly simple platformer, there's actually a lot going on; there's lock picking, a simple crime and punishment system, upgradable weapons and armor, special equipment to find, hidden chests, crafting, and a fair number of small side-quests. Somewhere around the mid-point of the game, it morphs from just another platformer to a sort of Metroid-vania-lite. If you're a fan of that sort of gameplay, there's a ton of enjoyment to be mined from exploring every nook and cranny for chests, or trying to find the keys to get into hidden areas.

Unfortunately, almost none of these otherwise wonderful systems are explained to the player, and a large part of my early frustrations centered around the absolutely abysmal tutorial, which beyond providing the basic inputs for movement and item use pretty much leaves the player to their own devices. For example, I didn't discover I could upgrade my weapons until almost halfway through the game, and didn't know crime was going to be a thing until I opened the wrong door and got swarmed by guards. While it's great that Apotheon has such surprising depth, I can't help but feel I would have enjoyed my time with the game more had I been told these systems existed and been prompted to interact with them earlier.

Within this general structure, the main gameplay is the combat, which has you using a huge variety of ancient Greek weaponry. Again, there's a surprising amount of depth here; weapons are divided into bows, spears, swords, axes, and maces, each of which has several upgrades affecting attack speed and damage. On top of all of that, there are various throwable grenades and support items you can craft. If you cared to count, there are easily several dozen weapon types to choose from. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of potential in all this variety, the actual combat becomes something of a letdown, mainly due to the poor feel of the controls.

The major complaint here is the way that inventory and item management are handled. Items are divided into several categories; your main-hand weapon, ranged-weapons, grenades, and support items like armor and healing. Swapping weapons or items is handled by the d-pad, with players first needing to move to the correct category using left or right, followed by selecting the desired item with up or down. Given the sheer volume of items you will pick up, this quickly becomes a cumbersome process. It's made even worse by the fact that outside of what your character is holding, it can be difficult to tell which category you currently have equipped. I can't count the number of time that, thinking I had a throwing axe equipped, accidentally threw away my main hand sword instead, leading to panicked mashing on the d-pad to pull up another weapon while simultaneously being pounded on by enemies. It's almost impossible to manage in the heat of battle, and the issue can't be solved simply by sticking with one weapon, as they will eventually break (oh, yeah, weapon degradation is a thing too).

The combat itself feels floaty and imprecise; attacks can take a long time to get off, and the hit box on the various weapons can be difficult to predict. Although there is some limited auto-aim going on, fights frequently degenerate into a lot of random flailing, interrupted only by your need to regenerate stamina (oh, yeah, stamina is a thing too). This would be frustrating if the game weren't quite so easy. Despite the difficulty in hitting things, most enemies die in two or three hits and you're only really in danger if you get swarmed. Still, combat feels like a little something of a miss, and all the weapon variety goes for naught when any weapon you choose to use feels equally klutzy.

In the final estimation, there are enjoyable moments buried somewhere within Apotheon. Unfortunately, the game's issues make finding those moments something of a (dare I say it?) Sisyphean task. Every time you find yourself about the truly enjoy the game, you're hit with a crash, or slowdown, or the game's control issues suddenly come to the fore. All of this makes the game difficult to recommend wholeheartedly. The silver lining is that the game is currently free for PlayStation Plus subscribers, so if you have a subscription, it might be worth your time to check out.

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Played on: PS4

Time Spent: ~9 hours

Trophies Earned: 58%

Notable Bugs/Performance Issues: 2 crashes, 1 game-breaking bug necessitating going back to an earlier save, noticeable and consistent slowdown, long load times.