Day Eighteen

• Game: Apotheon (Alientrap).
• Release Month: February.
• Source: The Steam Explorer Sale.
• Quick Look: Here. (Drew/Brad)
• Started: 15/12.

I was curious about Apotheon, because it didn't get a whole lot of attention shortly after it came out. Before then, it saw plenty - the game's striking art style is based on that found on Ancient Greek murals and sculptures, animated in a somewhat shaky puppet style and realized in video game form as the type of 2D exploratory platformer that folks 'round these parts tend to call SpaceWhippers. (Or maybe a ThraceWhipper in this case? That's almost an Ancient Greek thing, right?) The art style made for a powerful first impression in various PAXes past in much the same way that Cuphead is doing now. Post-launch impressions are muted in comparison, so I wanted to jump in and see what had happened to the game. Y'know, without actually going out of my way to study reviews or the like. Research? P'shaw. This game was £3 in a sale, how bad could it possibly be?

Well, it's not awful, but I can kind of see why some duders wouldn't be too into it either. It sets the stage for some classic God of War-style deicide iconoclasm: a human Greek survivor, Nikandros - a name that means "Victory for Mankind", aptly enough - is one of the few mortals still surviving after the Greek gods pack it in one day and leave the mortal realm barren of food and game, in permanent night and devastated by natural disasters. Unhappy with their decision, to say the least, Nik is found by Hera and is told that Zeus has passed an edict to leave the mortals to go extinct, collecting all the major and minor deities to chill on Mt. Olympus until the whole human race thing has blown over. Upon entering Mt. Olympus via some kind of divine shortcut, Nikky goes about systematically challenging each jerk-ass Greek deity while helping out those who wish to save mankind but cannot presently go against Zeus's word. The game treats two large regions of Mt. Olympus as the two hubs of the game, and each of the Gods' domains within as independent dungeons.

The hubs are curious: given that every public region of Mt. Olympus is protected by the laws of Zeus, if the player is caught breaking objects for the goodies inside or attempting to lockpick a door, they'll bring a whole bunch of guards down on them and will be read the customary "Halt Criminal Scum!" riot act with two choices: continue fighting a probably hopeless fight, or pay a small fee to make it all go away. You could steal or lockpick a whole lot of valuable loot in these areas, but only if you're careful to avoid being seen. The homesteads of the different Gods, conversely, regulate themselves and their guards are either on permanent hostility mode or won't mind if you break everything. Hubs contain a lot of sub-areas and some useful areas like the marketplace, but their main function is to house each of the game's big dungeon areas which inevitably lead to showdowns with specific Gods: Apollo, Hades, Artemis, Poseidon, Athena, Ares and Zeus. Each are treated as separate chapters of the game with multi-part narratives and mission structures, though the player is given some limited freedom when choosing which divine being to pursue in what order.

I want to save more about the game for future updates, as I'll probably be playing for the full three days given the game's impressive scale, but I should address the game's biggest flaw right now instead of beating around the bush for a couple more days: the combat. Apotheon's combat is... well, "chaotic", and that's putting it mildly. Die By The Sword is usually my go-to for fast and loose combat engines like this, where most of the fighting invariably boils down to running around swinging at the air hoping to hit something. A combination of very floaty jumping and rapid weapon-swinging mechanics combined with every character having an intrinsic lightning fast speed, zero sprite collision (which is to say, characters run through each other without stopping) and some weird hit detection has led to every fight so far being an enormous confusion of blades, shields and arrows, like a real-time approximation of one of those Looney Tunes dustclouds with fists sticking out of it. The most reliable weapons I've found so far are those with a big reach or a wide arc, because they're the only ones likely to hit anything. The game throws all sorts of items at you, to the point where the inventory screen becomes a difficult mess to resolve. Finding armor, for instance, upgrades what you're currently wearing by one level, effectively giving each successive piece a cumulative bonus - yet each weaker version still sits in your inventory for no discernible reason. You have zero need to drop down an armor tier that I can find, and the vendors don't buy items from you, but there they are taking up space. You can carry a maximum of 10 healing and repair items, for restoring health and armor values respectively, but the limits for weapon types seem to vary: you carry spears in groups of five, but only ever one sword of each type. There are weapons that can be wielded as melee or thrown, and others that are thrown only, but there's very little to distinguish the two groups besides an arbitrary distinction. Javelins and hatchets can't be wielded, only tossed at foes, but you can swing around spears and handaxes as melee weapons no problem. And everything, including unique special weapons, has a damn endurance limit. Surely there was a better and less clutter-filled way to handle equipment? Nothing wrong with a Symphony of the Night RPG equipment system with weapons that have fixed damage values, perhaps retaining the instant-access dropboxes to browse through when switching around. Finding fifty versions of the same crappy weapon because they keep breaking doesn't make for compelling loot.

The game Apotheon reminds me of most keenly as of right now is the equally flawed yet curious SpaceWhipper A Valley Without Wind: that game had some bizarre ideas that might have been incredible had they been more fully realized and didn't allow the game's otherwise acceptable level of competency get completely overburdened by its ambition. When that happens, and when it appears to have gone the "quantity over quality" route when implementing uncommon and untested features in general, you have a game that might only appeal to a small number of genre fanatics looking for something a bit different from the norm. For everyone else, I can see why Apotheon might be a little alienating and awkward, in spite of its incredible art direction and fidelity to Ancient Greek folklore. I'll keep at it for a while longer and report back with more impressions tomorrow.

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