Apotheon

As the title says. the story and art style are good. I'm sorry that I couldn't finish this game. However, the controls and enemy behaviour are so bad I gave up on the second mission. Not only are you swarmed all the time by respawning enemies, but those same enemies are more agile then your character. To add insult to injury, your weapons break after a few hits, which happens in the middle of the fight and it's incredibly irritating. You find yourself without the spear you had in your hand moments ago and striking at the enemy with fists. Of course, this means you get beaten up. To avoid this, you have to run away from enemies and hit them at range all the time. However, this is impossible to do sometimes because the game forces you to stand still on some small platforms while four different enemies beat you up. Good concept, terrible mechanics!

In Apotheon you go to the war with Greek gods. You meet all the usual suspects of the Greek pantheon and a few mythological creatures as well. Boss fights are interesting and every god requires a different strategy (when you fight Artemis, you are turned into a deer and she's chasing you and then your roles reverse). 2D-platformer goes very well with ancient pottery artstyle. The game is divided into several thematically different areas. There are two hub areas where you can upgrade your armor and weapons and buy healing items. The controls for mouse and keyboard are a little bit clunky. Overall, a very enjoyable Hack 'n' Slash game for fans of the Greek Mythology.

Check here for an example of a boss-fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKMGJjQccMc A retake on the "Metroidvania" titles of old, but with the added depth of Greek Mythology and a unique art-style. Despite everyone's hatred for the control scheme, I found it a breeze to play and completely intuitive. Perhaps the current vacuous minds and meme-culture fiends have also lost motor skills together with brain cells. Overall, a reccommended addition to the Indie panorama, and a fresh take on anything-but-defunct platformer genre.

Playing this with controller from the couch, works seamlessly (Linux, DualShock 4 controller, ds4drv emulating xpad-wireless). Left stick to move around, right stick to aim around in any direction, combined with the many weapons available makes for a great combat mechanics. You increasingly upgrade the character with what you find in order to stand up to more powerful enemies and gods. I am no expert at greek/roman mythology but it seems the game kind of follows it closely because the in-game gods have intricate relationships between them.

Not everyone will like this game. It has the deepest combat in any Metroidvania I've played, but some of the most frustrating movement. Immediately when you start, you have to decide if you can tolerate the basic walk/run mechanics. It's momentum based, and coming from other games in this genre, the acceleration from a starting position feels sluggish. Other than that, my only problems with the game were a couple of annoying bosses, low framerate during one of the late-game bosses, and a bug that prevented me from completing a quest. You march around Greek mythology and fight all the different gods. Levels are typically the domain of that particular god, which are connected to a hub. The hubs are populated and are safe, however, if you choose to break the rules you can explore, trespass, steal from and attack the NPCs. You can avoid the guards, or attack them directly and aggress the whole town if you can handle it. You progress to each hub in a certain order, but the levels branching off each one can be completed in any order. There are dozens of different weapons, divided by about six broad categories that can have their damage upgraded. Weapons have durability, but they drop everywhere, and you can carry one stack of every single weapon in the game at the same time, if you want. You can focus on whatever type of weapon is easiest for you to use, like using spears for the range, or clubs so you can break shields; or, when you get comfortable, you can quickly switch between a huge variety of weapons to suit the situation. You can also loot, buy, and craft consumable items including traps, bombs, and potions. It's deep and keeps things interesting on multiple playthroughs. If you run to the edge of some of the levels, you will be able to see that the background looks like stone, giving the visual effect of all of the game's events taking place as Grecian-style artwork painted on masonry. It's an unique concept that is executed perfectly.