"We wanted to create something new for the Soulsike enthusiasts."

For starters, congratulations on the launch of Achilles: Legends Untold. How has the immediate post-launch period been for the development team?

Thank you, after release we spent some time analysing the feedback we collected. We look at all the issues reported by the players and based on that we began preparing patches to address those issues.

Achilles: Legends Untold’s blend of Soulslike mechanics and isometric action RPG gameplay is definitely one of its bigger selling points. Can you tell us about how that idea first came about, and what the process of effectively implementing that vision was like?

We wanted to create something new for the Soulsike enthusiasts. During the prototyping stage, we realised that the isometric view works really well for this type of gameplay and decided to drive off that for further development. The first year of game production was mainly focused on combining the isometrics view with a target lock fighting system, during this year we also began our development on the AI GAIA system.

What are the biggest learnings you took from the game’s early access period, and how significantly did they impact development?

Early Access had a significant impact on the final version of the game. After the Beta release, the feedback was very positive, especially from the Soulslike players. When the Early Access release took place, a lot of players, due to the isometric POV and camera angles, thought the game was a hack-and-slash production, which caused some confusion. The difficulty for us was that we wanted players to perceive the game for what it was, not what they assumed. In the end, we made the game enjoyable for hack-and-slash players as well as die-hard Soulslike fans, mainly through difficulty settings. The game map we had prepared for the final version of the game was created right after player feedback and released in the first update.

What were the biggest challenges in implementing Achilles: Legends Untold’s Group AI Action system? What sort of an impact does it have on the moment-to-moment gameplay?

The GAIA AI System is essentially a self-aware and self-acting AI mechanism. The idea behind it was to make the AI run and choose actions randomly and spontaneously throughout the game at any given point.

For example, some games have NPCs with scripted actions, we wanted NPCs to run similarly to those scripted ones but without the script and randomly rather than following one. How our GAIA system approaches this is that it decides on its own which actions the NPCs will carry out at any point in the game.

An example of this would be a cyclops attack, which on a random attack, would attack by throwing a barrel or a skeleton. They can pick an NPC, eat him and regenerate life. Those actions and options are in the GAIA AI system, and the system, on its own initiative, decides which action the Cyclops will carry out, which in replayable gameplay can vary as it is random.

Another example can be NPCs soldiers that attack out of character, and randomly they can join forces and carry out a combined attack by one ducking and another using this opportunity to bounce off their shield and carry out a stronger attack.

These events are all unpredictable and are randomly decided by our GAIA AI System.

Reception for the game has been largely positive, though some players have criticized some aspects of the experience, like the balancing of its loot and progression mechanics. Are you working on releasing updates for the game based on feedback from the players?

Yes, we are currently working on rebalances in the game. Since the Early Access release, we’ve based our updates on player’s feedback, and we will continue to do so. We are taking in players feedback and planning fixes to address any issues.

Given how replayable action RPGs tend to be, what do you have planned for the game’s future where new content or features are concerned?

We’re planning new future content such as a new map (new ruin map), which is in development along with new side quests, amulets (strongly changing gameplay), and new co-op maps. Additionally, we’re continuously working on fixing game issues and delivering new improvements. We posted a post-launch content roadmap on Steam, and we’ll continue to inform players of what’s coming.

Do you have any plans to bring the game to last-gen consoles or the Nintendo Switch at some point in the future?

We’re currently looking into and exploring publishing options onto the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, but at this moment in time we cannot promise anything.

Since the reveal of the PS5 and Xbox Series’ specs, a lot of comparisons have been made between the GPU speeds of the two consoles, with the PS5 at 10.28 TFLOPS and the Xbox Series X at 12 TFLOPS. How much of an impact on development do you think that difference will have?

While preparing the console versions of the game, we wanted it to run identically on both consoles. The differences in specification (GPU & CPU) weren’t as important to us, and they had no major impact on game preparation for those devices.

The PS5 features an incredibly fast SSD with 5.5GB/s raw bandwidth. How can developers take advantage of this, and how does this compare to the Xbox Series X’s 2.4GB/s raw bandwidth?

The PS5 with a much faster SSD is a strong feature, however we tried to design and optimise the loading of the whole game to be fast no matter the SSD, whether that’s normal SSD or SSD M.2 on PC or the fast PS5 SSD. We got good results with both consoles due to proper preparation for the game’s levels streaming.

"We’re currently looking into and exploring publishing options onto the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, but at this moment in time we cannot promise anything."

The Xbox Series S features lesser hardware compared to Xbox Series and Microsoft is pushing it as a 1440p/60 FPS console. Do you think it will be able to hold up for the more graphically intensive games as this generation progresses?

In our case, the Xbox Series S still runs at 4k resolution. We made the decision to keep around the 60fps mark while other games decide to keep their resolution high, costing frames per second and keeping them around the 30fps mark. Graphics are calculated by dynamic resolution (900p mean) and scales it up to 4k, if we were to keep 60fps in 1440p, the graphics would have less detail.

What are your thoughts on the Steam Deck? Do you have plans for any specific optimizations for the device?

Our game is verified by Steam and Steam Deck compatible. During Early Access, we optimised the whole game in order to receive the ”green” Steam Deck verification, and we’re very pleased with how the game performs on it. The Steam Deck hardware is great and is quite powerful for a portable machine, so putting the game on this machine was less of a challenge than we initially expected. It’s impressive to see the great evolution of portable gaming and how it is now capable of running the full versions of today’s big games!

At its core, Achilles: Legends Untold is a loot-based action RPG that puts players into the shoes of the titular hero of the mythical Trojan war. Starting out as a more straightforward adaptation of Achilles’ advance into Troy to try and rescue Helen. Facing a defeat at the hands of Paris, however, things quickly get out of hand in the game’s story, thrusting our hero several years into the future in the land of Mycenae. For some reason, the world is now infested with monsters, and as our hero tries to get his bearings while also listening to a strange voice commanding him to find a smith, Achilles discovers that there’s also a parallel world filled with strange monsters of its own.

Achilles: Legends Untold is a unique take on the classic story, and acts as a pretty good excuse to thrust us into a land filled with enemies, magic, and epic loot. Unfortunately, that’s all it ends up achieving; the story doesn’t really do anything noteworthy, or even interesting, beyond its initial setup. Even the game’s missions don’t really extend far beyond just having you roam the land, kill things, and find a magical object in order to get your next objective marker.

With the story basically being little more than an excuse to kill things, it comes down to the gameplay to carry Achilles: Legends Untold, which in turn ends up melding quite a few different ideas into forging its own unique identity. Like I said earlier in the review, Achilles: Legends Untold is essentially a loot-based action RPG. It does, however, take quite a few cues from games like Dark Souls in how it controls, as well as the general structure of how it plays.

"Achilles: Legends Untold is a unique take on the classic story, and acts as a pretty good excuse to thrust us into a land filled with enemies, magic, and epic loot."

For example, the game has its own take on bonfires—called Shrines here—where you can rest up to heal and spend your skill points to unlock new abilities. Like bonfires, using Shrines also allows you to fast travel to previously-discovered Shrines, and enemies will also respawn if you choose to rest. The Shrines also act as checkpoints in case you end up making some deadly mistakes in fights.

Speaking of fights, the Souls influence is incredibly obvious. You can use a heavy attack, a light attack, dodge attacks, and if you have a shield equipped, block enemy attacks. Achilles: Legends Untold brings some of its own ideas to the table in the form of unique abilities that you can use at the cost of your Fury gauge. These abilities can range from the mundane, like a kick that is basically guaranteed to stagger a regular-sized human enemy off their feet, to more exotic abilities, like epic ground slams or even a Captain America-styled ability to throw your shield at enemies and have it return.

Speaking of abilities, Achilles: Legends Untold has an absolutely massive skill tree. Depicted by various constellations in the sky, each constellation tends to be thematic around a specific keystone ability. For example, the Sagittarius constellation, which can be accessed fairly early through the game, focuses on raising your strength, and lets you unlock the closest thing the game has to a parry mechanic. Each constellation also unlocks a unique passive ability once you’ve unlocked every other node there. Most of the nodes in these constellations are just simply stat increases, which means that your character will always improve as you make your way through the game.

"Achilles: Legends Untold is essentially a loot-based action RPG"

Unfortunately, despite all of its interesting ideas, Achilles: Legends Untold is let down pretty hard by its combat. Owing in large part to a flawed approach to combat, as well as secondary aspects like poor conveyance of information and a lack of proper feedback for the things you’re doing, combat in the game ends up feeling like an absolute chore outside of the boss fights.

The biggest problem with the game’s combat is that it was seemingly designed with the Souls-styled ethos of having you take on either single opponents at a time, or small groups of maybe two or three enemies. Unfortunately, Achilles: Legends Untold really likes throwing hordes of enemies at you. Aside from the tutorial which felt oddly well-balanced in this regard, even the opening zones where you’ll find skeletons roaming around tend to lead you into getting swamped. While the presence of throwable items like daggers might give you the indication that it’s possible to peel off an enemy or two for the sake of smaller skirmishes, entire groups still end up getting aggroed and start making their way to you. This is exacerbated, especially in the early game, by the fact that just about your entire moveset revolves around single-target damage.

The secondary aspects of combat are also worth mentioning; there’s an absolute lack of feedback for whatever you might be doing, be it hitting an enemy, blocking an attack, or even just getting hit. There are no indicators that you might have gotten hit aside from your health going down, and quite often, without the edges of the screen going red, I wouldn’t even have realized that my health was dangerously low. Even the lock-on feature is incredibly janky, with the game often refusing to acknowledge that I’m trying to switch targets.

"Achilles: Legends Untold is let down pretty hard by its combat."

Boss fights where you’re taking on a single enemy often end up featuring the most intense and fun combat Achilles: Untold Legends has to offer. Since there aren’t any additional enemies to confuse the lock-on, and the bigger enemies in a boss fight often tend to telegraph their next moves more clearly. Despite that, however, the combat ultimately feels like it’s the mediocre execution of some very interesting ideas.

Things don’t really get more interesting with the loot and skill tree either; most of the things you unlock in the skill tree are ultimately passive abilities that don’t change up your playing style too much, and equipment never really gets more interesting than providing more stats, or maybe an additional chance to poison your target, or maybe even some extra elemental damage. Unlike what you’d find in loot-based action RPGs, you’re never really going to find a particular item that completely makes you rethink your entire play style and skill build, which is a shame since the skill tree is quite generous in letting you respec your entire build whenever you might want to, provided you have the money for it.

Achilles: Legends Untold is a game that definitely has some interesting ideas going for it, but unfortunately, none of these ideas really come together well enough to form anything but a game that, at best, will help you waste a few hours.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.