Set against the backdrop of a fantastical empire that’s heavily inspired by the likes of Greek and Roman mythologies, you take on the role of Hilda – a young, impressionable, but fierce warrior of the Northwind Legion who has been sent on a mission to find her father’s missing battalion. We also learn that Hilda’s king has been inflicted with a foreign curse – and now it falls upon the brave warriors of that legion to travel to faraway lands in a frantic search for a cure.

"Set against the backdrop of a fantastical empire that’s heavily inspired by the likes of Greek and Roman mythologies, you take on the role of Hilda – a young, impressionable, but fierce warrior of the Northwind Legion who has been sent on a mission to find her father’s missing battalion. "

This leads Hilda and her father’s battalion to the town of Aphes, where the same curse has turned the denizens into goblins and beasts who crave Stardust – where you meet a bunch of characters and delve deeper into conspiracies that date back thousands upon thousands of years. The story can start out slow, and while it tries to go off towards many different tangents and explore themes of love, empathy, and betrayals – they all end up mixing together in such a way that doesn’t let any particular element shine as bright as it could, and the plot becomes bloated with a lot of unnecessary stuff and technical details that’s doesn’t add anything to the experience.

The characters are pretty distinct, and many have their own quirks and likable personalities – which is a great change of pace from the general Soulslike formula where everyone is on the brink of descending into madness and must talk in riddles. For instance, the blacksmith in this game is a cute talking fox, who calls you as her sweetie and reassures you on every decision you make (I don’t remember the last time I had such a supportive blacksmith in any Soulslike game). But the dialogues are extremely long and filled with uninteresting details and bland writing, which makes getting through the conversations an absolute slog at times.

The game also features story choices that will affect your character relationships and the surroundings. An early game choice allowed me to negotiate a deal with the boss character, but in failing to do so – I had to fight the beast which made me look like a careless killer in the eyes of my companions. As such, I tried to stick close to the moral path for future levels – though I didn’t make any such significant decisions later on. It’s a decent system, though players might need to do multiple playthroughs to see how decisions end up affecting the storyline.

" The dialogues are extremely long and filled with uninteresting details and bland writing, which makes getting through the conversations an absolute slog at times. "

Once you are done with the expositions and introductions, Asterigos puts you into the deep end with its combat. I like to term Asterigos’ combat system as a soulslite, since its gameplay is a lot more forgiving in terms of difficulty than your average Soulslike – at least on the normal difficulty; and yes there are difficulty options. While you will have to master the careful dance of dodges, blocks, and strikes to get through encounters – you don’t need to pay a lot of attention to the stamina meter since that only depletes by a certain amount when blocking a strike. Enemies are also pretty forgiving, and while there are plenty of enemy types – none of them require radically different strategies to defeat. Even if you die during combat or exploration, none of your collected resources are lost – but you are teleported back to your last visited Conduit – which are Asterigos’ equivalent of bonfires.

Hilda can wield two types of weapons at the same time – and you can choose from a handful of options such as a sword and shield combo, a heavy hammer, a pair of daggers, a staff, and a spear. Each allows for a slightly different playstyle, but I stuck with the sword and shield combo for the vast majority of the runtime alongside the hammer for the occasional heavy attack. Each weapon is fun to use, and resources for upgrading these weapons are plentiful – so are unlikely to find yourself dishing out belittling damage to your adversaries. Furthermore, you also have additional special moves that can be activated through the use of triggers alongside the ability to switch elemental buffs mid-fight.

"I like to term Asterigos’ combat system as a soulslite, since its gameplay is a lot more forgiving in terms of difficulty than your average Soulslike – at least on the normal difficulty; and yes there are difficulty options."

Another interesting aspect about the combat system is the progression. As you get through the game, you earn XP which provides you with Attribute and Talent points. The attribute points will go towards increasing your character stats such as HP and damage, while the talent points can be cashed in to unlock special skills for your character from the skill tree. Apart from that, the tree also features perks, which provide some gameplay benefit at the cost of a disadvantage. For instance, a perk might increase the effectiveness of your health potions – but in turn, your potion carrying capacity decreases by 4. You can change your perk loadout or unequip them on the fly, so you can customize your character build depending on the situation at hand. While I didn’t need to fiddle with these systems all that much on the normal difficulty, your mileage could vary for higher difficulties.

Where Asterigos sticks closely to the Soulslike formula is in its exploration department. You start from a Shelter, where you make your way to different levels which range from a ghosted bazaar to a trap-infested mine to high-walled forts, each of which is a large space that loops around itself. There are very few checkpoints on every map, so it becomes essential to search every nook and cranny in search of shortcuts like elevators or locked doors so that subsequent journeys become a lot easier. Of course, going off the beaten path also rewards you with more crafting materials or consumables – that can make these detours worthwhile.

Each of these levels also features some NPCs, which will give out simple side-quests involving fetching something for somebody or finding a hidden item somewhere on the map – which as you can guess, aren’t all that interesting. At the end of a level, you are greeted with a boss fight – and while some of them can be fairly challenging, they are pretty forgettable for the most part.

"While the game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 hardware, the system would not let me download the PS5 version of the game for some reason, so after multiple failed attempts – I had to make do with the PS4 version. "

Asterigos has some promising aspects when it comes to gameplay, but the game feels sorely lacking in the technical department. The game looks pretty bland with lifeless textures and painfully low draw distances, and the animations aren’t as smooth as I’d have liked. Enemy AI also has a tendency to glitch out, and there were many instances when some enemies wouldn’t react to my presence at all among other things.

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars could have been an excellent feel-good soulslike, but for that to happen – the story aspect really needed to hit home with its themes and writing. Acme Gamestudio has crafted a simple but highly customizable combat system along with enticing exploration, but those promising aspects are let down by plenty of technical problems as well. All in all, it’s a decent experience, but one that could end up being amazing if re-iterated upon.

The PS4 version of the game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility. 

Can you talk about how Asterigos’ setting, the city of Aphes, is structured? Is it a seamless, freely explorable world, or does the game have a more directed and linear design?

The city of Aphes is an all-connected world but it is not an open world. But we do grant the players the freedom to explore the area as there are many routes and secret passages that would surprise you, as well as many discoverable points of interest.

"It takes up to 15 hours to beat the game if you run straight for the main quests. If you consider all collectables and all explorations, it might take up to 35 to 40 hours."

How much of an emphasis does the game place on storytelling? Hilda clearly seems to be quite an important pillar of the story, but what should players’ general expectations be from the overarching narrative?

Asterigos has very heavy storytelling, if you compare it to the general action games. We try to design our unique way of narrative. And so we make our protagonist, Hilda, a girl with a love to draw graphic diaries. So as you play through the game, she would write down and draw the pictures of what she experienced, making every player’s diary unique to read. Other than this, there are also historical documents, letters, or other written diaries to let you explore the lore of Aphes. And whenever a conversation starts, we also grant Hilda options to ask more questions should you be interested in knowing more of the story. There are also flashback echoes where when you triggered, an event of the past would replay again right before your eyes to let you re-experience what had happened.

And there’s motion graphic cinematics, told from another important characters’ perspective, to conclude a story when Hilda finished a stage’s main objective.

We hope with these components piecing together, we can bring an immersive and enjoyable storytelling experience to the players.

One thing that Asterigos seems to be emphasizing quite a bit is its combat, which is quite focused on both style and variety. For starters, what can you tell us about how much depth players can expect across the six different weapons, and how significantly they differ from each other?

Every weapon is very unique from each other. And they all have their advantages and disadvantages against certain enemies. For example, if you are facing a heavy armored soldier with a shield, then for a hammer user, you can easily smash and break his shield; while a dagger user would use another way by shifting to the enemy’s back and strike from his soft spot. It all comes to how you utilize and how you are familiar with your weapons. And not counting the talents, skills, and techniques these customizable options you would have with the weapon, which would be explained below.

How customizable is the combat with each different weapon? 

Each weapon has its associated talents, techniques, skills, and passives. And the core combat system is a combination of two weapons, it brings more variety and customization for everyone’s own styles. Plus there are also magic elemental enhancements to bring more customizable options.

How does Asterigos approach progression? Are players encouraged to switch between various weapons or is investing in one or two to make them more powerful the better strategy?

We encourage players to try as many weapons as possible. But every weapon is so unique that it is highly possible for the players to focus on their preferences and get used to it. And although the weapons are associated with talents, where you would invest your talent points to, we also give players options to reset the talents should they change their minds on using different weapons.

Enemy variety is something else Asterigos is placing plenty of emphasis on. Can you tell us a bit about what players can expect from enemies in the game, both in terms of variety and challenge?

There are over 60 unique monsters. From Legion warriors to mutated wild beasts, as well as the famous mythical creatures like Chimera, Calydonian, Harpy, Minataur, and more! Some of them are general mobs you would encounter during your adventure; some of them are unique elite challenges where you would only find them through some quests or special mechanisms.

As for the boss encounters, there are over 20 unique bosses, with at least 10 of them you would face during the main quests. You might face a gigantic crocodile who would snap, tail sweep and breath strong water bolts; there is also an elegant harpy who sings deadly and emits shockwaves and launches feather blades.

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of Asterigos be?

It takes up to 15 hours to beat the game if you run straight for the main quests. If you consider all collectables and all explorations, it might take up to 35 to 40 hours.

Do you have any plans to eventually launch on additional platforms? What was behind the decision to launch as a console exclusive for PlayStation?

We do consider launching Asterigos on more platforms. But our manpower is limited and so we make a decision on choosing PlayStation first. But time will tell.

"We encourage players to try as many weapons as possible."

As a PS5 console exclusive, how can players expect Asterigos to leverage the console’s unique capabilities? For instance, how will the haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and 3D audio come into play in the game?

Upgrade features on PlayStation 5 are still under development and we will announce these features when the time is right. Stay tuned!

The PS5’s SSD has been one of its biggest talking points- how has it impacted Asterigos and the way you have designed the game?

PS5’s SSD is one of the best for developers to create a game with seamless and all-connected zones. With it, the loading is fast enough to stream more levels at once and the FPS is as smooth as it usually be. And to create a seamless world would greatly enhance to gaming experience for exploration and adventure.

Something else that the PS5 has is a Zen 2 CPU and 10.28 TFLOPS GPU- how big of a leap is it over previous-gen hardware in your view, and how is it going to help development?

It gives developers more room to make their vision a reality. PS5 can load more assets in a shorter time, so a lot of calculations and asset loadings are no longer a limit to the developers.

What resolution and frame rate are you targeting? Furthermore, will the game have multiple graphical modes?

For PlayStation 4, we are targeting 30 FPS. For PlayStation 5, we are targeting 60 FPS. We cannot talk about multiple graphical modes yet.