My affinity for roguelikes is spotty. There’s times where it feels good, the challenge is balanced, the environments are engaging, and there’s a feeling that I’m getting somewhere. Other times, it’s about as enjoyable as getting worked over by the local loan shark. And those shifts can happen within the same game! Still, when Aethermancer came up on the radar, I was intrigued. After some time with it in Early Access, I’m finding it’s not a bad little romp.
Aethermancer puts you in the robes of Siriux, the titular magical entity. Their presence in the realm of Terastae is expeditionary: a catastrophe in the capital city of Vigil has brought forth the Void, engulfing everything in its path and bringing about strange creatures. Being an aethermancer, Siriux has the ability to capture the essence of these creatures and use them as both anchor and army while their explorations continue. Should they run out of creatures to deploy, they will be forced to return to the village of Pilgrim’s Rest to try their luck anew.
The visuals in Aethermancer definitely hew to a 16-bit pixel style aesthetic, and it’s quite good. Some might be tempted to compare it to Hades, particularly given the title screen, but temper your expectations. With that said, the animation for movement is certainly as fluid as Hades, even if the action isn’t quite as intense. The various monsters are distinctive and easily recognizable. The UI is simple, contextual, and easy to read. The folks over at Moi Rai Games have done great work without going completely wild. That said, I have noticed that certain character portraits talking to some NPCs do not display correctly. It doesn’t feel like it’s a narrative choice, and does diminish the overall quality.
As far as the sound side, things are not quite as rosy. Not bad though, to be sure. There are lots of appropriate sounds for various attacks, from basic thumps to low roars and sharp cracks. Still, I think I would have liked more from the monsters themselves: howls of victory (or pain), chirps, squeaks, signals that they’re not just alive but living creatures. The soundtrack is not bad, but not exemplary, either. It doesn’t quite set a mood and it doesn’t quite stick in your mind.
When it comes to gameplay, there’s a lot to unpack in Aethermancer. The basics are easy enough: find monsters, fight monsters, get XP, get stronger, repeat until defeated. As you’re going through the different dungeons, every fight inflicts Corruption on your monsters, reducing their overall hit points when starting a new battle. Various items, special locations, and even NPC encounters can reduce or even eliminate Corruption (for the moment). But you’re never going to escape it, so it becomes a question of how best to manage your risk. Do you carry on, hoping to find ways to reduce Corruption on your best fighters? Or do you swap them out and potentially screw up the chemistry of your current team?
Complicating matters is that if you go swap one out, you don’t have access to your full collection, and the ones you can bring up might not be the ones you really need. It’s perhaps a bit more painful than other roguelikes because you will very easily begin to favor certain monsters over others because they can do such a good job. Of course, every run is different for them, and the table of special attacks and abilities they get when leveling up changes each time. Still, you as a player can easily learn which picks are keepers and which ones don’t necessarily work for you. Outside of the general gameplay, the ability to save during a run so you can come back later is definitely a big help. The developers clearly understand that players might have to step away for a bit, and the respect for the player’s time is greatly appreciated.
From a narrative perspective, Aethermancer definitely parcels its story out in fragments, and the fragments are not exactly what you might call “well organized.” Nicely written, yes. Very character-centric, yes. Forming a coherent narrative, not quite. This is one time where it would have been nice to have a codex of sorts, keeping track of the mentions of certain topics and narrative threads, as well as the characters involved. As it is, there are indications that there’s a lot of backstory involved, a great deal of worldbuilding that’s backstopping the action. Trying to get to it all will undoubtedly take a considerable number of runs and probably a good sized notebook to take down all the details.
If you’re looking for a new roguelike, and one that’s both enjoyable and able to be handled on a reasonable person’s schedule, you’d do well to pick up Aethermancer. Between the character and creature designs, the mutating combat options, and the narrative elements, there’s a lot to love and a lot to discover.
Axel reviewed Aethermancer on PC in Early Access with a provided review copy.
