Apotheon is an action, Metroidvania platformer developed and published by Alientrap.

What I Like

Let me begin this review by saying that, by far, one of this game’s best features is that e’rybody got da booty. Please see the below picture:

These are actually character sprites used in the game and, as you may have noticed, they have some plump rumps. Jokes aside, though, I’ll start this review in earnest (and will reference the above image later on for different reasons).

The first thing I noticed about this game when I saw it in the Steam Store was the art. Apotheon has a very unique look to it in that all of the art in the game resembles Grecian pottery. I thought that this was an amazing choice for this game not only because of the subject matter and theme of the game, but because it instantly sets it apart for 99% of all the other Metroidvania platformers one can find on Steam. On top of this, the color palette used in the game is dark and striking. Characters and items tend to draw a stark contrast against the more subdued colors that make up the backgrounds in the game.

One more thing about the game’s art: I think there are four or five kinds of shields in the game (with two to three being unique shields). The other shields, while mundane in nature, have a variety of appearances. You can see a few of them displayed in the picture above. I thought that this was a great way of fitting more art assets into the game, rather than having them go to an early grave as mere concept art.

Upon firing the game up for the first time, you will probably find yourself taking a moment to appreciate the gorgeous scrolling art on the main menu (it looks just like the picture at the start of this review, but it scrolls slowly across the screen). Coupled with this is a darkly beautiful song plucked out on some manner of harp or a lyre (honestly, it could even be a guitar or something similar) the main menu is, in and of itself, quite the work of art. A torch-esque light will also follow your cursor around as you move it around the main menu.

The actual UI within the game is minimal and never gets in the way of something you need to see or if you are in the heat of battle. I particularly like the scrolling menus for your inventory that you can switch weapons and items from on the fly, though I do wish they were a bit easier to navigate when you are in the thick of things.

Apotheon features a very light crafting system (solely for consumable items like healing kits, explosives, and the like) and the menu for crafting is pleasantly simple. It’s pretty much perfect for this small, but important gameplay mechanic.

One more thing about the game’s menus and UI: Depending on where you currently are in Olympus (and you’ll have the opportunity to visit several interesting places over the course of the game) your pause menu changes colors to reflect the backing colors of the area you are in. This is a small detail, but it works wonders for maintaining the atmosphere of an area.

Now were getting into some of the actual gameplay mechanics. For starters, the controls are simple to learn and to master. You’ll have a good, working knowledge of the controls within the first ten minutes of playing the game.

You can block incoming attacks with your shield (if you have one equipped), but you also have the option to roll away from attacks. Your roll covers a decent amount of distance and allows you to pass through enemies without taking damage.

Jumping is a pretty crucial mechanic in platformer games and Apotheon is no exception to this. Jumping really starts to shine when you figure out the other actions you chain after a jump. My personal favorites are ending a jump and going directly into a roll (tuck and roll, baby) and the fact that you can roll in the air, mid-jump (this can effectively be used as a small, forward boost in the air). What’s more, jumping while sprinting makes you go a satisfyingly long distance.

Every single melee weapon that you’ll pick up in the game can be thrown at your enemies. That’s right folks, the single best feature from Dead Island is back in a big way. It’s really fun to impale some poor schmuck with a well timed sword throw. There are naturally throwable weapons in the game, but it just isn’t the same. As a side note here, headshots on enemies do more damage.

There are a few portions of the game that take place underwater or in water. In addition to being able to fight in or under the water, your swimming speed is not markedly different from your normal speed on land. You can even do a speed boost by pressing the roll button while swimming.

One more thing about gameplay mechanics: there is, like, one single time that you ride a horse in the game. It’s a bit unconventional for a side-scroller, but, man, was it a lot of fun.

The world map is well designed, which is good, since the world map can make or break a Metroidvania game. The design of individual areas was, likewise, well done, well thought out, and filled with hidden goodies so beloved in the genre.

A couple more things about the design features of the game: there is a surprisingly wide variety of weapons to pick up (both common and unique), the lighting effects in dark areas of the game that require you to have a torch out are really cool, and the atmosphere in Hades was honestly quite spooky.

Apotheon features relatively non-linear progression. The game takes place in sort of three pseudo-acts with each act giving you different objectives. You can take those objectives on in any order you’d like.

One of the earlier boss battles (Brontes, a cyclops) is pretty fun. In order to beat him you have to hit him in his eye with projectiles. Be sure you bring some arrows or you’re going to have a bad time.

Sound effects in the game are clean, clear, and easy to hear over the soundtrack and other goings on. The voice work is good, especially for a smaller studio like Alientrap and there are no abysmal performances that stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the immersion. Far and away though, my absolute favorite thing about Apotheon is its soundtrack. Wow! It is well composed, well performed, and is easily the best thing to come from this game. I’m listening to it right now while I’m writing this, in fact. If you have some spare time, you should give it a listen.

One more thing about the sounds and music of the game: all of the voice actors are English and, therefore, have an English accent. There’s nothing wrong with this in the slightest, but a tiny, nitpicky corner of my brain deeply wishes they could’ve gotten VAs who either had Greek accents normal or could do a convincing one. It really would’ve upped the whole experience of the game I think.

What I Don’t Like

This section of the review, while shorter, is, nonetheless, just as important. I will begin the airing of my grievances with the gameplay mechanics.

You have the ability to perform different types of attacks with your weapons, but the method of doing so appears to hinge on you moving your joystick in a certain way (this probably translates to spastic mouse movements if you’re playing with K + M). I wish that the control scheme had been mapped differently to allow for different buttons to launch a different type of attack with your weapon.

You can aim directionaly with any weapon. I remeber this being a feature of another Alientrap game, Capsized, but it made more sense there since you had a gun. It make sense to be able to do it with the ranged weapons in this game, but it doesn’t make much sense to have the feature enable for melee weapons too. This led to some frustrating moments in combat.

One more thing about the combat and weapons: the weapons have durability. You can’t repair them. If they break, you’re just SOL until you can get your hands on more (I never actually ran completely out of weapons, but you can see my point). Weapon durability just felt very out of place in this game. It seemed like a mechanic that was added in to add a layer of difficulty to the game, but what it really added was a layer of tedium.

While I adore having the option to toggle sprint in certain games, I despise autosprint. Apotheon has an autosprint mechanic where your character will begin sprinting after moving over level terrain for a few seconds. This seems nice, but the more of the game I played, the more I came to resent this. Either let me control the sprint or don’t let me sprint at all.

While rolling to avoid damage is nice, the fact that you can’t also roll through/under a swinging blade trap is just criminal. Seriously, though.

The objective markers to where you need to go next do not appear unless you are in the hub area that is connected to your current set of objectives. This was obnoxious as there isn’t a way to check your current objectives otherwise. No thanks.

A couple more things about navigating in game: I absolutely hated the ever-revolving maze area before getting to Athena and the area that directly proceeds the Zeus boss battle isn’t good platforming action, it’s a chore.

The vast majority of the boss battles are, if anything, rather boring. The boss battle against Poseidon was, in all honestly, more annoying than anything else. The main difficulty factor in boss battles is typically the large health bars. Bosses can soak up a lot of damage before they die.

One more thing about the game’s boss battles: I encountered game breaking bugs in both the Poseidon and Zeus boss battles. This game was released in 2015 and this hasn’t been patched yet. Either this is just laziness on the part of the devs or it is intrinsically tied to how the game is built. Either way, its not a good thing.

Overall, the story is a bit underwhelming. I expected some plot twists as far as Hera’s role was concerned (and seemed heavily alluded to by the character’s interactions with her) and then nothing happened. The plot twists, while predicatble, would have at least made the story a tad more exciting.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Apotheon is that, the longer you play it, the more repetitive the game starts to feel. I realize that pretty much every single game is doing the same things over and over ad nauseam, but if you, the player, begin to feel that that is the case, it is game over.

Verdict

Apotheon is not the best platformer game I’ve ever played, but it’s also far from the worst. I love the art, I love the soundtrack, and I’m glad I have played through the game for the experience of it. That being said, I don’t think that this is one that I will ever be firing up to play again. If you ever see it turn up on sale (say, 60% off or more) it’s absolutely worth it even if you’re only going to play it once. Who knows, maybe you will end up liking it more than I did.