Dont Nod's Aphrlion: my ramblings as I play

[Legend]

Cool, the dude died. But we all know he will come back.

[Legend]

Just died cause it didnt let me jump while she talked. And i fell two feet into water. And it said i drowned lol, in my spacesuit 

[Legend]

It's messing with me! I swear!

"Veesions"

[Legend]

Haha now she can swim in this water cause it's the plot water.

[Legend]

I glitched the walk animation for a bit. Was just "flying" around 

[Legend]

Wtf, she takes her helmet off cause she sees a floating little light.

And this light is the planet itself or something.

[Legend]

That was bloody awful. First game in a long long time I skipped the credits.

4/10 maybe going into the ending but idk, that ending brings it down to a 2/10.

What the fudge was the point of anything? Ill give the game props for keeping the dude dead. I'll do a full breakdown later.

[Legend]

Game reminded me of Invincible more than anything else. But unlike Invincible, it just did not have an interesting story.

So so so many cutscenes yet so little said or felt.

Gameplay as the woman wasn't fun. Climbing was just, climbing. The perfect catch system was the only thing worth mentioning but it was not enough to be interesting itself. Just press X every single time you are about to catch a ledge, otherwise a qte A button comes up with a dangle animation.

The "stealth" with the alien was so fudgy weird. It was blind, sound only, yet in cutscenes the woman would keep visually hiding from it. And during gameplay it was either mindnumbingly simple, just walk past it while crouched, or it was mindnumbingly annoying with it liking to catch you in certain situations.

Platforming sucked.

Gameplay as the man was better. It wasn't interesting but his limited oxygen made it have a sense of purpose. But with the man I eventually kinda gave up on the game and stopped trying to read and interact with every single thing possible. Which made it more fun for me but maybe made the story worse, idk.

Atmosphere was good.

I think it's a hard game to fix from a gameplay perspective. The man side is fine but the woman side just needed to make climbing mechanically interesting or put in story stuff. Like maybe she could have had to deal with the cold the whole time. It was a meter, not just the ice effect near the end. And then you could have her interested in searching for resources like a survival game. IDK. Would change everything but the current thing was not good.

Story wise, what the fudge I don't know. The lady and dude were fudgy dull. Did not care about them. Did not care about their relationship. If that was like, fully removed from the game and the focus was just on exploring the existing expedition, I think that would have improved things. Sped things up a lot.

And in general it just was a really stupid story. Im sure an audio log somewhere would have tried to make sense of it but nah. The planet is alive just go with it. Really can only be read as an allegory for mother nature but they end with the acorn sprouting, so like they still want us to kill and colonize this planet? I have no idea.

And of course the sci fi sucked.

2/10. Final score. Now I can check other reviews and see if Im crazy or not.

[Legend]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1966410/Aphelion/

Hahahhahahahhahaha oh wow it is funny to read how the game advertises itself. Really really overselling things.

"

• Grounded sci-fi exploration: a realistic depiction of near-future space exploration

"

This is also funny. Very, very, very wrong.

64% of the user reviews are positive so yeah seems my experience was not unique.