Aestik Review

Hello everyone! With Aestik being just 5 hours away from release, I was fortunate to get the chance to complete it in advance!

As always, a spoiler-free video review has been created, which you can watch by clicking on this link: https://youtu.be/V5Vht77663Y

For those who do not wish to watch the video:

My Playtime: 5 hours and 30 minutes for my first playthrough (second playthrough necessary to see everything, check the pros I'll mention below)

Completion Rate: About 98%

Game Price: 17.49 euros (10% off at launch)

Pros:

- Beautifully hand-drawn visuals that give off a dark fairytale vibe

  • Nuanced narrative and lore that goes deep and is presented in small pieces, mainly through environmental storytelling and dialogue

  • The map of Aestik is a wonderful place to explore, being home to several different biomes with distinct themes, as well as diverse flora and fauna and even platforming and navigation mechanics unique to each place, keeping traversal across them fresh and interesting. I especially loved how every single one of these areas was carefully weaved into the game’s lore, effectively making the whole map a narrative tapestry that essentially functions as a character by itself.

  • Moral choices that can alter the course of the story as well as the enemies you get to face. Throughout your journey you will come across certain situations where you’ll have to make a tough choice, which is often related to you deciding someone’s fate, a decision which causes a ripple effect by making certain characters trust you and others want you dead, leading to different story threads and boss-fights, a quality that adds an interesting element of replayability to the game (aka, two playthroughs).

  • Incredibly meaningful optional secrets and collectibles which will make your life much, much easier. Trust me, go look for them, you'll probably need them! Journal pages provide snippets of insight into the land of Aestik, allowing you to make more sense of the place. Challenge portals, which I really enjoyed, take you to unique arenas where you have to defeat a few waves of enemies in order to obtain certain memory fragments with which you are able to gain access to companions. Companions are little spirits, some of which you unlock by obtaining the aforementioned fragments while others you find across the map, with each one providing a certain benefit that will help you on your travels and between which you can switch via an altar in the game’s main hub area, of which I will speak more about a little later. Runes are magical stones that offer active benefits in the form of platforming and offensive abilities, such as double jumping and shooting beams of energy at your enemies, all of which you can equip from the rune menu. Finally, upgrade elixirs offer the possibility to upgrade one of three different elements related to your healing potions and rune effectiveness.

  • Combat is quite basic, though I did enjoy its simplicity (whether that's a pro or a con is up to you). On a basic level, you are able to strike at your enemies with a flurry of hits by your cane, which can also be used to pogo off of them, as well as environmental hazards. Each enemy hit also bears weight, meaning that you are pushed a bit backwards every time you strike, adding an element of strategy when clashing against your foes near treacherous terrain. You also find runes that add some special attacks to your repertoire, such as an energy beam you can shoot at your enemies and a whip attack that lets you draw essence from them.

  • I cannot overstate how challenging, brutal and fun the game’s acrobatic segments are. There’s a huge variety of different platforming gauntlets that you will need to overcome before the story’s end, most of which will require your undivided attention and snappy reflexes in order to complete, with a few of them reaching insane levels of creativity, complexity and need for precision to the point where you’ll feel like a master acrobat once you’ve beaten them. What makes these ordeals truly stand out are the awesome abilities you get to acquire along the way, with special mention being given to the teleportation and wing double-flap skills that, in combination with the aforementioned pogo ability, can lead to perfectly fluid platforming runs that delight and terrify in equal measure. If you’re a fan of challenging platforming segments, then Aestik is definitely going to quell your hunger in that regard, with some of the latter gauntlets truly giving me a run for my money.

  • Cool bosses with interesting attack patterns, for the most part.

  • Accessibility options such as infinite health, infinite essence and a damage slider let you tailor the experience to your own preferences.

  • Main story aside, Aestik offers a series of separate combat and platforming challenges accessible via the game’s main menu for those wishing to try out their skills, which adds a good chunk of additional content if you’re a completionist.

Cons:

- I couldn’t find any way to reveal collectibles on the map, which can lead to frustrating situations if you’re only missing one or two items and have no idea where to go to seek them out.

- You can’t place manual markers on the map. There are certain NPCs that you find, who will then reveal save points and some very specific, and useful, points of interest, but it would have been great to be able to mark my own places of interest as well.

  • I would have liked to be able to see my exact position on the map. While the game does highlight the map segment you are in at any given moment, I’d have preferred an exact location of my character since some of the larger areas of the world may lead to a small degree of disorientation.

  • I found the fast-travel system to be somewhat counter-intuitive. Essentially, you are able to visit a certain hub area by striking at save points, and through said hub area you are able to then travel to three different, unique save points you unlock in certain areas across the map. While the hub area itself is extremely useful, featuring a bestiary, a couple of incredibly helpful purchasable items and your companion selection altar, among others, I would have preferred a more immediate way of fast-traveling instead of stopping there first, which feels like it slows down my momentum.

  • To my understanding, Aestik doesn’t seem to have any invincibility frames or, if it does, their window is so brief that it’s imperceptible, which can lead to some desperate battle situations where you spam your healing potion just to stay afloat and not die after an onslaught of attacks, something that can be a double-edged sword in itself since using the potion leaves you open to said attacks! This was mostly noticeable with certain boss fights.

That's it!

Anyone here who'll be playing this?