Dungeons of Aether

Man the combat in this game is just putrid and one dimensional.

love it, v good, i'll probably come back to replay after slade gets added to rivals (please please please please)

The game has a very interesting approach to turn-based battles. Each turn a handful of dice are rolled, you and your opponent takes turn picking them up and then allocating them to your stats - for this turn - according to dice color. Battles are very short, since enemies have between 2-4 and HP, but every turn matters and this game is a pleasant excercise in strategy. What I enjoyed the most are the characters of course. Their designs, animations, personalities and dialogues, instantly fell in love with them. Main campaign is relatively short, but there is also a challenge run mode, which can be a source of endless fun.

really addicting turnbased rpg. the combat is very simple, but the stat draft system kinda adds some mindgames to it and the four characters all play wildly differently from each other which helps to add some variety, I think. it's also a fairly short game, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. music bangs. fleet is cute i love her

это кубики, фурри и стратегия - что может быть лучше? в целом обожаю вселенную райвалсов, новые персонажи тут просто во 👍 стратегия с кубиками тоже имба идея, из похожего находила только Dicey Dungeons отдельно хочу отметить саундтрек игры - наверно из серии RoA он тут самый лучший)

Great, small game with deep, tactical puzzle-like combat. Set in the Aether universe, which is quite rich in lore, story is really nothing special. While the focus is on the characters, the things said or that happens outside the story are more than the one happening in the game. I may seems too critical, but to be fair I enjoyed it, and all character feel pretty unique. Especially loved how Fleet doesn't stay ubiquos for all the game, and there was a satisfying ending! But the focus of the game is mostly on the gameplay. Dungeon exploring is pretty minimal, even finding all the lore pages was quite easy. All the juice is in the combat. To me, it felt like a puzzle game that you try to solve, each encounter. You draft dice with the opponent, assigning them to your stats, and then choosing an abiility based on your SKILL (one of the stat) value. It's incredibly rewarding as there are no surprises at all: you can see the skill chosen by the opponent in any moment, and the order in which the ability are resolved is based on SPEED (another stat). Equips and personal ablities complete the frame, and are up for a great experience. I haven't got bored from a single fight (playing on hard), especially since health is a spare resource to keep from a fight to the other. Duration is less than 10 hours, which is fair. Bosses recycle themself pretty fast, and there are not too many enemies, but the characters in the different chapters are dievrse enough to keep the game inetresting. Some characters are exremely unbalanced compared to others, making the game either quite easy or quite challenging. Music is insanely good, and, most importantly, all the male characters are extremely hot

I went into this not knowing much about it, and it completely blew me away. The narrative, the characters, the writing... all of them really stood out and elevated what was already a fun and fresh RPG. I played on Hard and got the deathless achievement, so for what it's worth I think it's really well-balanced, too.. I'm a big fan of MtG drafting, and the dice drafting is obviously a lot smaller-scale than that, but I think there's *just* enough variance and strategy in it that it keeps the game feeling interesting. I had some fun builds with each of the characters, too: - Fleet did Snipe spam with stamina dice synergies. - Slade alternated between Slash if I needed stamina or Steal otherwise, and lots of free dice for evasion. - Hamir had this awesome oneshot build that aimed to Quake and recoup 3 stamina using the Poison Gem (which is super duper strong). - Artemis aimed to greed on 1HP for her kit's synergies, and just keep chaining hits to get value out of Break. I wanted to give a particular shout-out to how well-explained everything is! The UI is really clean, it's got lots of little helpful elements like icons if you're not hitting stat breakpoints, and absolutely everything is available for you to check and examine before you make any decisions. I especially liked the limited inventory system, too! Six slots is just enough where you care what you have and need to make interesting decisions. I liked the variety of equipment - same deal with the three slots, it promotes experimentation and just enough room to be able to run support equipment when you need to. The bank helps for cases where you find good gear for one character while playing as another, and similarly, I felt it had juuuust enough space to give you options without it being too strong. It's all so tight! The music is stellar, obviously, and an underrated thing I liked is how the game builds out the lore of the world of Aether! It ties in really nicely to Rivals 1, which is obviously intentional, but I think it's very well-executed, It was a really cool experience, especially the last few hours where it firmly hits its stride. Honestly I think this game is slept on! It's well worth playing.

A keeper for sure, especially if you love the "Aether verse" lore, and that slammin' soundtrack, especially the battle songs!