Review: Aethermancer

Summon your team of fantastic creatures and battle against powerful enemies.

THE GAME

Aethermancer is a roguelike game developed by Moi Rai Games and published by Offbrand Games. An Aethermancer has the ability to forge bonds with creatures. And that's how you'll explore the Fractured Ruins. Defeat other monsters, capture their essence, and use it to command a group of up to three creatures. Were you defeated? No problem! Come back stronger and with a new strategy in mind.

Use the enemies' weaknesses to gain an advantage.

MY IMPRESSIONS

Although Aethermancer is in early access at the time of this review, it's already a very complete game. Being a roguelike, building bonds with your creatures is a bit complicated, since you won't always use your favorites. Strategy is paramount. Knowing which team to assemble, with abilities that synergize best, is of utmost importance. Furthermore, your team needs a wide range of elemental attacks, as these are essential for breaking through enemy elemental defenses and interrupting their turns. Considering every detail is crucial to determining how long your adventure will last.

Battles are turn-based, using elemental energies for attacks. Outside of combat, you explore a small map that can offer items, money, and special events. Additionally, there's the corruption mechanic, which consumes your monsters' maximum health bar if they are directly attacked. While I find this mechanic quite annoying, it's just another layer of difficulty that you must learn to play around. The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, which is great, since many skills and stats have a lot of text that requires a more elaborate explanation. Overall, it's a game that, at first glance, seems quite punishing, and it is, almost forcing you to lose several times because that's what a roguelike is. However, when you start to understand it better, develop strategies, capture new monsters, and acquire improvements in the city, everything becomes more palatable.

The city's inhabitants will help you in your adventures.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Unfortunately, as of the time of this review, the game does not have achievements. I believe that they will be added in the future, especially since, in addition to being in early access, there is plenty of scope for objectives and actions within the game.

Explore the map to acquire upgrades.

CONCLUSION

I had previously played a game from the same developer. With the same theme of monsters battling for you, it's clear the developer really likes this theme. Here, unlike Monster Sanctuary, their previous work, the roguelike aspect left me with mixed feelings. When it comes to monster capture and battles, it's usually more fun to assemble a fixed team with the ones you like to use most and keep playing. In Aethermancer, detachment is recommended. The coolest creature isn't always the one that will best fit your strategy, and this can end up frustrating unsuspecting players. Adding this to the roguelike element and the need to repeat the same processes many, many times, the game can become tedious. Still, if you really commit to improving your strategy and upgrading your monsters, the reward is quite satisfying.

SCORE: 7.5/10