Altheia: The Wrath of Aferi Review

Altheia: The Wrath of Aferi is a fantasy action-adventure RPG inspired by the likes of Studio Ghibli and Studio Chizu. Developed by MarsLit Games and published by Neon Doctrine and Game Seer Publishing, this game aims to recreate the feeling of adventure found in other games like The Legend of Zelda.

Set in the world of Atarassia, the story centres around two unlikely heroes, Lili the Guardian (a title she desperately doesn’t want) and Sadi the Monk(-in-training). Both have lost loved ones to Aferi, who is going around causing wanton destruction, corrupting spirits, and spreading the Void across the lands. Lili and Sadi must now join forces to re-establish the partnership between Guardians and Monks, defeat the Void, and confront the very god that took everything from them.

The story is really nothing special, to be frank. It did surprise me a few times, going to places where I definitely didn’t expect (that I will not spoil), but it’s pretty predictable while offering little to really make me feel for the characters. This isn’t helped by the voice acting, which can be stiff at times… or there isn’t any when there really should be. Give me a gasp, a grunt, a cry of pain when an innocent family is burned to a crisp! Without it, some cutscenes are weirdly quiet, even with dramatic music blaring.

The graphics use a cel-shaded art style that will never become outdated. With the Ghibli-esque character designs, I can tell this game will remain pretty even decades later. I did notice issues with the shadows, because despite setting it to Ultra, they looked pixelated as heck. That’s not all, I also saw that there was some sort of area around Lili that made shadows appear…? I don’t know how to put this into words. It just looks off once you notice it.

But enough about the graphics, let’s get into the gameplay. You’ll be mainly playing as Lili with Sadi acting as your magical wolf support companion. He’ll free spirits, push buttons, pull levels, enhance your sword, plus a whole lot more as the game goes on. The only thing he can’t do is fight, but that’s where Lili comes in, as she’s able to attack corrupt spirits and perform perfect dodge rolls. Outside of combat, she can climb and carry heavy objects. At times, you’ll be basically playing as two characters at once to solve puzzles or beat tough enemies. It’s intuitive, although it has some hiccups (the camera can be rather unkind), but it works very well.

However, despite all the fancy combat manoeuvres and different abilities, Lili’s basic attack was more than enough to kill most enemies. I only occasionally used my other tools when a creature wouldn’t die unless you used them (with no indication, by the way, which is a running theme). It feels good swinging your sword around, either in its normal or greatsword state. I had issues with the bow, though, as it feels I need motion controls to use it properly. No matter how much I changed the sensitivity, it never felt good to use.

That being said, it isn’t all about fighting the forces of darkness. You’ll be delving into dungeons full of puzzles to solve, keys to collect, and enemies to battle. They can have some elegant solutions that require both Lili and Sadi to get through, while others are… less smartly designed. To be honest, I’ve solved a few of them without doing much of anything. For example, a gate didn't have any collision, so instead of doing an elaborate puzzle to put it down, I just passed through it and grabbed the dungeon key. There was another that required guiding a ball through a maze, but when I just did a test run, it just landed safely at the bottom without me changing anything. I felt kind of bad that I, quote-unquote, solved it in these ways, because all the other puzzles are pretty good and made me rack my brain for a bit.

There isn’t really much exploration in this game, with barely any incentive to go off the beaten path. With a line on the minimap always guiding you to your next objective, it feels more like going from A to B to C then back to A, rather than an adventure across the lands. Adding in all of the backtracking to areas you’ve been to before, often just to talk to an NPC who tells you to go back somewhere else, I got bored of it and stopped trying to check for secrets.

But now let’s get into the issues, because I ran into a lot of them. For general performance, it did run at 60 FPS most of the time with only some dips to 30 FPS during more intense moments, but there were one or two times when it went from 60 to three out of nowhere. That is unplayable, even for someone who's used to playing at substandard framerates. I had to reload from a checkpoint or move past it. I don't know why this happened.

Audio is off too, with sounds playing after a delay or not at all. There was a boss fight that began with bombastic music, but the rest of it was played in silence. The voice acting is weirdly mixed, where it's either too loud, too quiet, or none at all. I even spotted spelling and grammar errors in the subtitles, dialogue, and the Settings menu.

The Settings menu, by the way, has the tabs for Graphics, Controlls(sic), and Audio hidden after using them once. It’s still there, but they disappear for whatever reason. It can lead to someone completely missing that these options exist.

For glitches, there were a few I encountered. Minor things like clipping and some docile creatures walking into the ground, but there were some that absolutely softlocked me. My first session ended early when the teleport circle needed to progress didn't work. I had to exit the game to fix it.

As for gripes with the game design that I haven’t covered already, I really disliked that there was little-to-no feedback for obtaining key items or purchasing upgrades. For example, there is a spirit who sells upgrades in exchange for Void Cores, such as upgrading Lili’s health, Sadi’s mana, and learning new attacks. When I upgraded Lili's health, there wasn't a single indicator confirming that I purchased it, except for the number of Void Cores dropping. Speaking of health, there is no way you can heal outside of combat aside from dying.

I cannot stress this enough that, despite all the issues I've logged, Altheia: The Wrath of Aferi is a good game. All these issues can either be ignored or be fixed in future patches; they may even be gone by now, but it does feel undercooked in places that an update can't fix. If you’re interested, give it some time. You’ll find a fun adventure at the end. If you don’t, be ready for some jank.