A is for Apotheon

I've had a problem lately - admittedly a "first world problem" as they say.  I have too many games piled up on my game list that I've never really played.  Some of them I've installed and looked at the opening sequences; others have never even been installed.

I look at my Steam library and just get lost in the possibilities, and end up doing nothing at all.

So, when you have some problem (even if it's a really stupid one), the thing to do is to break it into smaller parts and chew each portion before going on to the next.  And that's what I'm doing with my Steam library.  I'm going to play my Steam games A to Z - at least one from each letter (if I have one for each letter) and I'll write something about them here - a review, or mini-review, at least.

First up: Apotheon.

Apotheon is a 2-D side-scrolling platformer released in 2015 by Alientrap.

The first thing to really notice about Apotheon is the art: the aesthetic choices for the game are truly superb.  The whole game looks like it's taking place on the side of an ancient Greek vase, and the lines and composition are frequently beautiful. The soundtrack is quite good, and the voice acting is above par to boot, making for a great experience overall.  The game incorporates snippets of Greek mythology, from the writings of Homer to various Orphic hymns, producing an unusual atmosphere for a video game, let alone one of this category.

Mechanically - well, it's a side-scrolling 2-D platformer.  That isn't one of my favorite genres by a long shot (in fact, I usually avoid them).  This category inevitably means a bit of frustration for me with the de rigueur boss fights, the lack of any choice in how the story plays out, and so on.

Apotheon got quite a bit better for me, though, once I moved from keyboard-and-mouse to Steam controller to play, with a minor exception (as I'll explain below).  With mouse and keyboard, it's just too hard to be facing the right direction when fighting, but controller play deals with that considerably better.  Except when you need to, say, aim down a long tunnel to hit a target with an arrow.  Then I pretty much had to go back to mouse and keyboard for that specific trick - no amount of fussing with my Steam controller settings could get the aiming to work with any amount of sensitivity, and there is no way to address sensitivity or to re-map the controller in-game at all.

(It's worth noting that I have played other 2-D side-scrollers with mouse and keyboard without this problem and I have played other 2-D side-scrollers with the Steam controller without these problems.  These issues seem to be something very particular about how Apotheon works, and it is the worst aspect of the game.)

Many players also complain that the combat is clunky, and I can honestly say that I find it terrible - but that is with the caveat that I frequently find the combat in these sorts of games terrible, so I can't tell if it's genuinely wonky, or I just do not enjoy this sort of thing and since I am only trying to get through the silly boss fights to see where the story actually goes.  Just know that in Apotheon, strikes must be aimed and they must be relatively precise; meanwhile enemies will dodge - and will often spring around crazily like mad frogs - which I found to be somewhat disconcerting, and which did not seem to fit well with the game's other artistic choices and tone.  Bottom line though: if you're looking for someone to appreciate unusual or varied combat in game of this genre, it's definitely not me, so take what I say with that grain of salt here.

I got best into the game by floundering through the opening level, mashing buttons until I had (slowly) sublimated attacking, dodging and rolling, and switching weapons, and then I started over in order to pay attention to the story and scenes instead of being focused more on "Oh damn it, I didn't mean to throw that! Bwah! Why am I facing the wrong direction?!?"  That generally provided a better experience for that secondary start and subsequent play.

Otherwise, though, the game is an interesting experience, and looking around provided me a ton of entertainment.  I'd definitely buy and play follow-ups to this game in the vein of Egyptian, Japanese, Sumerian, Aztec, and so on just to see the art and experience the mythology, honestly.  It's worth the admission price for that alone.