PlayStation is continuing to add exciting indie games to its library. It's been showcasing everything from Tchia to Sifu lately, and now fans know that a new action RPG is coming to PlayStation consoles too. It's called Asterigos, and it tells the story of a warrior named Hilda who travels to the ruined city of Aphes in search of her lost father. Players can modify their fighting style by changing the type of weapon Hilda wields, taking her from a swordfighter to a mage at a moment's notice. Overall, Asterigos looks like it could be a solid addition to the PS4 and PS5's roster of fantasy RPGs.
Interestingly, Asterigos looks a lot like two different games at once. Asterigos is only the latest in a long line of works of fiction that use ancient Roman and Greek culture as a source of inspiration, but even so, its combination of themes and aesthetics make it seems like the intersection of two specific games. Those games are Ryse: Son of Rome and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Asterigos seems to combine Ryse's themes of family loyalty and a warrior's duty with Immortals Fenyx Rising's animated art style and high fantasy elements. The result is a colorful, fantastical game with room for a grounded and moving story.
Ryse and Immortals Fenyx Rising's Elements
Ryse: Son of Rome is heavily focused on family. The game's protagonist, Marius Titus, rises to prominence after joining Rome's conquest of Britannia in search of vengeance after Marius' family is killed by invading barbarians. The loss of Marius' father is particularly hard for Marius, and serves as a major motivator for going to war. Asterigos doesn't suggest that Hilda's father is dead, but even so, it's still a game about a young warrior risking everything in the name of a family that she's lost. Just like how Marius discovers difficult truths about his family's death over the course of Ryse, Asterigos is probably full of complicated mysteries for Hilda to unravel.
While that's a fairly grounded central narrative, Asterigos looks like the much more vibrant Immortals Fenyx Rising at a glance. Instead of using realistic graphics, Asterigos is thoroughly stylized and animated. Hilda's character design is defined by her bright eyes and colorful clothing, much like Fenyx. The cursed city of Aphes, which serves as Asterigos' setting, also looks a lot like Immortals Fenyx Rising's set design. It seems like Asterigos combines Ryse's choice to often remain within buildings and cities with Immortals Fenyx Rising's idea of how those buildings and cities should look.
Asterigos Strikes a Solid Middle Ground
Asterigos lands in between Ryse and Fenyx in its approach to fantasy. Ryse involved some supernatural elements due to certain gods meddling in Rome's affairs, but it was mostly grounded in human matters. In contrast, Fenyx is all about interacting with the gods directly, saving the Greek pantheon from a terrible fate inflicted upon them by their enemies. While Asterigos is aware of its gods and features lots of magic, the gods remain largely aloof, letting more mundane supernatural forces take the helm. This puts Asterigos squarely in the middle of Ryse's light dash of fantasy and Fenyx's wholehearted mythos-focused story.
In a way, it's not surprising that Asterigos falls on a sliding scale in this way. Again, fiction about or based on Greek and Roman history and mythology always has to decide just how supernatural it'll be. This genre of fiction remains interesting because there's so many different potential stories to be told based on the amount of fantastical elements and the specific fantastical elements that creators choose to use. With well under a year to go before its expected release, PlayStation fans interested in Asterigos should expect to hear more about its take on Greco-Roman fantasy soon.
Asterigos releases for PS4 in spring 2022, with an enhanced PS5 version planned for autumn 2022.