Achilles: Legends Untold PC Review

We’re going to have to start this review by saying that Achilles: Legends Untold is an early access game, and it is still very rough around the edges. The game often takes a long time to load, the frame rate dips almost constantly, and the AI has various pathing issues (getting stuck on the environment or sometimes having strange follow triggers where they’ll simply stop following you past a certain piece of the map even if they’re right beside you), and it does crash to desktop (although this is, thankfully, less common than the other issues).

Many of these issues tend to be graphical in nature and so, it’s probably best to start off by saying that the game isn’t particularly marvelous to look at. However, it doesn’t need to be. It has functional, realistic-style graphics that work for what this game is going for. Because it is if the title is anything to go by, inspired by Ancient Greek myth and follows the character of Achilles.

 

And as you play as this famous character of myth, you adopt a more realistic, Soulslike fighting system. So, if you have no interest in games that are a little on the harder side of things; games that have low health counts, limited health potion slots per run, stamina meters, and a focus on dodging and blocking, then this one will not be for you. However, if you are a big Soulsbourne fan, Achilles: Legends Untold still may not be for you.

The game is more akin to dungeon crawler-type, hack-and-slash affairs, like Titan Quest or Dungeon Siege, but with a Soulslike combat system strapped on instead. You can’t just run in, murdering your way through the hordes ahead of you, but must instead navigate limited combat mechanics with that pesky old stamina meter while also facing far more enemies than a Soulsbourne game would likely ever throw at you at once.

 

Achilles: Legends Untold quickly becomes unmanageable when more and more enemies are on the screen because instead of fighting small groups of enemies, learning their specific quirks, and discovering the best way to evade and strike! You are instead forced to endlessly back up until there’s an opening, strike, back up again, and eventually whittle down their numbers. And when you get forced into relatively tight confines with multiple archers and swordsmen, it can become immensely frustrating as those archers have perfect aim and the swordsmen just don’t stop swinging. It’s a game that can easily get overwhelming in its number of enemies while forcing you into a combat system that is built for smaller, one-on-one type encounters.

And you’ll likely find that when you get into boss fights, you’re having the most fun. There’s a standard lock-on feature like you’ll see in practically every Soulslike game, and then you move around the environment, dodging and blocking attacks from that one foe, learning their moveset, and striking with alternating heavy or light blows when the time is right. It’s where Achilles: Legends Untold shines brightest. Sadly, those moments are relatively few and far between and you’ll mostly have six enemies rushing at you as you desperately try to eternally back up until at least some of them leave you alone so you can deal with a more manageable number of foes. This is also where it may be good to mention that this game has co-op, and in these trickier spots, it can feel like it was designed for co-op and not balanced for single-player play. It also doesn’t help that you’ll sometimes face a mythical creature that can kill you in one hit and ignores your block.

 

And that’s where death comes in. Because this game does want to be a Soulslike of sorts. Whenever you reach a shrine, all the enemies come back, a la Soulsbourne-style. You also lose all the points you made by killing enemies, but if you can make it back to your corpse you get them back. These points are then used in a variety of upgrades for everything from health and endurance upgrades to a few new moves (but not that many).

These shrines are also often quite far apart, and they can, at times, be difficult to find because, unlike the Soulsbourne games it wants to emulate, Achilles: Legends Untold uses a more isometric perspective and so none of the environment can be used as a form of landmarking or shortcuts. You just stumble around the map until you find the next shrine.

 

This perspective also doesn’t help with many of the different enemy types. The whole point of combat in Soulsbourne games is that you learn how the different enemy types fight and so you know how to approach each, but because of the more eagle-eye perspective, it can often be harder to tell exactly which type of enemy is which. So, you may forget that the one with the red hue has a different attack pattern to the one with a blue hue, but otherwise, they look similar to each other. You’re simply too detached from the action to be able to give each enemy the examination and consideration they need.

In addition, the fact that you have so many enemies coming at you at once often means that you can’t focus on those individual enemies. This is a shame because the game does work great when you are in one-on-one fights. They become a tense back and forth as you each try and one up the other. It’s great! However, it is worth remembering, that the game is in early access and so, with time, there may be balance fixes to make it a far better (and more optimized) experience. That is the hope at least because Achilles: Legends Untold probably has a lot of potential behind it.

 

However, here’s where we will have to move more toward a definite criticism because the narrative is… fine. It’s adequate. If you like Ancient Greek stuff, you’ll probably enjoy something about it. But the voice acting is not great, and the writing is perfectly serviceable, but the issue of subtitling comes into play. When it goes into some cutscenes, there are subtitles, and other cutscenes do not have subtitles. Much of the time, this is okay because there isn’t much to understand, but whenever the character of Hades talks to you, his voice is so muffled (you know, bad guy voice and all that), you cannot hear what he’s saying. Or at least I couldn’t.

I know that that character said words to me, but I don’t know what those words were, and that is disappointing. Although, as I said, it is early access and so maybe, with time, it will become a better experience overall. But for now, unless you’re super interested in a Dungeon Siege-esque take on a more Dark Souls formula, then give it a miss until it’s been fixed up a bit.

 

However, those who do like games like Dungeon Siege and other loot-heavy games may be disappointed to find that for a game that looks like a looter… it isn’t. You get a new weapon now and then, but it isn’t the cornucopia of loot that drops in games like Diablo. It’s a new sword every once in a while and little else. But hey, the one-on-one combat is pretty great, and it does work rather well as a game to play while listening to podcasts as it is rather mindless fun!

Justin van Huyssteen,
Editor, NoobFeed