Aphelion

Aphelion is a beautifully created game by Dontnod and while it's gameplay has its issues, the narrative is pure sci-fi perfection.

Aphelion may not allow players to connect as personally as they did with Max and Chloe to Thomas and Ariane, but it does represent many of its themes admirably. The vast, hostile and seemingly uncaring landscape of Persephone is beautiful regardless of the pain it inflicts upon the protagonists. Worthy of its playtime, Aphelion is the interactive equivalent of binging a single season of TV over a few nights – the rough bits don’t stick around long enough to ruin the overall experience.

Aphelion is a pleasant, well-crafted, and visually captivating sci-fi adventure that remains engaging to play, especially thanks to its setting and the credibility of its spacefaring imagination. DON'T NOD builds a world that is beautiful to explore and a story solid enough to carry the journey, but it never quite manages to give the gameplay the same strength as its artistic vision.

Aphelion has some excellent moments regarding the story, but is let down by consistently frustrating gameplay where you feel punished for no reason.

Aphelion is a deeply frustrating mix of both brilliant and baffling design: part gorgeous, best-in-class narrative adventure. One boasting cinematic presentation backed by superb lead performances, further enhanced by the year’s most compelling, science-grounded sci‑fi story. But also, part dreary third-person action-adventure, undercutting the pace of its narrative with clunky platforming, tedious stealth and puzzle sections, and Thomas’ oxygen-management nonsense. In the end, this tight narrative adventure is stretched into an over-long slog. Sure, it’s well worth seeing through for the story, but with a sharper gameplay focus, Aphelion could have been essential.

After an initially positive impression, Aphelion fails to achieve liftoff. Shallow and outdated climbing mechanics, coupled with an abundance of boring stealth sections, make the narrative the only hope for this mission. However, with a lack of compelling characters or performances, the gravity of two unlikeable leads proves too strong for Aphelion. Despite strong visuals, instead of reaching for the stars, this sci-fi journey ends up falling back to Earth.

Coming from Don't Nod, it's a shame that both Aphelion's storytelling and climbing mechanics feels so lackluster, with Uncharted-like sci-fi action failing to make much of an impact at all. Some gorgeous alien vistas and a decent premise fail to interest for long when simply controlling characters feels clunky and uninteresting.

Okay, it’s not the best game I’ve played from Dontnod, but I don’t think it’s as bad as some people make it out to be, either. The atmosphere is great, with those visually stunning icy landscapes. The climbing mechanics could be improved, though.

Narrative & Character Development is AMAZING; Visuals & Art Direction is GREAT; Music & Sound Design is AMAZING; Gameplay Mechanics are MIDIOCRE; Pacing & Length is OKAY; Technical Performance is OKAY; Technical Performance is OKAY. Overall is an GOOD game.

Ideal for players who love pure storytelling. There is no combat involved; the mechanics are limited to stealth, evasion, and platforming. While the story is beautiful, the game has its drawbacks—specifically the navigation. Finding your way is difficult, and backtracking through the map can get annoying, especially in the last two chapters. Since the gameplay is heavily focused on walking and climbing, it might not suit everyone. Play it for the story, but don't set your expectations too high.

Story is interesting enough, and the two protagnist speaker are doing a good job. This is one thing I expected from Don't nod, being a fan of their games since Remember Me (which was really great). I really love their creative ideas for stories and settings - from the mentioned Remember Me, over Vampyr to this cute little Scifi-Story. What I don't know understand: how can you manage making a step backwards gameplay-wise with every new game you develop? That being said, I am still ok. I like good stories, and I am totally ok with a good walking sim from time to time. But I am really getting annoyed with game developers obsession with "collectibles" and similar methods of artificial stretching of play time. Even more annoying is it, when a game expects you to look for collectibles, but closes the way with invisible barriers every few steps of the way - this is something almost kill all the joy of playing A plague tale for me. Another game with outstanding story and acting but a lot of unnecessary annoying limitations in gameplay. AND, non-trackable collectables are one of the stupidest ideas in game developing history. Aphelion has combines the three above mentioned problems. Plus another few things that are potentially bothering like problems with animations and the moveset of the character - and that I would consider just minor flaws. All-in-all, I really would wish for Don't nod to concentrate on the things they do good (story and dialogues), improve in the gameplay part or at least don't design the game in a way it emphasizes it's flaws, and just don't annoy fans and players with unnecessary limitations to badly strech the play time for 10 or 15 %. I'd rather enjoy a good story and smooth gameplay for 4 hours then being "occupied" for 8 hours and annoyed or bored half of that time. Then I could just appreciate them for creative and heart-warming ideas and courage to turn those into games for a growingly challenging market.

aphelion is more or less a climbing simulator, documentary more than game. Play is split between 2 protagonists, one is more used than the other. There is a alien lifeform chasing you " nemesis " but feels more a pest than anything to actually be concerned about. And the ending is rubbish.