Path of Achra Review - RIB16

Path of Achra Review

Disclaimer: I asked for and was provided a review copy yesterday night at time of writing. I have just over 6 hours in the game and have beaten the level track on the normal difficulty.

TLDR: This game is highly addicting and excels at providing fans of old school sword & sorcery the sort of esoterica that has usually been relegated to dressing in other works. There are many playstyles and goals for one to set out to accomplish. The game makes you feel like a badass and I think most people would feel a very genuine sense of accomplishment after grasping it.

        Path of Achra is my first time asking for a review copy from a dev. I felt nervous about it because this blog is very small and the game is not expensive. I know this isn’t much of an excuse, but I hope my readers will believe me when I say that I don’t have the money to buy and play video games without making difficult choices. I asked the dev, Ulfsire, over on X for a Steam key in an overly formal manner and didn’t expect a response.

He answered, and I quote, “helll yeah”. Upon seeing this I started jumping up and down in my living room in front of my little brother out of happiness. I had accomplished one of the goals that I set out for myself upon creating this blog and the informal response really put me at ease. I had this game in my wishlist for quite a while as a fan of both old school games and the old school fantasy aesthetic, though at the time I didn’t fully appreciate just how cool this title is. As such, I have to say that I’m biased because I’m going to remember and play this game forever, but I’ll also say that I made a good choice and you should play it too.

I don’t know what the dev’s intentions were upon attempting to make this game, but an itch has been scratched that I didn’t know I had before. If you’re familiar with Conan the Barbarian, imagine that world but with a specific focus on how Howard did tribes and magic. Even the player classes look like they could fit right into the old Schwarzenegger films. There is a distinct difference between the aesthetics of high/epic fantasy and old school sword & sorcery, this game really nails the latter on the head.

When you boot up the game your options are limited but the depth to what you have can seem overwhelming. There are many styles of gameplay that I haven’t even remotely explored and the variety in choice is really amazing. This game rewards you deeply for actually reading what the equipment and abilities you have do, most gameplay styles are built on the idea of escalating passives that most roguelikes have. I won’t get too deep into whether this game is a -like or -lite. Runs don’t start with you a little stronger each time, but different starting selections for your character unlock as you play. I would argue that these occupy niches in gameplay that don’t make the new ones automatically better than what you had before, however.

This last point should be read with a grain of salt. I haven’t explored the game to its fullest and it’s made by one person, so the issue of balance and whether or not there really are starting selections that should never be used over others isn’t something that I can definitively comment on. From what I’ve seen for myself, everything I have remains viable depending on how I want to play.

The game starts out with you picking out your character’s culture, class, and religion. These are what determine the stats, equipment, abilities, and passives you begin with. These also largely determine your playstyle, though I’ve definitely had times when playing where I thought I’d do one thing specifically but end up finding equipment that changes my plans. This may sound odd but the way it happens is that the core gameplay strategy usually remains unchanged, that mix of attack vs defense which defines your movement patterns, but the elements you use to augment your damage can change wildly depending on the gear you pick up, and sometimes even that core strategy changes if the equipment is good enough.

The game is turn based, played on levels that are laid out on grid tiles where line of sight keeps enemies hidden until they are close enough to you. Funnily enough, my most successful runs were my first and last over a total of 10 attempts at time of writing. My first run was a Strength based fire mage, where I could stand in place and enemies would explode around the map, taking a wide amount and variety of chaining damage. This build took me very far, far enough to where I cleared the first area, but upon entering the endgame I swiftly had my ass handed to me.

No build I played with after that got to the same point as the first one until the last before writing this review. The other styles were good up close, but ranged enemies would kill them too quickly. They simply got overpowered too swiftly and healing options were limited. My last build was a pure summoner build, I dumped all my stats and ability points into summons and even upgraded my class to increase the summons I had by a very large amount. Near the end-game, I had so many minions that on some levels there was no space to summon all of them, most levels would have all tiles completely full and the level map completely seen. It was awesome to behold, I had a lot of fun with it but now I worry about how I can beat the game with something different. How can I crack the code in a different way?

Really, I had been playing in a bit of a lazy way. My key mistake was that I would sacrifice equipment I felt didn’t fit my build almost immediately upon obtaining them, when in reality you want to keep similar equipment with different elemental damage and resistance to tackle the wide variety of possible encounters, at least that’s what I hypothesize. I think that I beat the game in the easiest way possible but a lot of luck played into it as I had equipment I had never seen before in other runs that helped out my summons. There’s a boatload of ways your run can go. Don’t fret though, this game definitely has ways for players to concretely challenge themselves and mix up their approach. This takes two forms, Lore and Glory.

Glory is the easiest to explain. Beating the game grants you Glory, allowing you to increase the difficulty and speed up progression. It’s a bit like prestige, seeing how high you can go is an immediate and obvious way to entice players to push themselves. Lore is more interesting in my opinion. This is basically an achievement board where completing a challenge, such as beating the game with monotype powers or with a certain class, grants you information about the wider world of Achra. The starting selection choices have bits of lore to them as well, it’s really quite interesting to read and I hope the dev has plans to really build on this somehow as it draws me in greatly with how unique it all feels.

This is not an easy game at first, though when you get the grasp of things and see how much stronger you become it feels very satisfying. It’s very cool that depending on your goal, you will have to face a strategic learning curve again due to how different things are and with how varied the equipment can be. I am biased because this game will follow me for all time. I understand that is meaningless to say in a review, but for the general consumer, keep in mind that this is made by a dedicated solo dev and that it is very inexpensive. I think it is definitely worth checking out, you can sink many hours into it and the experience is engaging and rewarding. Thanks again to Ulfsire for providing a review copy.

Nikhil Saxena

Founder, Destrier Studios

https://linktr.ee/destrierstudios