Achilles: Survivor – PS5 Review

Achilles: Survivor is a rogue-lite/auto-battler type of game and it comes to us from Polish programmers Dark Point Games.  It’s the follow up to Achilles: Legends Untold, a tough little souls-like RPG, and while it sports a very similar look, this takes the series into a Vampire Survivors direction.

That means that essentially you just move your character around and the CPU will handle most of the aiming, and all of the attacking, as you take on hordes of enemies from the game’s mythology-inspired world.  Animated skeletons, giants, spiders, giant spiders.  You know the deal.

You’re given a series of levels to work through, each with its own goal at the end (usually twenty minutes in but the game also gives you a very handy short option too which halves the time).  You either need to just survive, kill someone, open a portal or seal a rift.  The main thing is how you get there because in that time you will be besieged by enemies and, as is the way with this genre, you’ve basically got three paths to success.

The first is to get good with movement.  You need to avoid enemies while lining up your attacks for maximum efficiency.  The controls feel nice and slick and certainly very simple as you only use the left-stick during gameplay.  But good movement will only get you so far.

The next element is how you choose your perks.  These show up every time you level up, giving you a choice of four each time.  Do you focus on attack or defense?  On economy or survival?  While not as in-depth as Brotato‘s brilliant shop mechanics, getting the right perks is super satisfying and helps foster a good bit of addictiveness out of the game.

And finally, as ever, it’s the permanent upgrades that’ll really make a difference.  Materials are earned during gameplay that allow you to upgrade “favors” which are essentially just stats for all aspects of combat, economy and survival.  You’ll want to put a lot into your attacking power if you want to make real progress but you’ll need to share out the resources in other areas too.

Cleverly, Achilles: Survivor also adds another key element to the gameplay.  Each level has build spots on it.  Places where you can create structures.  These range from attacking ones such as flame turrets and spinning blades to marketplaces, healing stations and more.  Not only do they have a practical use but they also come with stat bonuses.  Having a flame turret increases your attack power, a healing station gives you more maximum health and so on.  It’s a cool mechanic and one that ensures you explore the whole level, which thankfully aren’t too large.

The combination of the standard Survivors-like gameplay and these tower defense elements works really well and adds a bit more tactical depth to a genre which already has a glut of games in it and it helps Achilles: Survivor really stand out.  As do all of the unlockable characters you can play as.  And while there’s a lot of content here we found it all quite logical in terms of what we felt like we needed to work on next.  There are challenges that give you a sense of what needs to get done, some of which unlock trophies but mainly they’ll open up new levels, characters or building types.   And while there’s a lot to do and, yes, it can get a bit repetitive, we found it a lot easier to get on with than Soulstone Survivors which is similar but just a bit more of a faff to work through.

Achilles: Survivor benefits from some decent presentation too.  This is a genre that usually suffers from either having very simplistic visuals or it tries to go into the 3D realm a bit but ends up looking like a cheap Xbox Live Arcade game from the ’00s.  The graphics here are a bit more modern and refined.  There’s enough detail and size to everything to make it feel a bit more like a modern game but they still manage to shift around a good number of enemies while keeping the action fairly clear and readable.

And so, overall, we’re really happy with this one.  The gameplay loop is fun and addictive, albeit a little bit of a grind (but it always is with this genre), the presentation is better than you usually get, the building mechanic adds a lot of strategy and keeps you moving and it all just comes together in the most satisfying way.  And it’s cheap too, coming in at under six quid.  If you’re a fan of the genre but want to see a more grown up version of it, Achilles: Survivor is well worth checking out.