Aluna: Sentinel of the Shards Reviews

Cool Hack n' Slash. Standard gameplay in a rare setting with an excellent implementation. Aluna doesn't reinvent the wheel, instead it satisfies the genre expectations. - Fluid controls, though the dodging is odd and the least likely way I would choose to do it. - Varied mobs, clearly separated by looks, biome, abilities and modus operandi. They often fight each other, to rob you of the XP. - Lively scenes. Level design is old-school, linear yet tortuous. The map overview is terrible though; the only real flaw of the game. - Colorful world and art, highly enjoyable. A zoom lets you ogle the details; I always appreciate such feature. Animations and sound on par with visuals. Polished low budget, talented team, excellent value for money. - Good loot, unusual in the genre. Classically over-itemised, but easy to compare once used to it. Abundant drops; well balanced rate and scale of improvement; specials that actually feel special... Rarer yet, the merchant is useful. Can't remember last time I had bought gear from a Hn'S - or even an RPG - vendor. - Powers are fun to use and make you feel mighty. Rate of acquisition is well-paced. You can also respec. - Even the boss fights are well done, fun, engaging, treated like any other fight, i.e. without the multi-stages grindy corporate BS you find pretty much everywhere else. That is, except for the last boss fight. Which becomes corporate for no reason. The Singularity, in gaming, will happen the day Developer Intelligence becomes so advanced, it understands that game finales are not meant to be endurance marathons. Neither physical endurance (thumbs, carpal tunnels) nor mental endurance (numbing repetition of patterns, of kills, of unskippable cutscenes, of anything that artificially lengthens.) The former kills momentum, the latter kills the fun and buries earlier good memories. Which is why I'm writing this review with the game on pause, while I decide if I can be arsed to beat the last bullet sponge or not. Solid recommendation for mindless but nifty action.

A nice little colorful ARPG. Since I really enjoyed playing the RPG game EMBER by the same developer, I just had to try ALUNA. It's just a nice little pastime for in between without great depth, don't expect a direct Diablo clone but a very slimmed-down ARPG, which can still be a lot of fun if you can get involved with the setting and the graphic style. I enjoy it and every now and then they play ALUNA for an hour or two ... Small price, small Dev. Team, great little game :)

Played the game to the finish - wow, this is a super cool game, the game has a cool story, a lot of loot, skill system, mini bosses, a lot of difference AI to battle - cool areas to battle in... if you are in to RPG games (like Diablo) this game is the way to go... check it out

A light top-down hack and slash game that can be compared to Torchlight. The game itself is looks great and is relatively cheap in price. It contains the usual leveling up of character, Loot system, skill trees and boss encounters. The player has the option of choosing between different combating styles, being Melee/Ranged/Magic and part of the game’s charm comes from exploring and mixing between styles to see what works best. I highly recommend rebinding the games controls (instead of using number keys 1-5) I changed mine to WASD + Q+E which made the game combat controls heaps better. Overall, the game doesn’t offer anything new to the genre, but I enjoyed my time with it.

It is an okay ARPG to play but you need to think about choosing skills and respec Aluna often to find the right build for each stage or enemy type (Respec cost is not expensive anyway.) Difficulty is not well balance throughout the entire game, as if Dev has no play testers to polish this aspect. Ranged/Mage mobs are very deadly if you stand still for too long (I mean 2-3 sec). Their skills and damage are insanely strong that can one-shot you often. If you do not want to frustrate while playing, I suggest playing the first run in Easy difficulty and change it to normal once you have enough skill points to handle those ridiculous damage from mobs later. Still, they can kill you really fast if you are not careful though. Stability also a little issue here, I experienced crash few times while fighting some elite mobs and trying to continue game from start menu. Luckily the game has auto save quite often, Other aspects are nice, it has beautiful levels. Cool artworks and okay story IMO.

It's an action RPG in the style of Diablo or Torchlight, but you play as a set-in-stone character, Aluna. There are some small bugs (your character's pathfinding) or unclear things here and there (such as needing to right-click skills to unlock them, when left-clicking didn't work I figured I might need to go to a place to unlock skills?), but overall the storyline, the music, and gameplay are excellent! It is set in Latin America at some point post-conquista, and your character is a demigoddess whose father is a conquistador and mother is the goddess of the earth, so there are some really interesting implications going on here. The comic book style of the cinematics are effective as well. Looking forward to completing it!

Been playing for awhile and its a cool story which has a very different take for ARPGs. The battles can be clunky and I dont mind a challenge but when an enemy on NORMAL can kill you in literally one hit thats bad programming and your potion cool down is bad you cant get more you only have the one and the mobs all band together to kill you you cant fight single groups at once. The moment you get near one the other ones all come into play.

I liked the game as a simple ARPG that may have a future, but a major game breaking bug caught me on quest. And the save feature did not help. I got stuck in a loop that red door blocker kept me from playing. I killed the boss and minions but died too. So on reborn in village the red blocker is up and the quest is stalled because I have killed them and quest not continuing when I go back to quest giver, because she wants me to go to room and do quest, which I cant enter anymore. I will give it a positive review as I did like the game to an extent and will hope a patch or update will fix the bug.

I feel this game is good for what it is right up until it isn't. I died numerous times along the way, which is fine, but then at the end of the game the difficulty shifts from challenging to nearly impossible for absolutely no explicable reason whatsoever. You'll get through most of the game with some challenge, at least I did, and then the last zone--the final boss fight, in particular--is just literally WTF. I was level 36 when I made it to the final boss and my character was just melting on contact, so I periodically (as it's slow, and not super fun) grinded my way to level 40 (the game required no grind up until this point, mind you) so that I could give the final boss another go. The result of adding 4 more levels and equipping the best gear I could find/buy/craft: the second my cool-down timers expired, so did I. Finally, in a begrudging moment of I don't really care any more, as I'd put as much into this game as I was prepared to, I dropped the difficulty to easy (git gud, whatever) so that I could at least get some closure to this story's mediocre narrative (it's not a AAA title, so no judgment there, as I wasn't expecting much to begin with), and then during the 3rd form of the final fight my game crashed... the result of which is my finally dropping a review. All of that aside, the game is cool if you're interested in some knockoff Diablo action, which is what first drew me to it, but the completely unnecessary shift in difficulty at the very end prevents me from recommending it to anyone... Though some people seem to like being angry while playing video games, so that demographic might enjoy it.

The game is mostly okay for a first entry and okay enough to give a recommend. I have purchased worse games at the price point. Graphics seem okay, sound and movement all seem normal for a ARPG. The story is okay (a bit amateurish in spots), but on the other hand most ARPG really don't have a great story any way. Voice acting is probably a sore spot here, seems some of the lines come off flat. Maybe a bit more polish in some areas like inventory and character customization would be the other thing to improve. All in all if your looking for a budget ARPG then give this game a shot could do worse :)