// PC GAMER — GAMING
Don't let this beautifully-drawn action RPG starring two girls trained in Sekiro-style combat get lost in the sea of new games on Steam
Lunarium has the atmosphere of Nier with the satisfying action of a soulslike.
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Do me a favor and don't let Lunarium get lost in the sea of game releases on Steam. Tons of action RPGs show up in my inbox and it's sometimes hard to differentiate which one is which. Lunarium stood out mostly because of its art style, which sort of looks like it would fit on the cover of a Nier or Final Fantasy game.
And then I played it and discovered one of the best action RPGs of the year.
The last thing I want is for a game with such an evocative, hand-drawn style to get swallowed up by the tidal wave of Steam games that try to fake it with generative AI. Lunarium's crumbling ruins and overgrown forests are like a Nier: Automata level squished down into an isometric 2D perspective. It's a sad game with a world painted in muted colors, as if the dark monsters you encounter are draining the life out of it.
Lunarium sort of plays like a soulslike, but it's much closer to Sekiro than Dark Souls in terms of pacing. Dying will respawn all the enemies, but you can dispatch them (or skip them entirely) to get back to where you were in no time. Main character Ave starts off a little sluggish—the first boss fight took me a few tries as I adjusted to the range of her dashes—but she quickly becomes way more agile than a typical soulslike hero as you collect upgrades.
At first I thought Lune would be my FromSoft-style level-up girl, but she's actually a ruthless combatant in some of the game's most intense encounters.
Ave is actually just one of two characters you play. After a brief intro sequence, she meets Lune, a mysterious floating archer who can help Ave in battle. At first I thought Lune would be my FromSoft-style level-up girl, but she's actually a ruthless combatant in some of the game's most intense encounters.
As Ave, you focus on handling enemy attacks with dodges or parries to set them up for Lune. The parry system works just like Sekiro where timing it perfectly builds up a stagger meter on enemies. Raise it high enough and you can command Lune to break their posture with an arrow so Ave can carve them up.
Even though you only directly control Ave, you still have to think about them both tactically. I picked up a skill early on that let Lune buff Ave's final swing in a combo and I found that the tiny delay it added to her swings forced me to decide if it was worth using it or not. Certain monsters are too fast to spare the second you need to line up a parry, but boy was it satisfying to deflect three swipes as Ave and shatter the enemy's defenses with Lune's arrow just before her final swing connected.