Nobody knows why the fox's pants keep disappearing, but that sure is a good way to sell a videogame. You'ld think someone was stealing the pants, but she'd probably notice them missing if that were the case.

Also I guess I just like the "good guy hero who is a terrible judge of character" archetype because Fleet is really doing the exact same kind of well-intended foolish shenanigans as Terra from Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep. Except she's an anthro fox which instantly means I like her about 5 times more than I ever liked Terra, and he was already my favorite from that game.

Oh also there's a bunch of other characters in Dungeons of Aether as well, but uhhh I dunno. Cool and interesting backstories and hints at forestories for most of them. but I didn't really buy this for them and there's far more fanart of Fleet than the others anyway which is what convinced me to play the game in the first place.

As a game it's kind of a 1v1 puzzle/tactics game that can feel really draining at first until you start getting a hang of recognizing the "stat too low" indicators at a glance and getting a feel of what items are actually worth keeping a slot for and which ones just _sound_ good but aren't worth the space. Consumable potions sound kinda wasteful at first, but when you get used to chugging them at the nearest convenience and effectively carrying an extra stamina die in the bottle every time you find a new source of water, their value for cost is way more obvious. Like. Just chunk 'em out if you find something better, but you'll get new stuff all the time and the pots are cheap.

Play this game if you like cute anthro fox women that try hard to be good but are also kinda dorks.
And if you're wondering what the whole pants thing was about at the start, I guess just go look up fanart and decide if you want to play the game based on that. Worked for me!

A true disappointment.

+Aesthethics

-Puzzle-like gameplay is instant turn-off for me

This game was very close to getting a recommendation, until I started to see things in my extensive play through of it. The game tends to suffer of the same strategy once you figure it out, every enemy has stamina and most of them have a limited amount except a few special enemies. So you just trick the enemy into using it and now since they can't use stamina, they can't boost their stats, so they die. This will however change when playing on hard difficulty as the AI will try to counter where you allocate your stamina points and even force your hand to use some. You should not have too much trouble and eventually throughout story mode you will get to play as different characters, this is where things get interesting.

Each character has their specific playstyle and I will name them like this:
The All-Rounder
The Dodger
The No one plays
And The Double Edged Sword

And you will see this in another mode very prominently. With these types of playstyles, some characters have a breeze going through the game and the others not so much.

But now we come to the big issues with the game. For those achievement hunters out there, this game is made easy for you until maybe a patch, which is why I need to address the current joke that is Challenge run mode. Challenge run has you face everything with your choice of one of the playstyles I mentioned above to go through every dungeon as a floor, with a few bosses in-between in one go. You are allowed to save and come back to that run in case you did not want to do a full run in one sitting. The issue with this however is that if you come into a situation that the enemy is going to drop you, you can just close the game mid-fight and go back into challenge run mode and be in the previous room just before fighting that enemy, a form of save-scumming. This makes the leaderboard pointless as anyone can do this and have a perfect run on top 10 if you really want to try hard enough. On top of that, if you store items in the bank and have to start over because something killed you and you have to start a new run, those items will carry over into next said run. They will only be gone for good if you die with them in your inventory or equipped. Challenge mode.....not really in it's current state.

Enough bashing the game, this is just some things I have come across and I will give the game credit for the character designs and their music is good. That's about it.

Very fun mechanic, though sometimes you get into a stalemate until you get good or bad luck. Story was fun, and there was enough item movement and characters that it felt fresh in each dungeon.

Dungeons of Aether is a fun little puzzle game. Not anything to write home about but a pleasant little game to spend a dozen hours chewing through. The game has a lot of charm- a little over the top with the simplest of plots but the gameplay is interesting and has enough variety at the start to provide.

It does get a bit repetitive by the time you've played all of the available characters since the game doesn't change much throughout its play length.

The game music is fine but it’s a little short and repetitive so I ended up muting it, however the voiceover is also linked to the same slider for some reason so I wasn’t able to listen to the conversations.

Additionally the final fight on story mode was overly complicated and very difficult to understand. Even having won the fight, I'm not sure I could tell you how it actually works.

Still, for $15 or less, certainly worth a try if puzzly RPG-lite games are your jam.

The puzzle combat is a good cross between easy to understand and satisfying to do correctly. I like how they managed to make four characters that all engage with the same system differently.
I'll buy however many more copies of this game I need to to get Artemis in Rivals 2.

It's addictive. Gameplay, bgm, character design, graphic all well-made and uh... the RNG(Sometimes it's quite RNG based), I don't regret grabbing this game with the original price, it's worth the price. I haven't finished the story mode tho, Imma update my comment soon.
Edit: Oh and... multiplayer please xd

it fun

Yes.

While interesting, the combat gets more dragged out the more difficult it gets, which might be the reason why the campaign is rather easy, even on the hardest difficulty. Along with cartoony writing, fairly limited game mechanics (which can get annoying at times) and cute art style this makes me recommend this game for rather younger audience. The story is short enough though and what's there kept me engaged just long enough to finish it, while enjoying the journey.