Is Aetherspire a new cooperative classic? TCbH Review
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Transcript
Any of you have that game that's a bit rough around the edges? Maybe there's some obvious flaws or limitations, like it shouldn't all work, and yet when it comes together, it tickles your head sponge like nobody's business. Well, for me, that's aetherspire, phase shift's new cooperative tower building and protection, not tower defense. And yes, there are similarities, but I've played a lot of tower defense, so I can't in good conscious just straight up call this a tower defense game. But let's take a look. You are a chubby elemental. That ain't a dig. That's just facts as presented. Together with other players, you are guarding the aether core itself, protected by thin walls barely holding together while the elemental plane spins out of whack. To stop it, you'll have to stem off at invading fractures of these primal forces while simultaneously building layers and layers of matching terrain to ultimately construct a spire.
Complete all four spires and win. But that's a tough order before the invaders, due to no available placement or game effects by their personified masters revealed throughout the game, break the corresponding wall and drop the health of the aether core to zero. In a practical sense, either Spire's core loop is pretty similar. Bad stuff happens and you try to react while proactively working towards your goal. This is a tried andrue cooperative formula since Pandemic first graced our hobby back in 2008. This particular flavor doesn't have you physically present on the map itself, but you influence the map through the dice you roll each turn, which themselves build pillars, allowing drawn map layers to be constructed upon. If it were just these dice and your character abilities, Aether Spire would be fine. But really, what makes it special comes down to the flexible amalgamation of actions that come at the behest of these magical fragments.
Each turn, in addition to five dice, you draw a map tile and then draw three of these elements, which you'll note are the same token as the invading fragments clogging up the board, which is important for a couple of reasons. Freely on your turn, you can cash in these elements in combinations for four different spells. From rolling more dice to constructing pillars, regardless of element, to even crystallizing invaders, converting them into immediately usable magic. You have a ton of utility in the system, but also a lot of limitation. You'll often prioritize certain actions based on what you're willing to spend out of here. And the fact that it carries over and accumulates from player to player is great. Furthermore, the fact that you can always spend it to draw extra building layers, including their wild, or as the game terms it multi-side, which counts as any element, but also costs more rare wild rolls from dice to construct towers. And speaking of towers, this is where I was talking about the difference between this and tower defense games. You are not constructing towers that act as stationary defenses spiraling out of control with more and more momentous power. No, you're actually creating traps for these invaders to fall into. And the act of creating the towers is the victory condition as you're trying to defend a central location. Hence, tower construction and tower protection game, but not quite exactly tower defense. But I'm
getting a bit lost in the sauce. Let's talk about these layers. So, first things first, Aether Spire has an uphill battle in that the first instinct of every upturn nose elite gamer is that this is going to be a dexterity game, which it is not. But that's going to be a challenge that anyone looking at the game at the table is going to have to overcome. You know it, I know it. And heck, even Phase Shift knows it because they put a disclaimer that is not a dexterity game in the materials for Aether Spire. Balance is not an issue in this game. And I mean, yeah, [clears throat] the as in game balance and mechanisms and things working together as intended, but I also mean literal balance of these towers is not the point of this game itself. The dimensionality is largely aesthetic, but that's not a bad thing. It's actually a clever bit of haptic production design where the physical reality of the game helps you intuitit the systems that it's playing with better. Anyway, aside from all of that, there's a lot of cool stuff that's going on under the hood in this game. Take for instance the elemental fragments and how they're placed into the space within the game and how they get placed on their element or multi-rooms and damage your core if they have nowhere to go. you have to construct with capacity to hold these elements in mind. And while single
element rooms are less versatile, they tend to be easier to build upon and have more space. And always on these multi-rooms and often on the single element rooms as well, the uh presence, the footprint that you can build upon gets smaller and smaller, compounding the issues of the increased investigation, making a nice arc throughout the game. Let's say you complete a spire. Sick. You get to defeat the elemental baddy that passively made the element worse once they were revealed and snag a sick bonus. You also take five fragments of that type out of the bag and remove it from the game, meaning the bag is now a higher concentration of the elements you're still continuing to battle. And the magic available for affiliated spells of the defeated element is more rare. This creates a pretty interesting decision space that's not difficult to grapple with, but certainly nice to chew on. But as I said at the top, this is a flawed gem. The flow of each session is going to feel pretty similar, even if there are difficulty options and a bunch of different fiends you can deal with. I also find it wanting some other system that allows for investment, growth, and development. Sure, you can invest in the terrains that are effectively cages to trap bad stuff, but your turnbyturn capabilities, aside from the mana to power it, is exactly the same at the start of the game as it is at the end.
And there's almost a comical lack of handholding as it's very possible to build yourself into an unwininnable corner with your towers. You can't destroy them once built. And unless you intentionally built one that splits into two towers, there are only three bases on the board. I'm not saying that the game state is unwinable from the get- go. I'm saying you very well can put yourself into an unwinable position. Get good. Beyond that, it suffers from the same quarterbacking vulnerabilities of classic co-ops. And even though it's grown on me, the art style of Cabbage Patch Elementals is certainly jarring. And style aside, it's not particularly noteworthy in its execution either. And yet, I love playing this game. It's such a fun, rhythmic puzzle. I love it solo, either with one of the dedicated solo characters or trading off two characters in two-handed fashion.
Except there's not the downside of having cards to manage in a twohanded session. I also love playing with my family and friends. I like the dance you have to manage between reactive and proactive play. Also, the magic fragment system is just mwah chef's kiss. So, where does this leave us? Well, atherspire has some clunks to it, but the core system really works for me. I mean, I hate the notion of expansions fixing problems with core games, but I'm hoping that it's successful enough to allow for exploration into what I think are viable solutions to some of the rougher edges that would elevate it from this sort of flawed gem status. But even as is for my household, this has been a blast. And in a year of some really notable great co-op games, Aetherspire is a very welcome entry from a small publisher that is exploring some fairly familiar concepts but in new unconventional ways.
And that's our review. But let me know, what do you think of this? What are some of your favorite flawed gem type of games? And what would you like to see out of the co-op gaming genres that have built up over time? Where do you think we can go next? Put in the comments. And as always, thanks for watching, supporting, talking about, messaging, sharing, doing all the social things that really help this channel grow. But above all, thanks for just being a great community.
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