Arkheron is doing something we all love in gaming, putting a fresh twist on something familiar. Coming from Bonfire Studios, a team founded by ex-Blizzard Creative Officer Rob Pardo, and whose influence runs through World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Overwatch, Arkheron is a PvP multiplayer dungeon crawler, with teams of three attempting to make it to the top of the tower, slicing their way through enemies and opposing teams, as the playable space shrinks. A team-based, dungeon-crawling battle royale? It’s a brilliant mix.
Arkheron centres around the relics. Each player has four empty slots: two weapons, a Crown and an Amulet, and you fill these by looting treasure chests as you climb the tower. Each relic has its own unique powers, or individual weapon types, and while there are common-level versions, what you’re really looking for are Relics that belong to an Eternal.
There are eight Eternals in the game right now, each with four unique Relics and corresponding abilities. If you collect all four from the same Eternal, you can transform into them, gaining a fifth, ultra-powerful special move as well, giving you a distinct advantage, and, as an added bonus, making you look incredibly cool too.
What it does mean, however, is that you’re stuck as that Eternal for the rest of the match, and that might not be the best choice. There are literally thousands of possible combinations for the gear here, and that includes further bonuses for carrying a split pair of same-type equipment. It’s a dizzying level of customisation, and I can see players really digging into the swirling range of possibilities when Arkheron launches.
You have to get to the top of the Tower first. Every team is dropped into the bottom floor with an expanding field of view letting you see other team drops and enemies, giving you a decent picture of where you want to join the battle. Our team – led by the exceptionally cool Bonfire Studios team member, Raph, – was consistently patient, waiting to see how the map was panning out before making the leap, and that seemed to work well in terms of giving us time to start building up an armoury.
Each floor of the tower is filled with CPU-controlled enemies for you to work your way through, clearing areas so that you’re free to ransack the heady assortment of treasure chests. There’s different levels of chest, so you’ll find plenty of mundane, run-of-the-mill weapons, amulets and crowns, in the lowest level, while the Eternal gear tends to be tucked away in the rare ones that you’ve really had to work for.
As you’re decimating the various enemies on each floor, you’re earning currency to use in the shop. These contain consumables and a selection of gear, too, but they’re also focal points for all of the other teams, and you can suddenly find yourself embroiled in a melee, just because you wanted to pick up some health. We found that a hasty retreat wasn’t so much cowardly as efficient, and we repeatedly lived to fight through another few floors after spying an enemy team and legging it in the other direction.
You can hear enemy footsteps ringing out through the gothic halls, so there’s a nice and clear audible indicator of which way you want to go, much like in other Battle Royales. Running and hiding remains my favourite tactic in PUBG, and I can do that here too, so I was well at home.
I loved the hack-and-slash combat here, though. A mix of Diablo and Hades-esque weaponry and movesets, makes this feel like a multiplayer version of those incredible games, and that is as enjoyable as it sounds. The weight and variety of different weapons and abilities has been tuned really well, and while things definitely become chaotic when you’re facing off against an enemy team, it never felt unwieldy. There’s a few quirks to playing with a controller – there’s not quite the expected level of control, with the controller replicating the way you move with a mouse and keyboard – but I still found myself having a whale of a time.
The battle royale element really comes into play when it starts funnelling the fifteen teams together. At points you have to retreat to the safety of a nearby Beacon, the only thing that will protect you from the Abyssal Storm. Lower floors have plenty of Beacons, but as you climb higher, there are fewer and fewer, leading to an inevitable brawl at the top with a final remaining team.
There’s plenty of customisation too, though thanks to the isometric view during each round, the best view you’ll have of your character, and your teammates, is on the prep screen before you head to the tower. Still, the art direction is really strong throughout, and the Eternals in particular are particularly characterful.
Our hands-on time gave a tantalising glimpse of Arkheron’s possibilities. If you’ve got a steady team of friends to party up with, enjoy the action of games like Hades and Diablo, and love the competition and gameplay loop of a battle royale, you should definitely keep an eye on Bonfire Studios’ first game.
