Aporia: Beyond The Valley Review

Oh, but I do love games with fancy titles…

Before I go into depth explaining why exactly I feel this way, let me tell you in two sentences or less that Aporia: Beyond the Valley is an amazing game. Like, I had tons of fun playing it and it left me at awe on many occasions, however … it was such a technical hardship, that it was getting annoying at some point.

From what I saw and experienced in the 13 hours I ran around the world of Aporia, I can say that it is well worth it and people, who love exploration games, with puzzles in them, a very atmospheric setting, mysterious and slowly unfolding story, beautiful world-building – then my friends, this is a game I can definitely recommend for you. Let us focus on the positive first, since it does indeed overshadow the negatives.

The story – I’m not gonna lie, I love story-building in games, even if there are some fine examples that go great without or with minor even, however, the story of Aporia I found to my liking and here is why.

First of all, we wake up in this mysterious temple and are basically left to explore the world for ourselves. We observe what is left of the mighty civilization of Ez’rat Qin – all from how it was very small, grew up to be very flourishing and crumble into ruin and what we see before us is the aftermath of some events that led to this ruin. In fact, I believe that exploration is a big part of the gameplay and even though I was wondering around in the valley for many hours, I never truly got bored of it. You are presented with a map – a quite obscured map, if I might add and imma be real with you, sometimes I was wondering if it was helping me or confusing me more. But it is a map nonetheless and unlike those ones that you never get used to, this one, as abstracted as it is, you can get used to and it’s totally learnable. Each important place is featured by a symbol on the map and they are quite well drawn, because they are all relatable and distinguishable. When you see a symbol, you know exactly what it’s supposed to represent. My only complaint about the map was that, as directionally challenged as I am in life, the fact that there was no indicator to what direction is where, or what direction I am facing even, didn’t really help me at all. However, top shelf statement – I am glad I had access to this map and I felt like using a map in real life, because we are so used to having this pointer in video game maps that show us where we are and what direction we are facing and while that is done for the point of making things easier and more accessible, I did like this subtle style here, because it puts you in the shoes of an explorer. Yeah – you have a map to help you out and guide you, however just go out there and explore to your heart’s contents.

Anyways, I got a bit sidetracked here, not only were we presented with a very interesting story, indeed I was very eager to learn what had happened and on every pedestal I was staring at awe, but the presentation of the story is what’s making it top notch on point. No cutscenes, no dialogue, the game wants you to observe in a minimalistic way and put the pieces of the puzzle yourself, to see what had happened and this is done through A) small pedestals which show you imagery of important occurring events and B) leftover stone tablets or cloth (or leather for that matter) hangings, depicting events in pictures. This, in a great sense, reminds me of Journey’s storytelling and it is a very dear way to me of experiencing a story. Because, sometimes it’s good to leave the player with a picture and let them piece it all out. Trust me, it really is not that hard to grasp the plot twist at the end … I can say I wasn’t really expecting that and it totally got me “wtf-ing” all over the place, but this is a how a good story should be.

So basically, and I will talk a bit about it, without giving away too much, the Ez’rat Qin people found this mysterious source of life energy and put it into crystalline flasks. With this energy, they bring light into the world and life into a specific type of healing plant, which they use to sustain themselves and cure their sick.

All of this is actually incorporated into gameplay as well. You actually have a flask on you and use it not only for lighting, but to grow plants and vines, which are used respectively for healing yourself and reaching high areas (or cross bridges … depending on the vines). The flask is also used to activate doors and objects by transferring the essence into the object.

I feel like this is an appropriate place to talk about the Glass Door. This is a door, present when exploring the Valley in the chapter “A Long Walk” or something of the sorts, which is not a mandatory thing to open. To open the door you have to collect 18 glass shards, and assemble the missing pieces on the actual door. I did come across a guide detailing where each piece is, however, from the point of a person, who actually does use such guides when achievement hunting, I can say that the shards are not that hard to come by when playing by yourself. Aporia is a game, meant for you to explore, so just in doing that, it is very doable to actually find the pieces without having to cheat. And contrary to what I just said, I did use the guide to cheat for a few shards, but that is only because I had finished the area and time was pressing me to move forward. What is behind the door? Another essence flask, however, not with the standard orange coloring, rather than blue. Throughout the land there are vials of essence you can find in order to fill up your flask, because it runs out when you use it. The blue essence flask is self-sustainable, meaning that when you use energy, it will slowly regenerate back again, which actually is a quite nice bonus, if you ask me. So given in mind the effortlessness I had in collecting the shards, while exploring and solving the other puzzles + wrapping up, uncollected shards in comparison to the reward = totally worth it.

Anyway, continuing on with the story, as events progress we are tailed by this shadowy grim reaper type of figure and let me tell you the mixed emotions I got from it…

First of all, it began appearing before reaching the open valley, but it goes away when you look at it. In the actual valley, it kind of goes around randomly and if you come in a certain range of it, it will begin to chase you down. You know this, because the screen turns a bit grayscale and goes slightly blurry, beside the noises, which were creepy as eff. I cannot begin to tell you how many times it startled me and on how many occasions was I running away from it, just cause I didn’t wanna end up in some random place after it gets me, only to end up in a random place, cause I was running away from it. Now, I am not sure of exactly how else are you able to lose it, however I found out that water helps.

Second of all, the spirit brings atmosphere to the player, because the game immerses you into the world and it kind of turns it into this creepy type of atmospheric experience, but on the other hand eager to find out more about the actual spirit. So it is important to the story. I have to say that I was feeling in a life vs. death battle, because you know, I was the warden of life and he was the warden of death, at least that’s how I interpret it, however … can I tell you how touched I was from the story’s end and when I found his remains on the stone tablet. I won’t tell more, because spoilers, however, the experience of the story towards the end is just … no words.

What actually happens when death catches you? Well, you don’t really die, it just chucks away a bit of health and you wake up in a random place on the valley (or if you are on death’s domain – basically the small island beyond the valley [get it … beyond the valley … title reference … ahem] it will put you in the beginning on the pier). But don’t forget to save regularly, because you can actually die in this game and it makes you reload the last save. Trust me, auto-saves are sometimes not that reliable.

Lastly, the story has two endings and you choose which path to take. You can either wake up your fellow sleeping beauties or just go away and leave this world behind by sea. You know … I am the type who was strongly preaching the life vs. death battle, the kindness vs. cruelty, and it was in a sense logical for me to wake everyone up … but I didn’t. I chose to leave them behind and let them slumber forever (or until someone else wakes up), because of that plot twist I mentioned, which kind of changed my beliefs for some things in the game.

All in all, a great experience in the face of the story and immersion. And trust me, puzzles fare no less.

For those of you, who have read other reviews of mine, where I talk about puzzles, you know that I suck at them, however, Aporia’s puzzles were the best of both worlds. They are not hard to figure out, but at the same time, it does require you to move that gray in your brain and fidget with the puzzle a bit. I do say that I was engaged with each and every puzzle and I am glad that the technical issues I will talk about now, did not interfere with me experiencing the whole valley.

The minor glitches which I am totally willing to ignore, because I kind of got used to them after the third hour are some graphical background flashes, which occur randomly in the environment. No I am sure that it’s not from me, rather than the game and I am aware that the devs are fixing them little by little, so this is why they weren’t so concerning.

Another minor bug was that sometimes when the game loads it just keeps loading infinitely and I have to restart it, in order to be able to proceed. I am glad there are not that many loading screens to begin with, so I am also willing to overlook this issue in a way.

However the major bug that got to me, which I had been baffled by for a week and was unable to proceed with the game was a bug in the water puzzle, where you have to first go in a cave and redirect the flow of water to go outside and then redirect the flow through some kennels in order to reach a pedestal with a key item for progression. All is good, thing is, when I was redirecting the pipes, the water wasn’t flowing. By sound it was supposed to flow through, however visually it was as if stuck in the pipeline. Now I did all I could to fix this, including restart the game, reinstall it, start a new game and finally I succumbed and contacted the devs. Usually google holds magical answers to these things, however, given the fact that the game is rather new, it didn’t help at all. So I was provided with a code to put me into the next level of the game and so what I did was, I told myself “okay, I’ll just have another look around the valley, to see if I have missed anything and maybe gather some more of the glass shards and then move forward, because I’m really pressured by time at this point”. And so I did, I wandered around, solved a few more things, got a few more shards and LOW AND BEHOLD, I MANAGED TO FIX THE BUG. Can I say that this bug is worrying, because I managed to get it both times. Basically, there is a door, which when you open, leads into the general area of the puzzle. However, there is a cave, which you can reach the puzzle through there and I didn’t, for some reason, find the door, until that later time. Once I opened the door, I went to the puzzle, rotated the pipeline and it worked. This makes me think that the puzzle is supposed to be reached this way and not the other way, however why can I reach it the other way too, if I’m not supposed to? Anyways, all is well if it ends well, however, I’d have that looked into. Not to mention that further on, there was a glitched elevator thing, which was stuck in the water and only the wire was moving. I was so scared that it would be unfixable, however a simple game restart fixed that … gladly.

The final technical issue I want to address is that achievements are bugged for me too. I’m sure I completed a great portion of what says to be done on them and I didn’t\t receive a single achievement. Now usually most people would be willing to neglect that and I understand that, I do too, however as amazing as this game is, the achievement hunter in me cringed so badly at this, I cannot even.

Lastly – Music. There is nothing I can say that will describe how beautiful the music of the game was and how immersive the soundtrack is. I will definitely be looking at it separately, since I do fancy me some game OST, at the end of the day. Every bit of note was on point – the general calm music, the scary, creepy death stalking tunes, the touching pieces, hitting you right in the kokoro… simply stunning.

As a verdict, I really do believe Aporia holds the true 10/10 potential in its hands, however, given in mind all the technical difficulties I came across while playing it, alongside some wonky controls when dealing with the elevators, realistically right now it stands on the solid 8/10. However that doesn’t mean in any way that the game is not worth it. It is indeed and on that note, let’s end the review in a positive thought. The world of Aporia is astonishing. Right from the start you are plunged into this mystical setting, featuring wilderness and ruins, temples and leftover technology, spirits and majestic lights. I remember when I came across the first ledge and I looked down at the valley from high above, the first thing into my mind was “I am so glad I will be able to explore this later on”. My favorite place was definitely the huge pillar runestones, for the day and night cycle, which is used for one of the puzzles. The state of the world – even if it was corrupted, even if it is in ruins, it still looks so magical. KAWAIII OVERLOAD. No just kidding, truly, I can bring all my thumbs (both hands and feet) and recommend this game. I am sure that with a bit of bug testing and a few patches, everything will be top notch.