Last updated on June 27, 2026
I went into Aphelion with zero expectations. It had completely escaped my radar, and honestly, after spending a few hours with it, I started to understand why. Developed and published by Don’t Nod, this is the kind of game that seems to exist for the sake of existing rather than for the sake of giving players an experience worth remembering. That’s not a dig at the effort that went into making it. Every category it touches is simply too unremarkable to leave any real impression, which is a shame given what this studio has proven it’s capable of.
Glacial and Spatial, Not in a Good Way
Aphelion bills itself as a cinematic third-person action-adventure. The problem is that the action and the cinematic quality are both largely absent throughout the experience. The sci-fi survival premise, where astronauts struggle to stay alive while completing a mission, is one of the most saturated setups in gaming right now. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of titles working in that same space. For this one to stand out it would need to do something genuinely interesting with the formula, and it doesn’t.
What frustrated me most from the very beginning was the performance and the core gameplay loop, specifically the parkour. Don’t Nod previously made Jusant, an exceptional climbing game with responsive controls and a world built around making every handhold feel deliberate and satisfying. Coming off that, the expectation for Aphelion to deliver something at least comparable felt reasonable. Instead, the controls feel clunky, world design is uninspired and dated, and the story carries almost no seasoning whatsoever.
Jusant, We Miss You
There is no real combat to speak of here, despite the game advertising action. The hyperactive parkour that fills that gap isn’t intense enough to compensate. You can’t put it in the same conversation as Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or even Mirror’s Edge, even accounting for the fact that those games have different priorities. Playing Aphelion feels a bit like Death Stranding in space, except instead of being a courier with purpose and a world built around meaningful traversal, you’re a lost astronaut wandering in all directions without ever quite arriving anywhere.
That said, there are a couple of things I genuinely appreciated. The game is short and doesn’t pad itself out with filler content that would have made the experience drag even further. The dual protagonist setup and the relationship between the two characters also worked better than expected. It was just enough to keep me engaged through to the end, and I even went back for the platinum trophy, which tells you something.
Each character plays differently in a way that feels intentional. The female protagonist is built around parkour and pursuit sequences, while the male character deals with a survival oxygen mechanic that means losing focus can literally cost him his life out in the void. It’s a nice design contrast that gives both playstyles their own texture.
Unreal Engine, Running on Fumes
Visually, Aphelion doesn’t deliver on almost any front. The art style is the kind you’ve seen countless times in games of this genre, including titles from a decade and a half ago. It lacks personality and any distinctive visual identity that might make it memorable.
On a technical level, the comparison with Jusant is again unflattering. That game made serious use of Unreal Engine 5 and it showed in every environment. Aphelion feels like it’s running on a noticeably older version of the same ambition. On PlayStation 5 Pro specifically, performance was genuinely poor. No graphical accessibility options, locked to 30 frames per second with occasional drops below that. For a game that isn’t pushing hardware anywhere near its limits, that’s hard to excuse.
The Soundtrack Saves Some Face
I’ll give credit where it’s due. There were several tracks in the soundtrack that genuinely impressed me and made it clear that the composer put real care into their contribution. The music is one of the few places where Aphelion punches above its overall weight class.
Sound effects are more middling. Nothing that pulled me in, nothing that actively pushed me away either. Don’t Nod has historically struggled with audio across even their more polished titles. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, arguably their strongest recent release, promised a lot in that department and delivered less than expected. That pattern continues here.
A Story That Just About Holds
The narrative is probably the strongest pillar in Aphelion, which is saying something given that it still isn’t particularly remarkable on its own terms. It has just enough momentum to keep you reading and watching rather than tuning out entirely. Think of it like Pragmata in that the plot itself isn’t what hooks you. It’s the relationship between the two main characters that provides the genuine warmth the rest of the game often lacks.
One of the more interesting creative choices is that after the opening, the two protagonists never actually share the screen together. They communicate at a distance, catch glimpses of each other, and at times seem to hallucinate the other’s presence as though they’re side by side even when they’re separated by the void. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory because the story doesn’t deserve to be spoiled, but there were specific scenes where I was legitimately engaged and not thinking about the game’s shortcomings at all.
Good on Game Pass. Not Worth Buying.
And that brings us to the verdict on a title that most people will probably never play unless they’re running out of options on Xbox Game Pass. As touched on above, Aphelion is not a game you want to pay for, certainly not at its current price point of around 30 dollars. That number is genuinely hard to justify given what the game delivers across the board.
If you have access to Game Pass, it’s worth a few evenings for the story alone, and the short runtime means it won’t overstay its welcome. On any other platform, hold out for a discount in the range of 70 to 80 percent off and then maybe give it a look. Going in with zero expectations, the way I did, is probably the best possible setup for getting something out of it.
Final Score: 4 / 10
I’m passionate about books and video games. These two great passions represent, for me, a boundless universe where I can “escape” from reality whenever I need or want to. There are so many stories, worlds, and landscapes where I can instantly teleport that I don’t think a whole lifetime would be enough to explore them all (though it would be my greatest dream to be able to).
