Approximate amount of time to 100%: 10h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Not really, but you don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play on easy and still get all the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
I first notice "Archvale" because of the looks, it looks beautiful in my opinion. I got even more interested when I heard from others the game is good, and let me tell you... they were right! I have finished this game within 1 day because I couldn't stop playing. Took some necessary breaks for food and some work-related things, but in the end, kept going back. A part of this addictive feeling is that you always make progression. even if you would spend a few minutes, you could make some progression. If it is getting some resources to craft armor or weapons, or if you can get from one save spot (a fountain) to another fountain, you get further because they are teleport points, so you now don't have to do that part of the map anymore. Even if faced with a challenging boss, you can go another route and maybe do that boss first, or get some better armor/weapons that suit your playstyle. (Melee, ranged, or magic). Other things you will collect are health upgrades and more healing potions, which get reset when you activate a fountain. You can also boost those to be better, so not only can you have more healing potions, but also boost how good to heal you.
About the achievements, this game has no missable achievements and you can even unlock them all on the easiest difficulty. I would suggest that when you play through the game, to just explore everything, as you just need loads of resources but also will find that way the challenges rooms and the extra bosses. If you're close to a city I would go first to there, to unlock a new bank upgrade. In the bank, you can store your money because when you die you lose half of the money you have in your pockets. But there is a maximum you can store. In every city is a bank and when you activate those you increase the amount of money you can store. (There is also an achievement for storing the maximum amount of 10k, but this isn't that hard if you first store your money in the last city you'll enter before buying any upgrades). It is a very modern bank... it wouldn't give you any profit, just the option to store and to pay for things you don't even have to withdraw (I think the shops in this game accept a bank card or credit card, to make it easy for you.
The achievement for completing all challenges might sound hard but it is a very doable one. You will find those challenges all over the map and you'll get teleported to a room with a round floor. There you have to avoid any damage during 3 stages in which it gets harder and harder, but the good thing is when you finish a stage, you will only reset back to the beginning of that stage and don't have to start over from the beginning. some of those can be challenging, as the name implies, but with practice and a bit of luck, you'll be fine. For me the real challenge where the dungeons where you get the arch pieces... not because of the monsters but because most of them have some sort of "dash challenge" where you have to navigate through a parkour with your dash ability... This was horrible and by far the worst part of this game (but gladly the only part that was bad). The ones in the jungle dungeon and the ice dungeon were the most challenging, but I believe the developer is still tweaking them and hopefully, they will get easier... if you just have a second more to react, would already make a lot of a difference. I can't tell you how horrible the dash parkour is in the fire dungeon, as I skipped it.. didn't want to do it anymore and gladly for the achievements I didn't have to (I was afraid I would have but then I would come later back, didn't want to torture myself when it wasn't needed). Those dash parkours are the only reason I would say this game is challenging to complete, all the rest is very very doable and I would give the difficulty a 4/10 instead of the 7/10 I have given it now.
Another minor annoyance I had in this game is throwing away armor you don't need anymore... you have to click the armor and then move your cursor (I used a gamepad which made this harder) to the trash and click again, you have to do this for every piece you want to throw away. I would love to see just a "trash" button when playing with a controller, but maybe even when playing with mkb.
If this game looks fun to you, I would highly suggest giving Archvale a try, because it is an amazing game, and if you enjoy the challenge... even better! You don't need to look up anything before you start this game, just press play and enjoy :D
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