Aethermancer Review – A Fantasy-Adventure Roguelite You Have to Experience

Today, I had the chance to experience a game called Aethermancer. This adventure roguelite puts you in the shoes of an Aethermancer, a monster tamer able to use special abilities to form bonds with monsters and build a strong party to fight and explore your way throughout the world of Terastae in the Fractured Ruins. Aethermancer was a blast to play, and here’s an in-depth review of my playthrough, along with what we can expect once the game is fully released.

The World of Aethermancer

Aethermancer is a roguelite turn-based strategy game where you can tame wild monsters and invite them to join your adventure to fight your way throughout the world of Terastae. Apparently, an ever-growing Void, which originated in the ruined city of Vigil, is threatening the world of Terastae and its inhabitants. As the main character, Siriux, we become an Aethermancer, bond with monsters, helping guide them to Worthiness, and stop the Void from consuming the world.

Monster taming is an essential part of the game, as it is what builds your monster party. From my playthrough, I didn’t get far into the story, which tells me that the story will unfold in small bits throughout the game, and that there is much more to the story than we’re led to believe.

A Roguelite Strategy Game with a Twist

Tame Different Mythical Creatures

One of the first things I learned from my playthrough was the fact that we, as Aethermancers, can tame mythical monsters to join us on our adventure and help us fight our way through Terastae. You are only able to tame 3 monsters at a time, and during my playthrough, I chose Nixie, a starter monster healer, Tatzelwurm, a DPS who deals poison damage, and Cockatrice, a tank that does wind and fire damage.

Level Up Your Monsters

Obviously, you start at level 1 with all your monsters, and depending on what monsters you choose to join your party, you can strategize what abilities you choose to level up your monsters that work best with your whole party. Needless to say, strategy is an essential part of monster taming and battle. I focused on Nixie’s healing and tanking with Cockatrice. Supports are important to me, so whenever I got the chance to level up my monsters, I tried grabbing level-ups that maximized those traits.

Turn-Based Strategy at its Finest

Turn-based strategy isn’t my forte; however, I thoroughly enjoyed how smooth the combat system was. I had some experience with turn-based combat when I played Omori, which I also really enjoyed. Aethermancer’s combat system was super engaging, and it really made you think strategically, what moves to make, what enemies to kill first, and when to use special items like mementos, which are used to tame monsters.

Aether is especially important whenever you’re in battle. Aether is a key resource tied to the elements that is generated by monsters, and is what lets you use special attacks that do damage, heal, tank, or other special moves. There were a few times where I actually ran out of Aether during battle and had to wait a couple of turns to generate more Aether, so it’s important you think about what moves you make.

The Cycle of Death and Rebirth

When a monster on your team dies, you lose them forever. However, you can use mementos to bring back a monster and rebirth its soul. You can even birth different monsters with mementos if you want to try out a different team comp altogether.

Choose Your Skills and Decide How to Build Your Team

As I’ve said, it’s essential to know how to level up your monsters and what monsters you use in your party to maximize your damage output. Whenever your monster levels up, you are able to choose between three different level-ups that focus on different traits important to that monster.

In team gameplay, supports are super important to me, so I usually focus on leveling up my supports first, and I found that some abilities work really well with other monster abilities that make some pretty cool combos during battle sequences.

Full Release in 2026

I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough of Aethermancer. I was nervous about how I’d feel about it because turn-based strategy roguelites aren’t really my thing, but I was pleasantly surprised with how smooth everything was, from traveling to combat to even the fact that we can nickname our monsters (which was one of my favorite things). I know for sure that I’ll continue my playthrough because I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I can do in the game.

Aethermancer is currently in early access and has been since last September. Moi Rai Games has yet to announce an official release date for the 1.0 launch, but it is expected to be released sometime this September. I highly recommend that people check out this game because if I enjoyed it, I know actual fans of roguelite games will have a blast with Aethermancer.