Aphelion is a visually stunning experience that features incredibly detailed characters and impressive set pieces throughout the journey. The narrative is genuinely interesting as it follows the exploration of a new planet for potential habitability which provides a strong foundation for the adventure. The Nemesis sections are a major highlight and the introduction does a great job of immediately establishing that the creature is highly sensitive to sound. This leads to some great stealth mechanics where you have the option of using various anomalies to distract the threat and slip away unnoticed. I also appreciated the use of multiple characters to vary the gameplay styles because playing as Ariane focused more on exploration and stealth while Thomas provided a different pace centered on world building, lore, and light puzzles.
However there are some notable frustrations that hinder the experience in the later stages. The Nemesis becomes more of a nuisance in the final chapters because it can randomly bump into your character and trigger an immediate death scene which feels unfair. The terrain also suffers from iffy collision in certain spots causing the character to fall repeatedly and this unfortunately seemed to happen most often during critical stealth sections. Furthermore the game is quite short with a total length of only about six hours and there is very little replayability unless you are a player who specifically wants to farm for achievements.
Overall Aphelion is a visually breathtaking and atmospheric stealth adventure that shines during its early encounters and character driven storytelling. While the late game enemy behavior and collision issues can be frustrating the creative use of sound based horror and the intriguing sci-fi premise make it a worthwhile experience for fans of the genre.