When moving quickly across a large room, or jumping between vertical platforms, the camera struggles to keep up. I genuinely enjoyed the dungeons, but I did feel at times that more consideration was given to their aesthetics than playability. With complicated maps, well-designed puzzles, and multiple bosses per dungeon that are really quite challenging at times. The thing that really took me by surprise with this game was that it’s actually secretly a dungeon crawler. Their design was quite pretty, but there was more animation in the boobs than anywhere else, which is a plus point for some players, but wasn’t for me. All of your units fit neatly into the JRPG mold and nothing about them was particularly standout. I didn’t feel like I connected with any of them, and their one-liners got old really quickly. Some hinted at much more of their previous lives than others, and some were pretty tragic, but I liked the characterisation that they added.Įlsewhere the characters were a little lacking. Something I really liked about the inevitable death thing was that the game was interspersed with little flashbacks to what the character’s lives were like before Demigod-hood. Suffice to say that the bad guys are trying to destroy the current system that keeps the world at peace, as per usual, and the bad guys are racing to get the magic macguffins that you need to get first.īasically, you and your group of merry fighters have to save the world before your inevitable demise. During that time they must use their powers for the good of the world. These Fateful Eight are given special powers, but in exchange for being chosen, they are only given three years to live. Every generation has eight warriors that are elevated to Demigods. As its tendency to get grindy, and its overwrought characters may not change your mind.The basic premise is this: the world is stable, its many creatures live in peace because they eat the ‘Harmelons’ as ordered by the gods. Just don’t expect it to sway you over if you don’t already like the genre. While it may not quite rise to the heights of some of the forebears it tries to evoke from Square Enix’s past, its friendlier price point makes it a great entry that can steal away 25-30 hours of time. It does what it sets out to do and at its price point it does it pretty well. While parts of it felt long and grindy, the English cast is abysmal, and the dungeons design themselves left more to be desired, Astria Ascending is still a solid entry in the JRPG genre. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Astria Ascending. It’s a JRPG but it knows to not do the annoying things that most happen to do. You can even swap party members during a fight, so if a composition isn’t working you’re not locked into a long, slow death. The game is forgiving though with difficulty settings you can change on the fly, and the ability to jump back to town at an instant to stock up on supplies. Each job has its own skill tree to fill up and with 20 classes you bet your butt you’re going to want to grind to get all that sweet power. Where Astria Ascending gets very interesting is each character can have not only a base job, they can have a main job, a support job, and a sub job. You’ve got mages, warriors, and healers, with varying degrees in between. Your heroes start off with the usual job class system from any Final Fantasy game. It’s an interesting push and pull that while a bit underused, keeps up the tension in the big boss fights. If you use something they’re immune to, well you’ll actually give the opponent Focus instead while losing your own. Some new differences are welcome such as if you use an ability that an opponent is weak to, you’ll get free Focus points. You can then spend Focus points to boost attacks or spells, giving you an advantage. The main hook is you can skip turns to accrue Focus points. If you’ve played Bravely Default, you’ll pick up the battle system quickly. Unfortunately, the map used to get your bearings, while it looks great, is really tricky to use and make sense in some of the later, more complex areas. The dungeons themselves are simple left to right, right to lift navigation challenges broken up with some puzzles or key abilities you find as you go. And Astria Ascending provides little to deviate or elevate this formula apart from sprinkling the occasional side quests into the mix and monster hunts. If that sounds pretty familiar, it’s because it is. Often the setup will give you a quest, that quest will require you to travel to a specific destination, and then you’ll find a dungeon that needs to be explored, culminating in a final boss fight to test your might, and maybe some puzzles sprinkled in for good measure. When the game isn’t spouting off about Demigods, Harmony, and Noises, you’ll find the minute to minute gameplay consisting of turn based combat, broken up by small dungeon exploration.
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