Ad Astra Infinita: The New Evolution

If you like RPG Maker stank, this might be your new jam for a bit. That's all it takes to get the thumbs up of recommendation from me. I mean hey, I played for 19 hours, so it either did something right, or something's horribly wrong with me. Maybe even both. If you're looking for literally anything other than RPG Maker stank, there's far too much frustration here to be worthwhile for the average gamer. But you're not an average gamer, are you? What's the matter, scared? Anyway. The developer clearly put a lot of thought into the combat systems and the general progression. It is by no means standard RPG Maker. The relatively open nature of the game means you could easily stumble into an area with enemies way above your level, but if you tweak your build just right you could overcome it anyway and feel like a giga brained gamer. There's also plenty of missable stuff, some small, some huge. The number of ways to build your party is truly overwhelming. However, this is where the game starts to fall apart. The progression systems, while functional, are cumbersome to understand and use. It really could've used a complete overhaul or new UI, rather than using a crafting system plugin that RPG Maker heads may be familiar with. There ends up being just way too much to scroll through, and there's no way to sort through the laughably large list of equippables. Speaking of equippables, RPG Maker's occasionally useless "optimize" button is ESPECIALLY useless here, because resistances and skills and effects are usually more important than the stats. Why the button wasn't just removed entirely is beyond me. To add to the frustration, item descriptions are vague. You have no way of knowing what skills or passive effects will come from something before you craft or equip it, and it's pretty often not what you'd expect. It's just another reason that the game needs a brand new UI for this stuff. Battles are mostly functional, but they're plenty scuffed. Damage calculations very frequently make a big oopsie and start to end up with decimals, which is a big-nono, as it makes the UI messy and really hard to read. During application of states and end of turn calculations, the game takes a MASSIVE drop in performance. This performance drop actually makes it harder to play, because the lag gives you less time to read the battle log and get an idea of if an element was super effective or what's even happening. Lastly, I think it's incredibly odd that a game that is generally light on story and not taking itself too seriously has moments of dialogue being overly wordy, dry, and boring. You might have nearly an hour of a fairly engaging combat and progression, but then talk to an NPC or fight a boss and be confronted with nonstop yapping that's devoid of any character or charm. And no, Bat's funny way of speaking is not a charming character trait. By the time I reached the ending, I was skipping almost all the dialogue. Overall, I walked away from the game feeling satisfied, but also a bit baffled. There's so many AWESOME ideas, but so much else bogging it down. There's a lot of room for the game to be salvaged into something more enjoyable for a wide audience, it's just not there quite yet.