ASCENXION

Before i get into the review i must say i was having quite a bit of fun for several hours, but by the end the game kept dragging on and eventually became so incredibly difficult that i had to give up. I always base my reviews on wether or not it is worth picking up the game to beat it (untill the credits roll). So for this game i would say no, i do not recommend it. However if you're literally a gaming god, or if quitting a game halfway doesn't bother you, you could still pick this up. On sale the game is pretty cheap, you can pick up the soundtrack along with it in a bundle or seperately. The OST i recommend picking up in any case as it's really good! For regular gamers or completionists like me i'd say pass up on the game, it's not special enough to be worthwhile. I'm gonna discuss the many flaws this game has as well as some of it's strenghts. The main gripe i have with this game is the balance, mainly that it's all over the place... Ranging from super easy bosses/enemies to harder ones you can safespot. By the end there are borderline impossible bosses that have way too much health and can delete you in less than a second. In fact nearly everything in the lategame can delete you in less than a second. The determining factor is how many projectiles are fired at you in a given timespan. The boss that made me give up was a tanky ball with bullet hell attacks that had 4 healing drones which were also tanky. He also had 4 ads that were pretty tanky and dealt insane amounts of damage and he even summoned more ads if you killed his healing drones... My other alternative was a boss that could stunlock onehit you with a certain attack. I needed to kill both bosses to progress and after trying for the better part of an hour i decided that i'd put the game down. I tried many different strategies, swapping charms to try deffensive builds, movement speed builds or even a build that had strong special attacks. This last one worked very well for me throughout most of the game but the problem is that these special attacks consume the same resource you use to dash. The other issue is that regular attacks slow you down so much that you can barely dodge incoming attacks. There's only 4 charm slots and you're always limited in some capacity. There's no way to increase the amount of slots, your health or stamina. The only way to get stronger is finding new charms and upgrading them. However upgrading charms is a costly process and dying (which is very easy) makes you lose half of your currency with NO way of reclaiming it. All these things add up with a ridiculous difficulty to make something that is quite literally unfair. I know there's some people who've beaten this game but i just can't see myself going much further. The diffirence in difficulty is too drastic from start to finish. It just spikes too hard in the endgame. I'd rather have a game that's easy or hard from the start (for refund reasons) than a game that spikes like this. Level design is pretty basic for a metroidvania, it's also quite linear. You discover the whole map of an area at the start so there's not much exploration to speak of. There's also nothing too find other than charms. That said the enemy variety is great and even the bosses are varied before they turn impossible. The game does start dragging on after the 5 hour mark but it was quite fun up until that point. Visuals are nice, simple but effective and distinct enough to be somewhat memorable. The soundtrack is probably the best part of this game, it's of a much higher quality than the rest. As a result i enjoyed finding new zones because that meant i'd get to listen to a new ambient soundtrack, all of which were very good. The story is told in through monoliths but they're not in order and spread out too far to make a coherent narrative. A log to keep track of all your findings would've helped with this. Performance was great, no fps drops and fast loading times, there were also no bugs that i encountered other than cheesing a few bosses. In the end the deciding factor wether or not you should pick up this game is your profficiency in bullet hell games and/or your desire to see a game through to the end. This game is restrictive in many ways to increase difficulty which spikes near the end. I enjoyed some of my time with it but at the end this wasn't the case anymore so for a completionist it's hard to fully recommend it. Whatever your choice, pick up the soundtrack anyways because it's cheap and really good!

It's good. The top-down shooter and exploration hybrid gameplay is nice, the bosses are quite creative and varied and there's enough weapon and gear variety to experiment with builds and load outs. Rough parts include getting stuck on diagonal surfaces, text going outside the screen and stats on gear sometimes being unclear, seemingly incorrect or missing. I could not find damage stats for any of the weapons for example, the info text literally only describe the effect of their alt-fires. The game is largely made by one guy apparently, which is impressive considering its size. I hope it eventually finds an audience outside korea.

我一直很期待玩到银河恶魔城 + 俯视角弹幕射击游戏，这游戏满足了我的需求。 所以，尽管这款游戏有很多设计上和程序上的缺陷，算不上优秀，我也要给它一个好评。 优点： - 武器类型丰富，作战风格可自定义且有明显差异 - 富有特色和挑战的 Boss - 鲜明的几何画风 缺陷： - 探索缺乏深度 - 解谜缺乏深度 - 游戏优化不足 - 叙事平淡无奇

ASCENXION : 降临无疑是一款优秀的游戏，清版的弹幕射击，各种石碑与对话构建的庞大世界观，空灵的背景音乐都让人眼前一亮。但游戏本身存在一些问题： 1.可能是我没有发现，但我不知道整个世界的全地图怎么打开，TAB键只能显示当前区域的，出生地最上边和下边都有一开始去不了的地方，也没有说解锁条件，只说了满足特定条件便会打开。之后的区域有同框boss，知道是打完boss才会打开，但之前没探索过的呢。传送门只能在一个区域内传送，想要回到之前的区域就要跑路。不像Hollow Knight一样是长按显示当前区域，双击是全地图。 2.对于剧情党，每个石碑上的文字都是构建剧情的重要部分。但一个个石碑相距甚远，顺序又杂（应该是想让玩家自己去探索），这导致我不得不截屏然后一个个保存。如果能有一个“日志”，记录看过的每一块石碑那是再好不过。 3.续接第二条，游戏在按ALT+TAB切屏时会出现上下黑边消失，游戏界面压缩的情况，会让游戏画面出格，影响游玩体验。 4.背包真的太少了，对于新手来说哪里敢随便拆符文石和护符。 5.游戏里的钱可以用来开门，制作，加强等。但游戏真的很容易死，特别是对于新手。钱那真的是要用了打打，攒了100+打个boss死几次全没了。 6.游戏难度稍高了，对新手不友好（好吧也可能就是因为我菜） 7.特殊条：在我的配置下，生命之地在切换场景式画面缩小放大一卡一卡的，在设置里把密度调低就好了。 总结：优秀的类银河战士恶魔城游戏，但深入挖掘也有很多不足。不是很推荐入手。一定要试试的话，建议等特价

So, ASCENXION. I found this game when I was browsing twitter, actually, and one of the people I follow retweeted it. I forget if it was Dave or Casey. Oh well. ASCENXION is a neat little game. It's short, but quite good. Essentially, what I'd call it, is a mix between a bullet hell and a "Metroidvania" of sorts. You go around, explore some areas, find some items that give you stat boosts, kill bosses, get their items, become stronger, etc. You start off with nothing, basically. A basic shooter, you're pretty slow and kinda weak. You quickly unlock all of your abilities, one after another, pretty early on. I should mention; your abilities aren't keys or movement or anything like that. They're special attacks. There's 4 tiers, and each one can be switched on the fly (time slows when you pop the menu up.) And they're all useful in different situations. What's interesting is that they use the same resource as your dodges. The dodges are useful, but they aren't get out of jail freecards either. There's a long delay between when you can move or dodge again, so keep that in mind. Dodging can help you avoid damage, but that tier 4 ability that does a chunk of Boss HP looks quite tasty.. Spoiler about abilities, read at thy discretion: [spoiler] so, your abilities get upgraded as you go on, believe it or not. Your form changes, as do your abilities, but with each branch you get offered a pretty big choice. Accuracy or Fast attacks, basically. Accuracy form slows your attacks down, but you do more damage per shot. Every 3 or so seconds, your next attack does 2x more damage. The fast form gives you faster shoot speed, maybe more spread? And maybe slightly less damage. I forget. But every 10 or so attacks you perform that attack twice. [/spoiler] I found myself mixing up the abilities a lot, but I did settle on my favourites. There were some I never found particularly useful, maybe that's just me. Of course, there ARE secret areas in this game. But the game has tombstones you can find that point out locations on the map. It's up to you to guess where it is, though! And projectiles / enemy bodies fall through fake walls. There's something to help you out~ (But the game teaches you this, anyway.) The bosses are actually pretty good, too. I dunno if there's a "Bad" boss, but there's some weird curves here and there. Some bosses are like, really easy for how late you fight them and others will just grind you into paste. I think my personal grievance with ASCENXION is that it always felt like I had to have one or two movement speed items so I could survive, which kinda stifled what I wanted to do with my build. But, that being said, it's quite easy to be flexible and build around a boss if you have to. Oh yeah, I mentioned items didn't I? Well, you inventory has limited slots. And as time goes on you will be scrapping items that aren't useful anymore. But the game piles on these items, and some have really interesting set bonuses that cause unique things! I didn't experiment with a lot of those, but maybe you should. I just really liked the lapsed believer's record. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a short-sighted fool and I didn't pick up on a lot of the story. I don't think that's a problem with the game, mind, I'm just not that smart :v Oh, dear me I forgot the weapons! So you have 5 inventory slots, right? 4 of those are for items that give you bonus stats, the one BIG one is for what determines your shoot. The shoot starts off anywhere from "it's a basic slow shot pew pew gun" to "Oh, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. This thing has 3 forms and gets an attack rate boost when I switch between the modes. Said modes being fast shoot, shotgun shoot, and homing missile shoot." [spoiler] or, my personal favourite, the "big ♥♥♥♥ off scythe that minces just about everything and destroys projectiles while you attack. You get that from a secret area, and that boss is quite hard! [/spoiler] Naturally, you always want to equip better weapons. and USUALLY what you get after your current weapon is better. Not always the case! If I had to split them into tiers, usually you get a tier 1 fast shoot or a tier 1 accurate shoot, then a tier 2 of the same, etc. Experiment, use what you like, but don't forget to eventually swap out to better things if you DO get them. Even if your build isn't focused around your primary attacks, it's all damage that helps kill a boss. And sometimes you can't use your special attacks in some situations. Oh, yeah, you move slower when attacking, by the way. That's obvious very early on, but you do want to stop shooting to avoid projectiles. Special attacks do not carry this penalty, mind. All and all, I like this game! I may come back to this review to talk about it more, since I've been going through a writer's block and I've been stumped on what to write on reviews. But I'm sad I've never heard of this game before! And I'm sad I couldn't find any reviews in English, either. So I wanted to change that. I do absolutely recommend this game. But do keep in mind it gets quite hard after a point. It's a bloody good game, though, and the music is absolutely fantastic (If the dev(s) ever read this, do tell the person who did the music they did a great job! Also the art style is great, too. I love this game.) I think my only big problem is that I ran into a lot of bugs. I have my personal issues, but those are just nitpicks (and me being bad at the game. I do not want to give people the impression that "game bad because me no like this one thing") But I have encountered a fair few bugs in my short time spent playing. Well, 8 hours is awhile but shhh. A lot of times I was put back at the start of the game. No progress lost, mind. Just.. put back at the start for some reason. Or a few times I'd go to a different area on the map and I'd be auto-teleported to the end of that bit, and warped into the next room. And going back would put me two rooms away? I don't know what causes it. I can't remember any game breaking bugs, though. I personally feel like I should've paid more for this game, honestly. It's good, short, but bloody hard towards the end. Though I'm just crap at bullet hells.

슈팅과 메트로베니아의 결합. 슈팅게임을 제작하던 개발사라 그런지 슈팅쪽의 재미는 탄탄하다. 보스마다 다른 기믹과 다양한 패턴들이 있어 여러번 죽어가면서도 도전할만한 맛이 나며 스킬시스템 역시 너무 강하지도, 쓸 가치가 없지도 않은 적당한 파워를 가지고있어 재미있었다. 하지만 메트로베니아적으론 약간 아쉬운 부분이 없진 않은데 레벨디자인이 절묘하게 되어있어 안가봤던 장소를 다 뒤져보며 다녔다면 딱히 필요는 없겠지만 그렇지 않아서 놓친게 있나 돌아가보려고 할때는 포탈을 사용하기가 힘들었다. 그리고 인벤토리가 제한되어있어 강화, 분해, 제작을 계속해서 해야하는데 어차피 장착 슬롯도 제한되어있는만큼 인벤토리 제한이 굳이 필요했을까 생각이 든다. 재화를 모아야하는 이유와 죽었을때 재화가 사라지는 페널티라는 의미가 있어보이긴 하지만.. 슈팅게임과 다른장르를 처음으로 결합시킨만큼, 차기작에선 또 어떤모습을 보여줄지 기대가 된다.

looks promising, but there is no option to disable fullscreen mode, therefore it's lagging and has low fps. adding window mode would fix all of this issues. (and yes, my system fits the minimum requirements)

재밌네요 사망시 소울이 줄어들어 보스전을 치르고 나면 소울이 너무 줄어드는게 좀 아쉽네요. 게 보스는 막 페이즈에 양쪽 문 구석에서 공격에 맞지 않고 클리어가 가능합니다.

An awesome game that is plagued with bugs relating to text.... and unfortunately saving. My savefile became partially corrupted at the end and brought be back to the very start of the game. As I don't have enough souls to use a portal I am trapped forever now. Don't buy unless the devs decide to fix the game. edit: apparently the savefile is easily edited. I've edited it in order to get myself back but this is still an unacceptable problem

《ASCENXION : 降临》作为一款小体量的射击游戏来说，唯一的评价就是好玩。走心而又意识流的艺术风格，舒缓大气的背景音乐，类恶魔城系列的地图设计加在一起给了我一种简洁而又独特的享受。如果你喜欢类银河战士系的设计思路，又恰好对射击游戏感兴趣那么本作绝对是一款值得你体验的精致佳肴。 游戏的故事背景十分沉重，人类随着落在地球上光球的巨大爆炸而消亡。而你在漫长的岁月之后苏醒，你需要从时空的碎片中找到过去的真相以及隐藏在背后的秘密。虽然本作引用了一个较为深刻的背景，但说实话从本作这种简单几何构成的过场CG还真不好了解故事背景，全凭宣传片和故事中的NPC只言片语来发掘真相。 真是如此包括NPC，地图设计等关键环节都透露出一股类银河战士恶魔城的经典味道，只不过本作巧妙地结合了射击游戏的要素来表现，给人一种强烈的新鲜感。 此外游戏的美术风格也是值得表扬的一部分，虽然简洁，却有着相当不俗的表现力，很好的构建了一个带有神秘感和艺术感的故事舞台，玩家操控着独特的小飞船穿梭在宫殿回廊，有着错开时空的美感。 与此同时游戏的操作也很简单，射击+技能+闪避构成了整个游戏的挑战思路，值得注意的是游戏的技能和冲刺是公用CD槽的，因此要输出还是要保命还需要玩家在战斗中进行合理分配。 [quote]欢迎关注我们的鉴赏家:[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35402982/]走心评测[/url] ←遵从内心，写出真实感受 欢迎加入我们Steam组:[url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ZXPC]走心评测[/url]←点击加入，一起探索游戏的乐趣 喜欢这篇评论，也麻烦点个赞，让更多人能够看到！[/quote]