Astral Ascent

比死亡细胞自机性能还牛逼，本来想找死亡细胞代餐结果发现你比细胞玩的还爽

I'm on the fence but I think I have to not recommend. This one hurts, considering some parts of the game remind me of Wizard of Legend, which I thought was fun. Most similar to Skul: The Hero Slayer, which I found lacking. + Great visual artstyle + Bosses have nice move sets + Cool animations + Coop (though given that you want to perfect rooms for rewards, not sure how good of an idea that is) * Meta-progression, lots of passive bonuses to unlock * Lots of handholding in form of tutorial for everything * Cheesy/cringe dialogue * Rewards you more if you perfect rooms, so if you are someone who likes to play tanky builds taking chip damage all the time, tough luck - Confusing hub area - A few small bugs - Just like Skul: The Hero Slayer, you end up going through big open rooms that have a few traps scattered here and there as well as scattered enemies, which for the most part is not really a challenge and just time-consuming, bosses usually are the only part where you could die - Unclear enemy attacks, sometimes there's a red mark, red mark with a delay, or no red mark at all, so you'll have to memorize each attack pattern - No feel of impact, not a single enemy gets stunned by your attacks. Given that you want to perfect rooms without taking damage for better rewards, you end up doing hit & run tactics to avoid taking a cheap shot or two, especially against groups of enemies - Each character, in theory, plays differently with different weapons/signature move but you pretty much just end up doing the same thing with everyone, e.g. if your first passive is poison related, you stack poison spells/passives and that's your build now for the run. You have four spells that you have to play in specific order (can swap spells during run), in theory you'd have to think about which spell is coming up next, in reality you spam spells whenever picking the ones that hit easiest, otherwise auto-attacking to regen mana - Surprisingly easy, actually got easier with my following runs after the first win, due to meta-progression, although if you play enough I would assume the difficulty catches up as you keep raising it up, but that will take a while. I stopped playing once I reached Destiny 5 difficulty, I suspect there is a major difficulty spike after Destiny 6 - Game is somewhat in-your-face about DLCs should you not own them, I believe not owning the four biomes DLC makes the game technically slightly harder as it limits your biome choice to 1, this choice accompanying which special room shows up in it, minor detail, but grinds my gears a bit I'm disappointed since the game is rated so highly and looks great, but the gameplay despite various system feels like it lacks any proper depth and just comes down to stacking same thing without much thought.

Astral Ascent is a roguelite that features smooth combat, varied builds, and customizable levels of difficulty. At first, I wasn't 100% sold on this game - I found all the different types of upgrades overwhelming and it wasn't super clear to me how different things interacted with each other. While I don't think everything fully clicked until (embarrasingly) my ~30th run, things settled down a fair bit after a handful of runs and some trial and error. But, all those upgrades are what lead to a lot of varied builds/gameplay, which is what keeps things from getting stale. You can choose to equip four spells, which can have four augments, an imprint, and an affinity. Each playable character has a signature spell, which can also be upgraded in various ways. That's not everything that's customizable, but it gives you a sense of the different types of upgrades available to you. My other primary critique of the game is it's not super clear how you actually beat it. At some point, I thought (end game boss spoilers) [spoiler]it might be like Hades and maybe I had to fight the end game boss a certain number of times. But, after doing that, nothing seemed to change and I was instakilled in a cutscene each time I reached the end even when I had plenty of health. Instead, to beat it, you have to reach the end game which unlocks something called destiny levels. You then increase the destiny level by one (which increases the difficulty of the overall run) and continue to the same end game state. Once you do that on the sixth destiny level, you finally unock the actual boss you need to kill to beat the game. That's all well and good, but if I hadn't looked it up, I'm 97% sure I would still be bashing my head against the wall not knowing I was expected to continue to increase the difficulty to beat the actual boss. It definitely came across as an optional challenge for the player.[/spoiler] On the co-op side of things, overall, it was pretty fun and worked well. The only real downsides are that you both can't look at the upgrades after you clear a room. Because of the way the text shows up, you have to take turns reading through the rewards, which kills momentum a bit. Also, if you both are going for a particular affinity and you only get one of that kind, it's begins a negotiation in terms of who gets it which again also slows down the game. But, those are relatively minor QOL issues in the grand scheme of things. With that out of the way, I enjoyed the characters, the voice acting, the whole astrological premise (even though that's not my thing IRL - it was still implemented in a fun way), the enemy/boss diversity, the music, etc. While comparisons to Hades seem almost inevitable, it seems clear to me this game takes inspiration from it (certain things like the end game summary screen reminded me of Hades, but that's also like...the tiniest detail), but it is fully its own unique game. I beat the game on my 34th run at about 24 hours in, which based on the achievements is on the lower end of runs to beat it (though I suspect not significantly so). I did some achievement clean-up afterwards, some of which was fun and some of which was too grindy for my tastes, but that's of course fully optional. Generally speaking, if you're looking for a solid roguelite to scratch that particular itch, I think this game has a really nice combination of smooth combat, enjoyable story, and satisfying gameplay loop. It's also a solid co-op pick, which is something I'm almost always looking for. Aside from a few confusing things (which you can always google if it really comes down to it), I fully enjoyed my time with Astral Ascent. AVOID | LACKING | MAYBE | WORTHWHILE | [b][u]COMPELLING[/u][/b] | UNMISSABLE

局外成长爆炸，第三局就通关0命了。 但有没有人和我说一下哪个种子隐藏亚力票比较多，刷了三十多个小时了，还差21个，目前最多的一局拿了七张，但那时候还没种子系统，现在一局就一两张。

Closer to Dead Cells than Hades in terms of pace, but it borrows the best from both. Four characters, twelve Zodiac bosses and dozens of spells. The pixel art is genuinely stunning, and the combat feels tight in a way that most roguelites don't bother to nail. If you're into the genre, this is an easy one.

I must be honest, when I booted up this game for the first time I did not expect that I'll be playing a top-notch roguelite and actually be blown away by it's sheer quality. I've been dealing with my backlog lately and I decided to give a shot to [b]Astral Ascent[/b], merely as another game to cross off the backlog list, which is somehow never ending and always expanding (100% my fault). I honestly thought I won't be playing this game fore more than 2 hours before I'm bored and I move onto something else. Man, I was wrong. I love [b]Astral Ascent[/b], I can 100% confirm that this will be one of the games that I'll be coming back to in the future, because at it's core it's rather simple for a roguelite, but once you start digging, you realize how expansive the game truly is. The controls are very fluid, character movement is done extraordinarily well. Dashing gives this game another dimension as you start to fully embrace character controls. Gameplay is outstanding and very versatile. At first, the learning curve can be a bit steep but once you figure out how spells, auras, gambits and other features work, the game starts growing on you, at least for me. Combat is rather simple and easy to understand, but hard to master. You get to play as one of 4 chosen fighters in order to release yourself from ever-growing prison. All characters have signature traits and abilities which makes the gameplay more fun and engaging. There are also 2 DLC characters which I haven't touched, but they seem decent enough. All characters are fully voiced and this is commendable for indie studios, and the voiceovers are done very well. The story is somewhat generic, but then again it's hard to pull off a good story in a roguelite considering the gameplay loop and I personally think the story is good enough to stay interested. Worldbuilding can be lighthearted, enemies at first look like they've been drawn from children's coloring book, but later on they start to pack a relatively heavy punch. I was reading through some comments about the game and a lot of hardcore fans of the genre say that the game is rather average, and that there are a lot of better roguelites out there. I can't say that they are right considering I'm not really that big on the genre, but if you're someone that's looking to seriously get involved into roguelites, I'd say this is a perfect example on which you can start your long, but fulfilling journey. [h3]9/10[/h3]

This game is excellent holy moly. I don't wanna foam at the mouth for paragraphs but if you like ANY kind of Metroivania games. Buy it. If you like Dead Cells or anything platform related with Roguelite elements. This is your game. The auras (passives) multiple weapons PER character and a huge roster are just icing on the cake of an already would be incredible game.

角色多，体系多，内容量大。具有庞大且完整的独特星座世界观架构的故事情节（我认为星座支线比主线剧情好）随着解锁内容的增加，可玩内容逐渐增多，属于越玩越爽的游戏。隔壁cdk个位数入手，建议搭配dlc食用（如果你喜欢玩苍翼，你会在它身上找到熟悉感😋）

Great game. Scratches the same itch as Dead Cells and Skul : The Hero Slayer.

The game is fun and addictive, this is the kind of gem that only indie game development can produce, taking simpler graphics to make something very active, fluid, and dynamic. The character interaction is fun, I look forward each run to what the bosses may say. The spell system has a lot of fun combinations though it's not easy to create specific builds, granted there is a seed selector. There are some enemy attacks that are hard to ever dodge, and challenges for avoiding damage that seem to time out, though the Zodiac challenges are fun without being too difficult. The game appears to have loads of content and options to unlock, even zooming through it quickly. Support these devs.