Astria Ascending

Hello friends, Today I will review the game Astria Ascending. This is a rpg about a group that protects harmony in a world where everyone gets along together, but due to disruptive sources, not everyone agrees with this, so the demi humans are formed to protect it. The players start with all their characters at the beginning of the game, unlike other rpgs, which makes changing them out for strategy for weaknesses for enemies interesting. The artwork in this game is beautiful. The backgrounds look like someone did custom artwork on each one. The maps are huge, so huge, it is easy to sometimes get lost in levels. There are many side quests and quests in this game. The issue is the lack of information on some of these quests do not tell you that they are meant to be finished after completing the game. Also, due to the low popularity of this rpg, information online was lacking. Due to my posts on the forum for this game, this issue has been rectified as much as i could do. Anyways, here is my pros and cons for this game: PROS: - A beautiful crafted side scrolling turn based rpg. - The music is wonderful in this game. A great soundtrack for a beautiful game. - Plenty of side quests to find in this game. - Some bosses and enemies require using certain strategies. - Players have the ability to choose which class jobs they can learn. These are learned after getting certain items after boss fights. - Bonus dungeons with harder bosses. CONS: - Some of the information for quests are vague, including several players can only finish after beating the last boss in the game. - There are some bugs with some quests. For example, one did not register the items were found for the quest. Instead, a player may need to buy the items from a store. - The difficulty level is very high. For example, a player maybe needed to grind quite a bit to be around the level of a boss. Do I recommend this game? Depends if you like a hard type of rpg. The story is not that great, but the turn based rpg combat is fun, especially learning what weakness and strengths enemies have. The beautiful backgrounds and music are very nice in this game. They offset about how bland the story is. Some of the characters are interesting, like how there are different races all the characters are. Id only recommend it for the hard core rpg enthusiasts and when it is on sale.

I’ve just finished the entire game, and the story is terrible. The main plot is weak, the dialogue makes no logical sense, and overall it’s just awful. The gameplay is riddled with UX issues. To top it all off, after completing all 50 achievements for completion purposes, the “Completionist” platinum trophy didn’t unlock — clearly a bug. This game is simply one of the worst. Even with a 90% discount, I wouldn’t recommend buying it — there are plenty of better RPGs out there.

Among SO many issues, the top reasons this game failed are: 1. Story and voce acting is so bad that its not even comical, it will make you angry. 2. The fights are designed so that the enemies always go first, nearly. This basically translates to huge time sucks from battle. you cant act until a minute into the fight.....every time. 3. No quest tracking. The quest lines seem to never end and you have no idea where to go. There is a very vague description and then you find yourself aimlessly searching and entire dungeon for one thing, that may or may not even be there (because quests done in the wrong order cannot be completed - but there is no indication of that order) This may be one of the worst game designs I've ever encountered. Referencing the achievements, you can see that only about 1/10 players even made it to their second job class. This means not even a quarter through the game people quit. And if you waste your money on this game you'll quickly learn why.

This Games optimization is really poor , going in setting to adjust graphics it just hangs on the legion go

Despite reviews that were very not encouraging, I've bought the game because of the cool art direction and combat that seemed interesting. And both of those things are very good indeed. The problem is the rest of the game lack substance so much, that I dropped it after trying to get invested for hours. The art is the main selling point and has fantastic style and vibrant colour usage. Some of the designs of the (totally original) fantasy races, as well as monsters, are very original and have a "fairy tale with a dash of dark fantasy" vibe. Backgrounds are also cool - but mostly in the cities and major story locations, dungeons can be super drab. The combat system is also interesting. It's a classic turn-based JRPG with jobs, limit breaks, elemental weaknesses and such. It's investing, although not origal - except the focus system, which breaks the mold. A pool of points you can use to boost any of your actions, but which increases only when you hit enemy weaknesses or spend a turn of one of the characters, give the battle system a very dynamic feel. You always have to manage your Focus, because without it you are pretty much helpless in most situations. It also makes many bigger fights feel like a puzzle, where instead on taking the fight head on, you have to figure out how to outsmart a boss - and when you do, the fights tend to end very quickly to your satisfaction. Some elements drag this system down - mainly ability of many mobs to make the whole party useless for 2-3 turns or even party wipe. The progression (which is in itself based on several "currencies" and intertwining systems) seems to me to be very slow, which kinda irritates, but sometimes add to the beforementioned puzzle approach. And those are all good things I can say about the game. The rest is boring, to be frank. Dungeons are super linear and empty, but also somehow you can get lost in some. The whole game follows a strict scheme - something happens in the big city, you combat out the issue, this takes you to smaller city, where there is a dungeon, and the a temple where you get a summon and push the plot further very slowly. Back to the capital and the scheme repeats. The ideas for exploration - like elemental skills for puzzle solving and traversal - are underbaked and underused. Worldbuilding is too sparse to get you interested in rather shallow lore. But the story... oh, this is bad. The idea of having a team of (sometimes massively) flawed characters has potential on paper, but the don't have enough personality to counter their more awful side. The plot is very generic JRPG, but it seems to want to tackle some heavy issues... but it doesn't address any of them properly, they are kinda just there. Think something like Metaphor Re: Fantazio pool of topics - utopia, price of peace, how to define higher good, how to integrate a society, racial issues - but if it was very shallow, disjointed and crude in execution. So it boils down sometimes to generic order vs chaos narrative, sometimes hinting a more serious topic like sacrificing your freedom for peace, but then it becomes mostly a matter of choice between a casual racism vs all-out competitive racism. So yeah, the game has few solid elements, but no momentum to make you want to see it through. The mini-game is fun, I guess.

this game is so inconvenient. Running around looking for npc's for quest obj, no directions hint, no map or mini map in town. wasting so much time running and looking. no quick movement menu to get places faster. Also the main playable characters in the starting are so boring and the playable character are not ,,,relatable? funky character design but maybe it will fly for others.

O jogo é mal otimizado, tem 23 GB, e as configurações são bem limitadas. A história é bem "ok", mas me senti aliviado por não ser daqueles tipos de jogo que são mais história do que gameplay, e que te fazem ficar apertando botão pra passar texto. Embora pudesse ser mais curta, passei 25 horas porque me apressei nas últimas, o jogo deveria ter, no máximo, 15 horas, cortando metade do grind, tirando a busca em quatro territórios do capítulo 10 e um abençoado labirinto no final do jogo, que senti serem desnecessários à minha experiência. Sobre as classes e subclasses, muitas mantêm uma aparência esquisita. As classes te dão escolhas, mas parece que sempre vai existir uma classe pré-definida para cada personagem, como o Arpajo e a classe de caçador. Me decepcionou profundamente a árvore de habilidades bloquear as últimas skills roubadíssimas, que só podem ser usadas no pós-game, me fazendo deixar de lado alguns personagens por serem muito inferiores. Os inimigos são reutilizados o jogo inteiro e possuem habilidades desanimadoras, como um grupo em que cada um pode dar stun infinito, heal forte ou se multiplicar infinitamente. Sinceramente, me diverti porque tive paciência, mas me estressei em algumas partes. É realmente um RPG de turno old school. Uma dica de grind: vá para o coliseu, deixe a configuração no mais fácil, coloque o Alek no grupo e derrote o boss pra farmar SP.

Finished this game on the Switch shortly after it's original release. It had issues then and probably still has them now (random crashes, including just after the final fight :( ). I had forgotten just how undirecting it's quest lines are, and it is very easy to loose direction and the target of what you are doing (and the unclear locations).

I will never understand for the life of me why this game is maligned. The art and music alone makes this a must play.

It´s an RPG in the famous Vanillaware Style. It´s beautiful but doesn´t excite too much in storytelling. The World and lore is halfway interesting. Gameplay is pretty clunky but does fulfill its needs. I can´t say it´s bad but in this gengre there are hundreds of games that are great to awesome. I would definetely not recommend it for the 35 Dollar Full price. But it´s pretty often on sale like now for about 3,50 Euro. When this is the case you could reconsider it if you want something else than Final Fantasy.