Focus can stack up, allowing you to deal an abundance of damage once it maxes out. But while you’re collecting Focus, enemies can hit your weaknesses and do the exact same thing, raising the stakes the longer a fight goes on. This is due to the excellent Focus mechanic, which makes the party gain Focus Points when striking an enemy’s weakness. The combat itself is some of the best I’ve seen in a traditional turn-based JRPG. Whether it be an attack, spell, buff, or status effect, everything is animated immaculately and with purpose. Since it’s presented as a 2D platformer outside of fights, the world of Orchanon feels as if it was created in a story book – each of its characters drawn with tender love and care, and they especially shine in combat. Every zone is drop dead gorgeous, especially in dungeons. Focus Your SkillsĪstria Ascending really stands out in its battles and its art style. Every enemy type has distinct abilities so fighting these minibosses adds even more variety to the creatures that you face, which is especially welcome when combat is the shining star here. While none of them are very interesting, additional guild missions that task you with killing special enemies for money, experience, and skill points can be. You’ll often be asked to defeat a certain number of enemies or find the quest giver a specific item, and little else. You only ever see this twist between specific locations in the latter half of the story, and by that point you’ll already have progressed so far that its introduction feels random and disjointed.Īs you explore Orchanon, you will also find plenty of side quests, but these are similarly straightforward and uninspired, doing little to make the world feel fleshed out.
The repetition is shaken up a bit relatively deep into the story by a section where you shoot enemies in the sky like a side scrolling shooter, but it’s too little too late. Dungeons are usually structured the same too: each has a boss known as an Astrae that you can summon in battle once you’ve defeated it, followed by another boss at the end, leaving them a little too predictable to make your way through. But most aren’t that engaging due to their simplicity.
Some of these require you to take advantage of basic elemental powers to solve them, like using wind to move boxes to their correct position. Unsurprisingly, completing your quest will mean venturing into a handful of puzzle-filled dungeons. Side quests do very little to make the world feel fleshed out. Many party members have family tied into the events in ways that could be compelling, but with how vague a lot of the plot points are left, those potential hooks were never actually able to grab my interest. That isn’t to say that this story structure never works, because it does have entertaining or heartfelt moments here and there. Because of this, the main cast suffers from bland dialogue and a lack of personality, making them uninteresting to spend dozens of hours with.Īnd like so many other JRPG stories, their struggle is against yet another syndicate of generic villains that want to destroy the world for some weak, unconvincing reason.
#Astria ascending reviews skin#
Astria Ascending’s world has a unique look and its races are freshly designed, but their differences are only skin deep. stay as far away as you can.Each of your party members has their own bigger motivation too, but in general, the story is just so cliche. If you view this as a dungeon grinder and ignore the story, it's playable and quite fun at that. Only real issue is character balance: a couple of them are incredibly OP and a couple others are worthless throughout. Character growth is reminiscent of FFX's sphere grid. It's rather difficult (as difficult as you want it to be) and fairly complex. The best part of the game is combat, by far. I daresay this game had the worst story of any RPG I've ever played. Many of the main cast are terribly racist. "A story based around adult characters, Astria Ascending offers a more mature experience and extensive dialogue." Where to even begin with this game? I guess let's start with a very glaring statement on the game case:
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