Astria ascending steal5/24/2023 It does what it sets out to do and at its price point it does it pretty well. While parts of it felt long and grindy, the English cast is abysmal, and the dungeons design themselves left more to be desired, Astria Ascending is still a solid entry in the JRPG genre. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Astria Ascending. It’s a JRPG but it knows to not do the annoying things that most happen to do. You can even swap party members during a fight, so if a composition isn’t working you’re not locked into a long, slow death. The game is forgiving though with difficulty settings you can change on the fly, and the ability to jump back to town at an instant to stock up on supplies. Each job has its own skill tree to fill up and with 20 classes you bet your butt you’re going to want to grind to get all that sweet power. Where Astria Ascending gets very interesting is each character can have not only a base job, they can have a main job, a support job, and a sub job. You’ve got mages, warriors, and healers, with varying degrees in between. Your heroes start off with the usual job class system from any Final Fantasy game. It’s an interesting push and pull that while a bit underused, keeps up the tension in the big boss fights. If you use something they’re immune to, well you’ll actually give the opponent Focus instead while losing your own. Some new differences are welcome such as if you use an ability that an opponent is weak to, you’ll get free Focus points. You can then spend Focus points to boost attacks or spells, giving you an advantage. The main hook is you can skip turns to accrue Focus points. ![]() ![]() If you’ve played Bravely Default, you’ll pick up the battle system quickly. Unfortunately, the map used to get your bearings, while it looks great, is really tricky to use and make sense in some of the later, more complex areas. The dungeons themselves are simple left to right, right to lift navigation challenges broken up with some puzzles or key abilities you find as you go. ![]() And Astria Ascending provides little to deviate or elevate this formula apart from sprinkling the occasional side quests into the mix and monster hunts. If that sounds pretty familiar, it’s because it is. Often the setup will give you a quest, that quest will require you to travel to a specific destination, and then you’ll find a dungeon that needs to be explored, culminating in a final boss fight to test your might, and maybe some puzzles sprinkled in for good measure. When the game isn’t spouting off about Demigods, Harmony, and Noises, you’ll find the minute to minute gameplay consisting of turn based combat, broken up by small dungeon exploration.
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