➤ Astria Ascending, the review 🎮

The guys of Artisan Studios, a team founded in France that recently opened a studio also in Canada, three very important names in the panorama of Japanese role-playing games strongly wanted to collaborate: one is Kazushige Nojima, who wrote various Final Fantasy, but also a lot of other games; then there's Hitoshi Sakimoto, who has a scary resume and has composed the music for numerous Square Enix titles, as well as for various Vanillaware games; finally we have Akihiko Yoshida, the pencil behind the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics or the more recent NieR: Automata. With these premises and the intention of paying homage to the golden age of the 90s JRPG and in particular real cult such as Xenogears, Secret of Mana and Valkyrie Profile, the title Artisan Studios immediately attracted our attention, and after having played it thoroughly we can explain to you in this one review by Astria Ascending, all its strengths and weaknesses.

A long history to mesh

Astria Ascending, the review — Astria Ascending, the eight Demigods protagonists

On the qualities of Kazushige Nojima as a writer we could make a really long speech, but let's limit ourselves to saying that it is controversial and that not all his donuts succeed with the hole. As is normal, but when they are successful they are excellent and you would like to do an encore. Unfortunately that doesn't happen with the story of Astria Ascending and the point is, it's not entirely her fault. The premise, a bit confusing, would be this: in the world of Orcanon live the most disparate species, protected by representatives, called Demigod (in Spanish, demigods) who exchange their lives for extraordinary powers and great riches: once these privileges have been obtained, in fact, the Demigods only live another three years. Their purpose is to protect the world from all dangers, and above all to preserve Harmony, which in addition to being literally harmony, is also the name of the capital of Orcanon.

Practically a team of Avengers-like, the eight protagonists of Astria Ascending are the heart of the story. They belong to different heritage and species and look at each other with suspicion, but are forced to revise their positions when strange incidents begin to occur that would seem to suggest a catastrophic hypothesis: the Astrae, the deities who represent the mysterious and supernatural Arbiters, are attacking the inhabitants of Orcanon instead of protecting them from the hostile creatures called Noise. Investigating, the Demigods will find that obviously not everything is as it seems and they will have to fight against enemies who come from their own pasts to ensure the future they had given up.

In short, the story is really interesting and unleashes some really remarkable twists, but Nojima's efforts are thwarted by an exhausting pace, especially at the beginning: the plot takes really too much to mesh, also due to numerous dialogues in English which for some reason cannot be accelerated, and which are interspersed with frequent and long pauses between bars.

There are no intermission cinematics: the story is told through the balloons that appear above the characters as if they were a comic. In these situations, the animations are reduced to the bone and only rarely does the direction resort to zooming or other movements of the frame to liven up the narrative. The tasteless dubbing in English, then, it does not help: it seemed to us one of the worst we have heard recently, while the Japanese one is much better and luckily it can be set at any time from the options menu.

It's a shame because the narrative of Astria Ascending is anything but obvious, it deals with interesting themes and surprises for unexpected dynamics, especially if you consider the type of game. The characters in the cast are all well characterized, thanks also to the refined character design of the excellent Akihiko Yoshida, although perhaps there are too many and the script ends up not giving everyone the weight they deserve.

One po 'JRPG and one po' platform

In the introduction to this review we didn't mention Vanillaware at random, as we mentioned the composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, as always in great shape, even if a little less memorable than usual. Astria Ascending, just like Dragon's Crown, Odin Sphere or the recent 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, is entirely hand drawn. The guys at Artisan Studios have a real talent: every background is a joy for the eyes, every animation is extraordinarily fluid and detailed even when you leave the protagonist Ulan stop for a few seconds. The choice of soft but vibrant colors literally embellishes every screen, and the variety of settings is impressive: woods, deserts, swamps, ancient temples and cities that mirror the tribes who built them. Combat effects may appear understated at first, but there is no shortage of spectacular spells that fill the screen.

If we then consider that more sprites have been designed for each character that reflect the different Jobs, you will understand that the artistic direction of Astria Ascending is truly impeccable: even the menus impressed us for their cleanliness and clarity, rich as they are in illustrations and details. , and we were positively surprised when we found that the weaponry grips change visually depending on the equipped object. A real touch of class.

The level design is a bit less inspired, more than anything else because there is a real structural break between the cities, formed by horizontally contiguous screens, and the dungeons, which are instead layered platform-style stages inspired by the never forgotten Valkyrie profiles by Enix. Connected by doors and entrances, the rooms in the dungeons immediately appear quite repetitive aesthetically, but they test the player who has to jump from one platform to another, avoiding pitfalls and solving some puzzles environmental with the help of a magic ring that acquires different powers as you progress in the campaign: initially it will allow you to activate switches and paralyze enemies, but then you will discover how to manipulate the water or burn some obstacles, and this means that you can return in previously explored areas to unlock new passages and find collectibles and the like.

It is a convincing dynamic, and the structure of these dungeons - of which there are about twenty - is becoming more and more intricate: the rooms that compose them multiply exponentially, and the map 3D doesn't help a lot in that sense. We found it perhaps too essential, since it merely indicates the generic position of the doors and chests already discovered.

Fighting like Demigod

With the exception of the mandatory bosses, the fights begin only when the Ulan sprite comes into contact with the Noise represented in the form of a bubble in the dungeon: it is possible to jump over them with a jump, perhaps after having paralyzed them with the magic ring, or hit them with a sword to increase the chances that the fight will start with an advantage in our favor. At that point, Astria Ascending reveals all of her old-fashioned JRPG nature. THE fighting they are turn-based, ordered according to the agility values of the individual characters: on the one hand we have a variable number of enemies, on the other four of the eight Demigods. Don't worry, though, because it is possible to swap the Demigods on the field with those on the bench at any time, sacrificing a turn to reconfigure the team entirely, regardless of whether our heroes are still alive or not.

Characters have the traditional commands that allow them to attack, defend, consume healing items or cast spells and special abilities. We then have command Focus, which allows you to skip the turn to load the homonymous resource represented in the upper right corner.

Focus can also be accumulated by cleverly exploiting enemy vulnerabilities, a bit like the Press Turn system in Persona and Shin Megami Tensei; after that, it is possible to unload the accumulated resource to empower any attack or spell by up to 200%. In this way, even the characters who in certain situations are less useful can have their say in battle, but always thinking strategically on the aforementioned vulnerability, because the wrong attacks charge the Focus of the enemies who can then give us tit for tat in the same way. We do not hide from you that Astria Ascending can become frustrating, with sudden and unsettling peaks of difficulty regardless of how strategically you have studied your moves. In this sense, it becomes imperative to shop for weapons and armor - at the risk of finding them in the chests, you are warned - to improve the equipment of the characters ... or alternatively, jump into the menu of options that allow you to increase or decrease there difficulties, but also to alter some aspects of the combat system, making it a little more flexible if necessary.

Astria Ascending also offers another way to face combat more serenely: a rugged one Job System focused on learning bonuses, spells and support skills. By spending the JP accumulated individually in battle, the player can build his characters by choosing the order in which to unlock the various upgrades, which are really numerous and multiply with the introduction of the main and secondary Jobs. The latter are unlocked a little at a time and the system is actually less flexible than it appears, but guarantees a fair freedom of choice, in the face of some irreversible decisions that can affect the game until the end, forcing us to better structure our team. of demigods. This is especially important when unlocking the Cosmo Break, a very powerful ability that can be activated only after having loaded the appropriate indicator: the problem is that this occurs only if the character on duty performs an action suited to his Job, and this means that you have to think even better before choosing a command.

Secondary activities

Fortunately Astria Ascending is a clever game in some respects. In dungeons, when not fighting, i Life points they regenerate automatically and quickly, allowing you to always face enemies in the best conditions. The same does not happen with Magic Points, which are restored only in the city; despite this, the generous distribution of checkpoints allows you to teleport at any time between the uncovered areas of Orcanon, and then to return to the city, recover in seconds, and resume the dungeon from the last discovered checkpoint in the blink of an eye.

This flexibility helps in solving the many side missions that start by talking to them PNG who have the canonical exclamation points in their heads. Often structured in multiple steps, these assignments will make us go far and wide, fight and explore scenarios already visited, rewarding us with accessories, money and so on.

Unfortunately not always these secondary missions they are very well written and, beyond the narrative deficits, the rewards in most cases are negligible, not to mention that the clues on how to solve them in some cases are all too indirect. However, they represent an added value in terms of longevity, also because some are completed without effort. Astria Ascending is a game that takes about thirty hours to complete, but Artisan Studios promises at least twice as much for those who want to dissect it in every aspect, including some fun mini-games. The one that stands out the most is called J-ster and is a kind of board game reminiscent of the Triple Triad and the Tetra Master from Final Fantasy VIII and IX respectively. J-ster it is played with tokens obtained by defeating monsters or transforming them with a specific ability of the grumpy Arpajo, and almost every NPC in Orcanon is willing to play a game with us, following varying rules. The winner can choose some of the opponent's tokens ... and this means that we will have to go and get them back in case of defeat.

From this point of view, Astria Ascending also does more than recall the ancient glories of the past: it borrows some dynamics that JRPG players have liked over the years, but in doing so it must be admitted that it loses a lot. personality, imitating this and that without putting too much of his own into it. In the end we have beautiful hand-drawn graphics, please, but we have already seen in the Vanillaware titles; a combat system that looks like a strange hybrid of Shin Megami Tensei and Bravely Default; a Final Fantasy-style Job System that tends to be redundant in terms of bonuses and abilities; an exploratory dynamic taken by the weight of the Valkyrie Profile. Depending on your interest in the genre, all of these can be points absolutely in Astria Ascending's favor, but we have to admit that an extra ounce of courage and originality wouldn't go amiss.

Comment

Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam Resources4Gaming.com

7.5

Readers (2)

8.9

Your vote

Squeezed between the likes of Tales of Arise and Shin Megami Tensei V, Astria Ascending is a carefully crafted JRPG that perhaps tends to pay too much homage to the old glories of this genre. In an effort to get a little bit of everything in, the guys at Artisan Studios have developed a title that's beautiful to look at, but without too much personality. However, it is an extremely valid JRPG, albeit net of various angularities, weakened by a narrative that takes too long to mesh but which reserves many surprises for those who will have the patience to overcome the first hours of the game.