To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Unfortunately, a captivating artstyle can’t save what a sloggy experience the game is. The colors are crisp and the backgrounds look sharp. The 2D art invokes familiarity with Vanillaware titles like Odin Sphere or Dragon’s Crown. In an age where more and more games, especially Japanese RPGs are going full 3D, having a different look can help a game stand out amongst a crowd. On the surface, Astria Ascending intrigued me with its wonderful hand drawn artstyle. Now it's back with a new adventure, Astria Ascending. The studio’s first project was Super Neptunia RPG, a 2D entry in the Neptunia franchise. It’s a cool idea that will see players creating many different iterations of group builds that suits their playstyles.Artisan Studio is a French and Canadian developer that specializes in 2D RPG games. Some might add either HP or MP, while others might give you a choice of boosting one of four stat points. It’s essentially a node tree that requires stat orbs and skill points to unlock, and then you choose a specialty for that node. This gives you an opportunity to add skill points into each character’s Ascension Tree which allows you to specialise each individual character how you’d like them to be. You’ll earn currency, experience points and skill points after each battle, and eventually your party members will level up. There’s also treasure chests you can loot for items. If they get to you first, they will have a turn of damage against you before you can retaliate, so positioning and timing is important. In addition, if I pressed X as I got close to an enemy, I would gain a combat advantage over the monster team, attacking first. Later, I entered a dungeon area which is traversed the same, only this time there were some platforming elements to it, jumping up onto pipes to get onto higher platforms to flick switches which unlocked new areas or doors. This is where combat gets really interesting in Astria Ascending, and it turned the tide of more than one battle in my preview sessions. Have you ever been in a turn-based combat situation where you’re out of mana, you’re low on HP with death looming, and all you have left is your pitiful melee strike that you know has a high chance of being blocked or resisted by the enemy? Here you can spend Focus Points on an ability to make it worth using or use the Focus command to give up their turn to increase efficiency for another character. Focus is one of the key additions to Astria Ascending however, where it makes all characters as efficient as they can be in every situation. If a character is getting targeted heavily, swapping position is a good option, even if they have been knocked out. Down the bottom of the screen, you have options for a standard attack, use an ability, guard for defence, focus to add one focus point for that turn, use an item such as a potion, swap position, or flee. After descending the elevator and boarding the train to fast travel between known locations, I arrived at Harmony Orchard to come across my first of three battles.Ĭombat is like any other turn-based game you’ve played with some additional features. It’s not long before you’re given your first primary and secondary quests and pressing Right Stick will show you the quest log. Being 2D, you only need to worry about moving left to right and interacting with characters or items with A. I used a controller to play the game and controls start off simple. The voice acting was terrific with a bit of friendly banter amongst the group straight away. Some characters have melee abilities, other have some magical ones, some can heal and so on. You can learn about each character straight away, despite only controlling Ulan. I was immediately drawn into the hand-drawn graphics and all sorts of quirky and wonderful characters presented. Astria Ascending boasts contributions from world-class JRPG developers, with a narrative written by Kazushige Nojima (Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VII Remake), score by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story), and art from CyDesignation (Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba).
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