It is rare for me to play a JRPG and find myself ambivalent about it. I usually either really like a JRPG, or I find plenty of things wrong with it that leave me feeling unsatisfied. Astria Ascending is an RPG that just feels average, to the point where I don’t like it or dislike it, it just feels meh.

Astria Ascending takes place in the world of Orcanon, a land filled with all sorts of fantasy creatures. For thousands of years, the creatures have lived in harmony thanks to the establishment of the city of Harmonia. Using fruit known as harmelons, the world has managed to find some sort of peace and harmony amongst the races. Now, beings known as demigods fight for the people of Harmonia and Orcanon against monsters known as Noise.

However, this comes at a price, as demigods only live for 3 years before they “transcend”, dying and being replaced by new demigods. In exchange for this limited lifespan, they gain a lot of power. You begin playing as the latest batch of 8 demigods, with only 3 months left before they die/transcend. A mystery begins to unfold, as Noises begin to appear in Harmonia, which has never happened inside the city, only outside of it.

The problem is, the game sort of throws you right into it. You start with all 8 characters which (while refreshing) somewhat causes a narrative issue of feeling detached from the characters as a whole. They’re all living on borrowed time, but since you start close to the end of their time as demigods, you have established relationships already with very little time to understand why they matter. Their imminent death doesn’t seem quite so impactful, because you have no connection to them.

However, in terms of gameplay, it is typical turn-based JRPG fare, aside from the Focus mechanic. By hitting an enemy’s weakness, you can accrue focus points. Focus points can be used to enhance attacks, or lengthen the duration of buffs or debuffs. Each character starts out with one class and can eventually get a Main Class, Sub Class, and Support Class to go with it. Each class has its own Ascension Grid, which is basically a mix between a skill tree and the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X.

SP is gained through battles and is required to unlock nodes on the Ascension Grid. Stat nodes also require Stat orbs, which can be gotten from boss battles, chests, and things such as side quests. As a result of this system, there is a lot of customization at your fingertips. You can make all sorts of party compositions as you progress, and there is a lot of room for varying playstyles.

As for exploration, Astria Ascending takes place on a 2D hand-drawn plane, where you can move left and right, jump, and utilize the Zodiac Ring to freeze enemies or interact with the environment for puzzles. In that way, it is very much like Valkyrie Profile, and the map is very similar to Valkyrie Profile as well. Each room you enter in a dungeon is a different square on the map. You can see doors/exits, teleport points, and other elements if you have the right skills equipped.

There are lots of side quests, hunts for strong enemies, and other bits of side content involved. However, one major issue is that in story cutscenes, the dialogue advances on its own, and there is no way to adjust the speed. In other dialogue or side quest cutscenes you can move the dialogue at your own pace, so it is a weird choice to make story cutscenes different from that. It also means that if you die and have to watch a cutscene over, you can’t skip it.

Luckily, the game has a variety of difficulty and accessibility options, along with the ability to save anywhere. You can show enemy weaknesses by default, show enemy health by default, or turn those features off and play more traditionally using skills like scan to reveal those things. Astria Ascending has a lot of great ideas, and yet somehow I’m just left feeling unfulfilled.

The environments and character designs are absolutely beautiful. Each hand-drawn environment is colorful and visually distinct. The voice acting is well done too, though I personally had a hard time connecting to any of the main characters. That may very well be Astria Ascending’s problem. It does a lot of things right, but when it tries to get you to care about your heroes, it just doesn’t seem to hit its mark.

Overall, if you like JRPG’s and games like Final Fantasy or Bravely Default, then Astria Ascending won’t really steer you wrong. Is it a great experience? Not really, though I wouldn’t say it is bad either. I’ve just played a lot of games that were better or more engaging from the outset.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Astria Ascending was provided by Dear Villagers for this review.

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Astria Ascending

$34.99 USD

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Deep Progression Systems
• Beautiful Environments
• Smooth Controls and Gameplay
• Lots of Customization and Accessibility Options

Cons

• Characters Aren't Likeable
• Story is Hard to Connect to
• Map can be Frustrating
• Cutscene Dialogue Moves Itself