Astria Ascending Review Summary

Beautiful and unique art style: The game features a beautiful and unique art style with vibrant colors and hand-drawn graphics. Players appreciate the visual appeal and the distinct designs.

Classic JRPG experience: The game offers a classic JRPG experience with turn-based combat and a story reminiscent of old-school JRPGs. Players enjoy the nostalgic feel and traditional gameplay mechanics.

Engaging combat system: The combat system is dynamic and enjoyable, featuring a fun class system and customizable characters. Players find the battles engaging and the combat mechanics interesting.

Wonderful music and sound: The game's music is highlighted as a strong point, with wonderful tracks that enhance the gaming experience. Players appreciate the quality and appeal of the soundtrack.

Unique character and monster designs: The game features unique designs for fantasy races, monsters, and characters. Players enjoy the creativity and distinctiveness of these designs.

Weak Storyline: The story is widely criticized for being unengaging, confusing, and poorly developed. Many players find it boring and cliche.

Slow Combat Tempo: Combat is criticized for being slow and not able to be sped up. The pacing is considered poor.

Clunky and Buggy Gameplay: The gameplay is described as clunky, annoying, and disappointing. There are also numerous bugs reported.

Poor Map Design: The map design is considered confusing, unhelpful, and poorly designed. Players find it stressful and not intuitive.

Unclear Enemy Weaknesses: Players struggle with unclear enemy weaknesses, which are not easily remembered or displayed. Some enemies lack weaknesses altogether.

Job and class system: A robust job and class system allows for extensive character customization and progression, similar to the Final Fantasy series.

Turn-based JRPG combat system: The game features a classic turn-based combat system reminiscent of traditional JRPGs, with a focus on strategic gameplay and character progression.

Variety of gameplay mechanics: The game offers a range of gameplay mechanics including hunts, side quests, platforming, mini-games, and exploration.

Elemental weaknesses and status effects: Combat includes a system of elemental weaknesses and status effects, adding depth and strategy to battles.

Character progression and customization: Players can develop their characters through various progression systems, including skill trees and stat development.

Frequent bugs and crashes: Players report encountering numerous small bugs and occasional crashes, which disrupt the gaming experience.

Audio-related bugs: Various audio issues are reported, including intermittent cut-offs, extremely loud music, and glitches affecting gameplay.

Game freezing issues: The game frequently freezes, particularly during menu navigation and other specific instances.

Frame rate problems: There are issues with frame rate, including slow frame rates and significant drops during screen switching.

Lack of PC configuration options: There are no configuration options for PC performance, including resolution settings, leading to optimization issues.

Recommended for RPG fans: The game is highly recommended for fans of turn-based RPGs, classic RPGs, and JRPGs. It is particularly suggested for hardcore RPG enthusiasts, especially when it is on sale.

Underrated and promising: The game is considered criminally underrated and deserves better reviews and more popularity. It shows promise for future games from the developers.

Character customization appreciated: Players appreciate the character builds and job transitions, which allow for a high degree of customization and flexibility in gameplay.

Steam Deck: The Steam Deck experience is marred by several significant issues. Users have reported small text sizes that are difficult to read, frequent crashes and black screens indicating stability problems, and unresponsive or broken controls. These issues collectively contribute to a poor user experience.

External guides: The primary user complaints revolve around the lack of sufficient in-game explanations for complex mechanics and stat explanations. Users feel compelled to look up information externally to understand character progression, hidden quests, and detailed game rules, which significantly impacts their gaming experience.

Accessibility issues for colorblind players: The game has accessibility problems that affect colorblind players, making it difficult for them to fully enjoy or navigate the game.