Let's start with the good. I liked the art design, and I liked the character progression system. Combat against bosses is fairlyLet's start with the good. I liked the art design, and I liked the character progression system. Combat against bosses is fairly challenging. The core gameplay of combat and leveling is solid.
Most everything else is poor or buggy. The story and dialogue are pretty terrible, and everything takes 3 times longer to explain than it should, but that's the norm for JRPGs.
There are a good number of sidequests and optional hunts that are often ambiguous as to what you're supposed to do. These quests will have 3-4 steps which each boil down to searching a largish area for some sort of trigger point. This quickly becomes tedious. The hunts are even worse. Astria Ascending doesn't have a day-night cycle, but it does have weather, which is important for getting the hunt monsters to show up. So not only do you have to search a large area for a hunt monster, but you also have to make sure that its the right weather, which is completely random. This is even more tedious. It's like whoever designed the subquests and hunts hates these games, or at least doesn't understand them. There is also an optional cardgame that is tacked on that reminded me a lot of the cardgame in FF8. it's very "meh."
I encountered a game-breaking bug during my playthrough with the Fedorah side-scrolling minigame. It is disheartening that it still hasn't been fixed, and apparently I'm the only one who experienced it, or no-one else played the game halfway through, because I can't find information anywhere on it. I also encountered another gamebreaking bug in the Capricorn Temple that makes progression impossible. These are the worst bugs I've seen in a decade. The game is still in alpha.
Edit: A few days after I posted this review the game was finally patched. The bugs that I mentioned have been fixed. Without these bugs I would give Astria Ascending 4/10. It's still quite dire and has deep flaws in its design, and I say that as someone who loves turn-based combat. I'm leaving the original score however, as releasing such a buggy mess for so long is inexcusable.… Expand
