Astria ascending characters full#The other way that the game throws your right into the depth of itself is with the battle system, which as you can gather gives you a full party of eight characters right out of the gate. All the same, once you get a feel for what the game is doing, it really does feel like a good bit of narrative shorthand that elides the more tedious elements in favor of direct development. The plot isn’t going to amaze you right out of the gate, and it’s a bit intimidating to be thrown into the deep end quite so quickly. Everyone feels realized right out of the gate, and thus the game moves into the more interesting part wherein you get to see how they all play off one another and how the story unfolds. It helps that the characters all get a quick dose of introduction, from Dagmar’s gruff pessimism to Alassia’s imperious intellectual nature to Eko’s clear need to prove himself. The introduction to an established group dynamic does throw you off a little bit at first (it certainly did for me), but it also means that the game can dispense with the slow assembly of the party and move straight into the more interesting part where there’s an established set of character dynamics and individuals to play off of one another. Look, you get absolutely no points for figuring out that something is going on beyond what you’ve been told in this particular case, because that mostly means that you’ve played a JRPG before. Almost right away, there’s a strange attack of the Harmony-threatening Noises in the Peyska district of Harmonia, which prompts a meeting with Yuno about investigating what’s going on and… And I do mean it throws you in these characters are all promptly introduced to you and given a quick rundown, since the unit has already been together for about two and a half years (meaning that their deaths are rapidly approaching) and has established dynamics by this point. In Harmonia, the center of everything, the Goddess Yuno oversees the team of demi-gods charged with protecting the Harmony, with the demi-gods in question getting three years of power and status before, well… dying.Īt the start of the game, you take control of the 333rd demi-god unit, commanded by Ulan and containing Kress, Alek, Eko, Dagmar, Arpajo, Alassia, and Kaydin. It’s quickly explained that the world is ruled over by the Harmony, a pact between the various sapient races of the world that is sealed through eating of fruits known as Harmelons. Demi-deityĪstria Ascending wastes absolutely no time throwing you into the deep end of the game’s narrative. The Steam version was played for this preview. Heck, more importantly, is it fun to play in the first place?Īstria Ascending releases on September 30th on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One/Series X/S. Does the game still feel like a satisfying JRPG? But the real question is that elusive feel. The team has some JPRG bona fides, in other words. While the game is developed by the Quebec-and-France-based Artisan Studios, the team has brought in staff from some of the various Final Fantasy games, including narrative designer Kazushige Nojima, composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, and visual design work from the CyDesignation studio, headed up by Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba. Browse through the tag on Steam and you’ll almost certainly see what I mean.Īstria Ascending is a game that definitely has some JRPG pedigree behind it. It feels reductive to say that these games have to come from Japan, of course, but for every game that manages to feel authentic to its JRPG aspirations despite not originating in the country in the name, there are a couple dozen that bear the fingerprints of being in the style of a JRPG rather than being a proper JRPG. It does not store any personal data.There’s a certain je ne sais quoi that accompanies a JRPG that a lot of games try and fail to emulate. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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