r/JRPG • u/Patient_Banana_ • 4d ago
Question Astria Ascending is worth? Or not?
I was checking the offers in playstation and this catch my attention, but i only found old reviews talking bad about this game.
Most of the problems were the story being nothing new, repetitive gameplay, boring side quest, useless companions and racism.
But are they true? most of the time people exagérate.
Nowadays is worth playing?
104
u/Samihazah 4d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/s/k6SmXVrAsT
I finished it, but I have OCPD.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
The story is among the most disappointing pieces of writing I've witnessed, and that includes terms of service of the Adobe suite, which at least managed to get me angry.
Astria is just completely bland and predictable.
26
18
u/sess 4d ago
The story is among the most disappointing pieces of writing I've witnessed, and that includes terms of service of the Adobe suite
Thanks to this, I am now literally dying in real life. My wife is expressing concern. The cats are mewling. My sides ache. My cheeks are red and puffy. Thanks alot, /u/Samihazah.
2
u/WiserStudent557 3d ago
Imagine writing a plot worse than the Adobe terms of service. This is incredible and I will make reference to it in the future
1
1
41
u/spatialdiffraction 4d ago
I gave up a couple hours in. The art was beautiful but the story and characters and combat just weren't interesting enough.
31
u/StrongWhiskey 4d ago
The games big problem is that it throws you into the world with a full roster and gives you a whole bunch of stuff to juggle from the start. Just sort of overwhelming when you have all these abilities to work with, but were never given the chance to see how characters work with each other. The story also just drops you into a conflict that feels like you are missing an entire chapters worth of game, which creates characters you just can't connect with because you aren't given the time to connect with them. The games just doesn't try to ease you into understanding the world, its a victim of its own poor pacing.
7
u/SleepyHeracross 4d ago
Yea agreed. I don't like that they just give you the full roster at the beginning. And it does feel like they just drop you into the middle of things. I wanna like it but I dropped it after like 2 hours and don't really have the itch to play it. Beautiful art tho, only real positive
28
u/Kafkabest 4d ago
I don't think I've ever seen anyone that actually likes it without a ton of caveats.
1
u/makiodaflash 4d ago
This i played it through the first boss quit right after just boring from the start.
1
u/Syfer_Husker 2d ago
Yup, I wanted to love this game so badly it has some systems I really enjoyed and the Art style and combat are pretty nice with the deep trees etc.
Problem is god it's just boring it doesn't get me hooked.
7
u/mfactor74 4d ago
It could've been phenomenal, on ALL fronts, but it ended up being lousy. The soundtrack is solid though.
So many problems that shouldn't exist. So many great ideas that don't reach their potential. I beat the game, and it had its moments, but I sadly don't recommend it.
I don't remember the game being racist unless the reviewers are talking about racism themes in the context of the game's story.
6
u/TheSuperContributor 4d ago
No. It's mid in every aspect aside from artworks. You absolutely miss nothing by not playing it.
11
u/kale__chips 4d ago
Beautiful art is the only thing it got going for this game. Everything else is not good. Hard avoid even at like $2.
6
u/Davalus 4d ago
It’s okay. If it’s cheap enough and you don’t have anything else that you would prefer, you could give it a shot, but prepare to be underwhelmed. It’s one of those games where I don’t regret playing but will never play it again either. It’s easily forgettable because I honestly couldn’t even tell you the plot anymore. I just remember finishing it and thinking it wasn’t terrible.
4
u/LazyShinobi 4d ago
I must be crazy. 100% achievements on steam lol. I liked the art and the gameplay was pretty good to me. Side scrolling aspect was a nice change of pace, class combos were fun.
7
u/NeverEnoughDessert 4d ago
I enjoyed the game. I felt like the combat was enjoyable and that you needed to make use of the enemies' weaknesses to do well. The token minigame was pretty fun and definitely took inspiration from Triple Triad. It had a lot of bugs at first, but I played on PS5 and was able to get the platinum after they made some patches.
3
3
u/Buttery_Smooth_30FPS 4d ago
Did they ever fix the glitch where equipment didn’t actually modify your stats?
3
u/reevestussi 4d ago
It's a mixed bag with some aspects which were done well and some very frustrating gameplay design choices
Art is obviously the highlight but the story was just super bland and a disappointment considering it was written by Kazushige Nojima.
The metroidvania gameplay design really shows it's issues in the second half of the game where the game doesn't properly guide you the order in which you should acquire the traversal abilities which could lead to alot of backtracking.
Traversal in general could have been fun but the strange 3D map design which the devs went with is not the best map to navigate (especially with the curved lines with multiple exits)
Side quests are bland as heck and don't really provide with good rewards
The weird 2D shooter segments are a bit clunky as well but not bad enough to deter from the experience.
7
u/FridayNight_Magus 4d ago
Tried it for about 30 minutes. Honestly one of the worst things I've ever experienced.
4
u/bbushky90 4d ago
I like just about everything I’ve ever played, and can almost always find something good about a game.
This game was an absolute garbage heap. Only purchase I’ve ever regretted.
4
u/daedalus721 4d ago
No, it’s legitimately a bad game. Not a diamond in the rough or a mediocre game that’s worth it on sale. A flat out bad game not worth your time.
5
u/MythrilCactuar 4d ago
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. It is one of the biggest disappointments of the century. Amazing art, nothing beyond that
2
u/Pharsti01 4d ago
Nope.
Beautiful art, awful everything else, this one is truly a marathon of crap if you get through it.
2
4
u/diagrammatiks 4d ago
Pure garbage. Well. Very beautiful garbage. These western jrpg keep getting made by teams with no concept of combat pacing.
2
u/darknight9064 4d ago
So I played a lot of it and enjoyed it for awhile. The further into the game I got the more you just had to exploit enemy weaknesses to complete fights. This wasn’t even on the level of octopath Traveller where you could power through random encounters if you really wanted or enemies would be weak to some version of a melee, you really needed to engage with them or lose random fights. The encounter rate also feels rather high given you also have platforming and puzzles. The character models can be off putting as well. TBH I’m sure I’d have struggled more if I had not looked at some optimal build guides as well.
It looks cool, had an interesting enough story premise, and a lot of promise but ultimately fell short.
1
u/Gitmoney4sho 4d ago
It never gives you a reason to care about any of the characters. The beginning dumps you into the middle of a story that never quite caught on for me.
1
1
u/Chance_Sail_770 4d ago
Wasn't this that one game that had all its assets reused from a failed project?
1
u/NotASniperYet 4d ago
Bought it at a big discount and didn't hate it. It looked and sounded nice, though the world itself unfortunately ended up underutilised. Found it tedius (though not exactly hard) to play on a normal difficulty level, so I switched to easy and had a more enjoyable time. If you've got nothing else to play or are simply interested in playing a great variety of (J)RPGs (like I am), then sure, go for it. I could give you a list of worse games if you asked.
As for the racism: the game is about racism, but it's not racist.
1
1
u/LyndinTheAwesome 3d ago
Depends on the Price.
Its a fairly classic JRPG with some combat elements similiar to Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler. You can save Bonus Points and use them for a bigger punch. Its okay, but not as flawless.
Story is indeed pretty standard, nothing thrilling, but its okay.
What threw me off, is the bugs (on Switch) The game can crash during combat and the save spots are pretty far so, you may lose 2h of gameplay just because the game got stuck in a still image of the summoning.
And the balance of difficulty is shit. The game gets difficult to nearly impossible levels.
So if you can deal with that, you get few hours of fun basic JRPG gameplay, and for a handfull of bugs it may even be worth the price. However there are so many games to play. You have to think about all the other games you could be playing instead.
1
1
1
u/PrometheusAborted 4d ago
I liked the combat and character progression. Skipped all the dialogue and cutscenes though.
1
1
u/lilidarkwind 4d ago
I feel like I have a lot of benefits for a lot of doubts in a lot of JRPGs … this one squandered my good will very swiftly
0
u/Novel_Algae_8819 4d ago
Don't buy it. There's a bug in the Wind Puzzle. You can't change the wind direction. You can't finish the game. Devs already gave up on fixing.
4
u/Xijit 4d ago
Is that on the OG release, or the rerelease?
When the game first came out it was pushed out with bad QA and no support by the Publisher, then later on the developers bought the game from the Publisher and rereleased it with a bunch of bug fixes.
Still not a good game, but I applaud the devs wanted to fix how the game was launched.
4
u/Healthy_Radish 4d ago
I beat this last month and that puzzle is doable you just aren’t in anyway told or even slightly given a clue about how to solve it but it is not a broken puzzle. I have a terrible memory problem but the Solution is posted on steam forums.
-1
51
u/Takemyfishplease 4d ago
I dropped it pretty quick. The weird motions everyone does drove me crazy. Absolute gorgeous menus tho.