Knowing an enemy’s weakness is really important in combat. They also have strengths and weaknesses that you can exploit.

This then leads to a string of events that puts our heroes into a situation where they need to save the world. It was a peaceful day in the Capital when suddenly, Noises attack the orchard. You take control of Ulan who is the leader of the group. The story takes you to the 333rd group of demi-gods. The chosen demi-gods only have 3 years to live before they get ascended in which they will die and be replaced by another set of demi-gods. Let’s deep dive into the game and see what it’s all about.Īstria Ascending is about 8 demi-gods, beings that were chosen to protect the peace of the world.

This allows you to really mould and specialise all eight of your party members to suit your playstyle and gives versatility to combat.Astria Ascending is a new JRPG game filled with interesting characters and innovative combat gameplay. Some early choices might add either HP or MP, while others might give you a choice of boosting one of four stat points or unlock different elemental attacks. The ascension tree allows you to specialise each individual character how you’d like them using stat orbs and skill points. Each character has a primary job/class and can learn three other jobs eventually. Through combat and completing quests, you’ll earn currency, experience points and skill points as well as levelling up your party. It was very helpful when I got stuck to work out where I hadn’t been to progress through to the end of the dungeon. There’s a percentage completion at the bottom of the screen which helps you know how much further you need to explore. As you progress through the dungeon, you’ll see any doors you have missed as they’re not connected to other layers, allowing you to go back and explore that new area. Going through a door to the next room adds a layer to the map and a trail showing how the doors connect to previous layers. Each room is added to the map as you discover it, showing the door or entry you came in and records and doors that you discover. Early on I tried to just keep pushing on and work my way through the regular fights, but when it came to more difficult enemies or boss battles, I would be struggling with very little MP to use and dwindling potion supplies which meant many frustrating defeats.Īnother aspect of Astria Ascending is the outstanding implementation of the dungeon maps that I’ve not seen before. There are lots of battles to be fought as you progress your way through the dungeons so don’t be afraid to head back to town to restock on potions.

When you’re in a dungeon, your HP will regenerate after each fight, but your MP does not. This was very useful when you start heading into the multi-level dungeons in the game. One advantage to fleeing is you can utilise the teleporters to go back to town, stock up on potions, shop for better weapons/armour, then go back to the fight and try again. It can also be advantageous to flee if you know the battle is lost, but this has a chance to fail. You don’t have to worry about not having saved the game for 30-minutes or more and can get straight back into the fight knowing the enemy’s strategies. If your group is wiped in battle, you have the option to retry the battle straight away which is fantastic. Curse is a real pain because it means your party members have a chance to attack your team. Often the bosses would do huge damage or cast curse or other such negative effects. The bosses I’ve encountered so far have two phases and they can be super frustrating, especially as I would usually encounter them when I was very low on MP across most characters.

Astria ascending switch review