Astria Ascending Preview A Fervently Classical JRPG For Better & Worse

Astria Ascending Preview: A Fervently Classical JRPG, For Better & Worse

Astria Ascending has an intimate familiarity thanks to its classical JRPG design, which contains more hits than misses despite a few archaic beats.

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Astria Ascending Preview A Fervently Classical JRPG For Better & Worse

Astria Ascending is an upcoming JRPG title from developer Artisan Studio and publisher Dear Villagers. Apart from an eye-catching visual aesthetic, the game’s main claim to fame prior to release is the involvement of several developers who have previously worked on the Final Fantasy franchise. That influence is evident in every aspect of the game’s roughly five hour-long preview build, and while the classical focus lends an air of familiarity to a brand new tale, it also brings with it a few archaic elements that hamper some of the game’s lovely pacing and deep systems.

Astria Ascending’s story follows eight different heroes, and eschews conventional JRPG narrative conventions by having them pre-banded together; There’s no journeying across several continents before the team is fully assembled. The eight heroes are destined to die as part of the world’s cyclical nature, which sees greater civilization protected from catastrophe by the establishment of demi-gods (the playable party). While the preview doesn’t get too deep into its story, Astria Ascending has a lot of stereotypical JRPG plot points to begin with, replete with hammer-over-head foreshadowing and personality traits as 2D as the character models.

That being said, there’s still the potential for depth here, and the preview build felt like it was too short to get a good sense of how each character will develop as they grapple with some of the more insidious societal concerns that begin to be hinted at in the game’s first several hours. Aesthetically speaking, Astria Ascending is as good as advertised, too, with a look and feel that blends dreamy environmental design with vibrant character depictions and battle animations.

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Astria Ascending Preview A Fervently Classical JRPG For Better & Worse

Astria Ascending’s world exploration is simplistic but fun, without too much in the way of repetition despite the standard enemy encounters and treasure chest seeking that characterizes many JRPG quests. Battle is initiated on the map and can be pre-empted with a sword slash to gain a greater chance at initiative, and jumping and traversal within dungeons occurs at a brisk pace that makes journeying more palatable.

Battles themselves are where the meat of Astria Ascending is, and the depth of tactics is wonderful. A focus point system lets players manipulate the strength of their attacks, and the eight-person system allows for on-the-fly team composition customization, even letting tactical minds swap out a downed party member with a fresh one from the backline. Combat is turn-based and on par with expectation, though the advancement system closely resembles the Final Fantasy X sphere grid – a nice thing for those who enjoy plotting out how each character will develop, and a bit of extra book-keeping for those who don’t necessarily want to fuss over where +2 in stats goes.

Astria Ascending Preview A Fervently Classical JRPG For Better & Worse

Astria Ascending’s Final Fantasy resemblance doesn’t end there, either. The game’s minigame, a token-focused board game called J-Ster, is remarkably similar to Triple Triad, upping the complexity somewhat with an increase in the sides that need to be managed on a given game piece. It even has some of Final Fantasy VIII’s rules variance, with different versions of the game offered by various opponents. The preview doesn’t get too deep into it, but J-Ster feels more like the type of minigame players will sink a few hours into than one that will be largely ignored, which is a promising baseline.

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Most of Astria Ascending is appealing to anyone who enjoys traditional or classic JRPGs, though it does stumble a little in a crucial area, with a story that fails to captivate in its early hours and equally bland characters. Some of the tropes are so obviously rote that they can be a bit off-putting, too – each race’s home area, for instance, features that race’s name in the title, followed by something generic like “valley’ or “forest.” While the designs themselves are interesting, their implementation feels largely generic. With that said, though, plenty of great JRPG titles have suffered from slow burns that require a bit of patience, and as the preview build comes to a close the story finally begins to feel like it’s picking up, so it could simply be a case of needing more time to fully flesh out a narrative that can’t be rushed.

As a preview, though, Astria Ascending’s offerings are more than enough to consider it a title to watch in its genre space. There’s enough diversity in combat, tactics, side pursuits, and aesthetic that Astria Ascending captivates in spite of its suffering narrative, and if the latter gets more engrossing as time passes – something that seems likely given the closing hour of our hands-on preview – it could genuinely be a sterling entry into a genre that has no shortage of compelling alternatives. For anyone with a fondness for old Final Fantasy games on PlayStation 1 or more recent titles like Bravely Default, Astria Ascending is a game to watch as it gears up for full release on September 30, 2021.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/astria-ascending-preview-a-fervently-classical-jrpg-for-better-worse/

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