If you long for the days of SNES-style JRPG pixel art but wish those games had modern flair, Octopath Traveler is for you. Play as eight travelers, across eight separate adventures, as their paths entertain into one epic story. Travel the expansive world of Orsterra as you fight through dungeons, theaters, forests, and waves of unspeakable evil. Simultaneously vintage and modern, Octopath Traveler is an unforgettable treat.What would happen if a budding indie company, known for vibrant 2D JRPGs, partnered with esteemed Square Enix designers? We’re talking Kazushige Nojima (FFVII/Remake, FFVII), Hitoshi Sakimoto (FFXII, Vagrant Story), Hideo Minaba (FFVI, FFIX, FFXII), and Akihiko Yoshida (FFXII, Nier: Automata). You’d get Astria Ascending – a visual feast on the one hand and a smorgasbord of flavorless mechanics on the other.
I spent several hours sampling the game’s assortment of features and was dissatisfied with the overall experience. Developer Artisan Studios’ sophomore effort (it also shipped Super Neptunia RPG in 2018) shows bouts of promise, but its stale story and gameplay left a bad taste in my mouth.Īstria Ascending mixes JRPG elements like skill trees and stat-boosting cosmetics with platforming navigation. A side-view camera suits the sparse controls you’ll move along a horizontal plane, scaling platforms with the jump button or deactivating obstacles while roaming dungeons. I expect this level of simplicity in side-scrollers, but Astria Ascending’s explorable world lacks depth. In the first dungeon, I activated four murals to open a gated doorway, but I didn’t solve the mural order on my own merits how could I when a nearby pillar etched with an on-the-nose riddle spelled out the answer? At the time, I couldn’t know this would foreshadow much of the game’s unimaginative level design and environmental storytelling. This begs the question: why have these hazards scattered throughout the game world in the first place? Similarly, leaping over bottomless chasms to arrive at varying points of interest got boring quickly because there are no consequences for dying outside of battle scenarios. The turn-based combat amounts to rotating four party members (out of eight) as you utilize a range of physical and magic-infused attacks. This allows you to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, inflict debuffs/devastating status effects, and amass focus points (FP) to enhance the effectiveness of a selected ability. I enjoyed collecting FP and combining them with my most potent magics, but this formula ran its course after the first few battles. The Ascension Tree is where you’ll spend your experience (SP) to enhance stats or acquire new skills.
#Astria ascending job system upgrade#
Each upgrade truly feels like a critical customization choice. I loved boosting my thief’s evasion properties so he was more elusive, but at the same time, his accuracy and luck numbers weren’t as high. Throw in four possible “jobs” (or classes/roles) with specific unlockables for each playable character, and you can create a squad that’s ready for any engagement … or so I thought. Sudden difficulty spikes are incredibly punishing and create awkward lulls in campaign progress.
At one point, I came across a boss with four grunts that felt almost impossible to beat. That one boss cast “stun” and “confuse” on everyone, immobilizing and turning them against one another, healed its allies for more than double the damage I was dishing out, and even respawned its downed minions. I immediately knew that I’d have to grind to overcome this obstacle, but that required me to leave the dungeon entirely to repopulate the small number of wandering enemies. Doing this over and over again drove me up the wall. I tended to avoid subquests because some areas weren’t accessible yet, and most objectives required me to kill punishing monsters or collect miscellaneous materials for forgettable NPCs. A mini-game called J-Ster kept me preoccupied when grinding became exhausting (we all know how much I love tabletop side activities). J-Ster is vaguely similar to the Japanese strategy game Go in that you place five tokens on a board and use their power levels/positions to capture the opponent’s tokens.
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