It instantly called to mind things like Triple Triad, and I look forward to seeing how deep the J-Ster rabbit hole goes in the final version. You get J-Ster tokens by completing quests, winning contests, or turning enemies into tokens. Perhaps the most interesting part of this is J-Ster, which is a miniature collectible 'card' game you can play with characters around the world. It feels rather like Persona in that way.īeyond combat and dungeons, players have the usual JRPG fare of side-quests and exploration. This encourages players to swap characters around because being able to hit specific elemental weaknesses is often more important. Even if a character isn't a heavy hitter, if they can reliably hit an enemy weakness, they can build up focus to allow a non-elemental heavy hitter to smash hard. This lends itself to some interesting combat strategies. During a character's turn, you can allocate up to four FP to a character, which boosts the power of their next attack by 50 percent. Players earn focus points (FP) by striking enemy weaknesses or having a character skip a turn in battle to focus. Certain characters are strong or weak to specific elements, and while some characters have access to multiple elemental spells, there's a hierarchy of who is advantageous against which elements.Ĭombat may appear simple, but it has some complexity that allows you to get the most out of your characters. Of course, each character has a unique set of skills and elemental effects. There's also some light puzzling an early puzzle poses a simple riddle that you must complete with some basic platforming to hit switches in a specific order.Īt first blush, the turn-based combat system looks straightforward in that players attack, defend, use items, or cast spells with their limited supply of MP. You engage in battle by attacking enemies on the battlefield, and early on, you get a magic ring that lets you stun them in place. The game is set on a 2D plane, and you can move around and hop like you're in a platformer. The game generally tends to eschew the stereotypical appearances for characters, so they stand out in ways that are not just 'wizard' or 'warrior.' When you add the fact that each character is fated to die, you get a non-standard group with a number of different perspectives.Įxploration in Astria Ascending feels a whole lot like the old PS1 game, Valkyrie Profile. The primary wizard is a huge beefy monster-like man named Dagmar. The thief, Arpajo, is an elderly man who is happily married to the summoner, Alasia. The characters in Astria Ascending are a unique bunch.

The game follows the 333 rd generation of demigods who are the equivalent of one day away from retirement as they try to keep their world safe from danger.

Demigods 'ascend' within three years of gaining their powers and either die or become stars, depending on who you ask. Citizens are called up to become demigods - incredibly powerful fighters gifted with amazing abilities - at a cost. To stop them, Harmonia has adopted a ' The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' system. Thankfully, based on our time with the preview build, the game will likely please its target audience.Īstria Ascending is set in the peaceful land of Harmonia, which is threatened by monsters called Noises.

In other words, it's made to appeal to me as much as possible. (It didn't hurt that the console featured blatant classics like Final Fantasy 7.) Astria Ascending is effectively Valkyrie Profile remade as a modern indie title and written by Final Fantasy veteran writer Kazushige Nojima. My favorite JRPG era was the PS1 because it had a lot of quirky titles that would probably be considered indie titles these days - including my favorite JRPG of all time, Valkyrie Profile.

Astria ascending switch review