Astral Ascent (2023)

what i liked:

• different characters with unique skills and play styles - it is quite fun and provides a lot of diversity. i've found two playable characters so far in my early access run, but the developers addressed there will be more.

• fast paced movement and combat. it's a pleasure how the combat is playing out so well already. it's pacing is fast, with layers of vertical combat and many different spells. improving the skills with gambits and building some synergies is quite interesting and enjoyable. the magnificent combat is already one of the major selling points.

• the boss design is excellent. there is a lot of variety in design and skill set, making each boss a unique and memorable experience. i really liked their decision making a pool of different bosses for each encounter.

• liked the room progression system. it's all about meaningful decisions and how you progress in your character development.

• eye-catching pixel art in-game graphics and exceptionally well-drawn character art. astral ascent is a pleasure to look at!

• fully dubbed dialogues, and the dub is actually decent as well. i'm usually quite critical about dubs and prefer no dub over a bad one. at least, the audio quality. the quality of some of the dialogue texts is something they have to dastically improve on.

• combat controls are quite decent, ui and managing your stuff is a tad bit clunky at times, but nothing you won't get used to after a couple of hours.

• wholesome sound design, calm and relaxing audio is soothing your ears on a high level quality.

what felt debatable to me:

~ melee combat feels weak no matter what upgrade you're obtaining. there is quite some balancing to do. at least most of the spells seem fine tho.

~ charming characters, although they don't have enough interesting lines of dialogue.

~ it's awkward how the game shows you a dialogue symbol on npcs, but they don't even have anything new to say. instead, they'll repeat the same line over and over. please don't bait me with pop ups, if nothing is going to happen.

~ some character names are pretty nonsense. a dragon called "barbecue", are you serious? it's not funny.

~ meta progression needs to be worked on.

~ some of the enemies and their skills kinda aim tracking you, which feels awkward to play against.

~ would've loved to see different outfits instead of different colors for the same skin.

~ the combat controls are quite good, but piloting the UI and managing your items can be a little clunky at times. this is nothing you won't get used to after a couple of hours tho.

~ pricing of the early access isn't accurate in my opinion. 20 bucks on sale for an early access title is a lot to ask.

what i disliked:

• unnecessary detailed AND unskippable tutorial. it was indeed well built into the game, but i generally dislike forced tutorials. even more so if they're showing me plain and basic game mechanics like: how to attack on the ground, attack in the air, jump, dodge and so on. it's simply boring for seasoned players and will be delaying the game for no reason in the beginning.

• it's not possible to skip anything meaningful to speed up runs. like boss intro, end of run resource count (at least not fast enough), respawning and so on. those things will take up an unnecessary amount of time while doing a run and in between runs.

• game performance is kinda bad in this early state. frame drops, micro stutters and lags. the good and odd thing is that the combat performance is actually flawless, but starting a dialogue or loading something hurts the games performance for a couple of seconds.

• didn't like the traps at all. please make them destroyable or think about other kind of traps, like basic spikes or something. undestroyable thingies which spawn a constant flood of enemies are not fun and the plants are kinda garbage as well, sometimes blocking you off from looting your items completely. i don't need unique and creative traps, if they're borderline bearable.

that's my conclusion after a couple of hours and more or less finishing the early access content. i'll update this review after more hours played and of course content updates, which will happen since the developer is motivated and reacting to critique from the player base. overall i think this game has a bright future, so i'll rate astral ascent with an 8/10 despite having some early access problems. the premise is definitely there, and only time will tell if the devs manage to make a real gem out of this already pretty solid base of a game.