Astral Ascent

Astral Ascent is one of the best action roguelikes out there. The game is challenging, has a wide of variety of enemies and builds and it keeps getting better and better with each update. Here's a concise summary of what I like and dislike about the game: Pros: + Lots of variety in runs: 4 playable characters in the base game, each level has 3 different bosses, tons of spells and auras to make a build unique + Pixel art + Simple yet satisfying combat mechanics + Frequent gameplay updates Cons: - Lore is shallow - Past a certain point, there's a lot of grinding to do to unlock things

Astral Ascent is visually and audibly stunning, but despite its strengths, I struggled to enjoy it. As soon as I started, the game bombarded me with mechanics, and despite the abundance of descriptions it often failed to explain core connections between them, making choices unclear. I figured things out after playing for a few hours, but once I grasped the basics, it all felt disjointed - more like a collection of features than a cohesive system. Immersion was frequently broken during gameplay by some mechanic or awkward UI/UX decisions and storytelling issues. I might've still enjoyed the game despite that if it wasn't for the saving system. Progress isn’t auto-saved and you can only save and quit to menu when you spawn in a room. Quitting anywhere else - even two steps away from where the save icon appears - erases the entire run. And if the game crashes mid-run, which player reports suggest happens often, all run progress is again lost. I haven’t played many roguelikes, so I’m not sure if these issues are common in the genre. But in the ones I’ve tried, I didn’t run into them. I can see why others might enjoy Astral Ascent, but for me it just doesn't work.

Essentially a Studio Ghibli roguelite - if the devs said they were not inspired by Studio Ghibli, I'd be shocked. The game overall is a vibe, great audio, great voice acting, Im very very happy w/ the game. I think I have 100+ hours over two devices. The differences in characters are quite stark, but you can still play them all. I have no favorite character, just whatever Im in the mood for. Im very happy with the new additions to the endgame content - similar to Hades' meta system. I will be gifting this game to people in the future. Keep up the great work devs -

Hours and hours...and hours... Great game with a good learning cruve.

damn addicting yo and superb polished game