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.
