Astral Ascent Review (Steam)

Our Astral Ascent Review has us Choosing one of the four heroes and exploring the Garden, an astral prison guarded by 12 powerful mystical bosses: the Zodiacs. Challenge them with dozens of unique spells and faithful friends by your side to unfold the story of this platform roguelike with lightning-fast combat.

Astral Ascent Review Pros:

• Beautiful graphics.
• 1.03GB Download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Full controller support.
• Remote play together support.
• Input your constellation.
• Graphics settings – fullscreen, window size, light quality, game effects, fullscreen quality, and resolution scale.
• Can rebind controls and set controller icons.
• Keyboard support and again you can rebind the controls.
• 3 save slots.
• Roguelike gameplay.
• Select your constellation and this affects your relations with zodiacs.
• Readability mode is where Characters can have an outline or no outline put on to make them more visible.
• Fully voiced characters.
• Opening tutorial.
• You can dash and jump again after hitting an enemy.
• Man is used for casting spells and is built up by using basic attacks.
• When finding new spells you can watch a small demonstration clip of the spell in action.
• Heal shards can be collected, have 5 on you at once to get a bonus to heal when you use them.
• Local co-op play is supported.
• Beautiful locations.
• The game has pixel art graphics in-game but hand-drawn art for cutscenes and conversations.
• After finishing a room you will get a choice of where to go next with different room types holding different challenges. It will tell you the type or room, difficulty level, and reward before you select it.
• Hack and slash combat.
• Easy and straightforward to do combat and use/equip spells.
• Spells will rotate as you use them.
• Salvage unwanted spells and items for quartz.
• Gambits are like buffs and abilities that you equip to slots for them to take effect.
• Fast loading times.
• Excellent smooth animations.
• You can see the enemies’ health.
• End-of-run breakdown showing unlocks, earned bankable EXP, and any rewards.
• The Garden is your hub space where you spend time buying permanent unlocks, conversation, and more as you progress.
• The stone altar allows you to choose one stone and will add a bonus to either your health, damage, or attack speed.
• Every run is randomized.
• Very addictive and a huge time sink.
• Earn keys from fight rooms and use them to open chests for more loot!
• Environmental elements like hitting certain plants can cause a fireball-type attack to come out and hit enemies.
• Quartz is a currency used and lost in runs, you spend it on the gear in shops.
• Rooms will get progressively harder as you go on a run.
• You can jump again after a basic attack.
• Rooms get bigger and have multiple routes or secrets to find like altars and chests.
• There will be 12 rooms to go through, the final one is always a boss fight.
• Unlock new spells and abilities as you play.
• Devil May Cry levels of combat speed.
• EXP bangs up as you unlock it.
• The arbiter of achievements is a guy in the hub that gives you rewards as you fill the various combat bars.
• At the end of a run you get told of new things unlocked and earned that can be found in the hub.
• Unlock new characters who all have their own movesets, unlocks, and interact with others differently.
• Find Yalee tickets to purchase random new colors to dye your hair and/or clothes.

Astral Ascent Review Cons:

• The tutorial especially is very stop-start.
• Unskippable opening cutscene.
• Slow starter.
• Combat takes some getting used to especially dodging and jumping around.
• The tutorial is very very basic.
• Room layouts repeat themselves a lot.
• It takes a while to get used to the hub layout as it is a big area.
• Can be hard to see enemies.
• A lot to take in.
• Gets very reflex-heavy.

Related Post: The Awakener: Forgotten Oath Review (Steam)

Astral Ascent:

Official website.

Developer: Hibernian Workshop 

Publisher: Hibernian Workshop 

Store Links – 

Steam