The weird thing about selecting a roguelite to play is that… it’s a lot like playing a roguelite. In roguelite games, there are a lot of options, and as the run progresses, it can quickly crash hard, or you stumble upon a build that makes you realize you have a shot to go all the way.
Roguelites are one of my favorite genres, and I usually have one each year near the top of my “Game of the Year” list. On the way to finding that magic roguelite game, there are usually five that I abandoned after a few hours. When I bought Astral Ascent on a whim, I certainly wasn’t expecting what I found, and that is not only the best roguelite game since Hades, but one of the best games of the year in general. Astral Ascent is that game where a few hours in I thought to myself “oh man, this one could go all the way (to the top of my rankings)”.
Fast As Heck Combat
Astral Ascent draws you in quickly with its combat. Its main goal is to be fast and to keep you moving at all times. Your dash is swift, gives you invincibility, and doesn’t take long to refresh. You have a lot of spells that also dash, a special attack in the opening character that teleports you right behind the nearest enemy, and enemies that throw out a lot of big attacks. The game smartly has large indicators when attacks from enemies are coming, because the action gets chaotic with that much speed, so it still stays easy to keep track of where enemies are coming from so you can continuously avoid attacks. In general, if you aren’t moving, you are dying, and the frenetic pace helps make the combat stand out in a crowded genre.
The game also excels with its spells, with a unique system that I didn’t love at first, but slowly I grew to really like. Spells are the truly powerful attacks in the game, and you have four to use. The twist is, these spells are not all mapped to different buttons. There is one spell button, and you can map your 4 spells in any order you like, but you must use them all in order to use one again. At first, it was kind of tricky remembering which spell was going to come next (there is an indicator that pops up briefly, but it’s hard to keep track of with all the action on the screen), but once I got the hang of it, I really thought the system was quite smart. There can be a lot of strategy in deciding which order your spells go in. It also really incentivizes you to find good spells for all four slots, so you can’t just coast by with one sweet move.
Those spells are also what really give the game its impact. If I were to levy one criticism against the combat in Astral Ascent, I’d say that the standard attacks are really quite weak, and don’t “feel” great to use, especially as you up the difficulty on each successful run. You need to use these attacks to charge up your mana for spells, so I wish they felt better. Luckily, most of those spells feel really damn good to use once you do have some mana to play with. There are also well over 100 different spells in the game, which really keeps the gameplay fresh. The spells help offset some of the disappointment with how basic attacks in the game feel.
Risk/Reward Perfection
That spell variety really plays into one of the most important parts of any roguelite, and that’s making every run feel different. Not only are there all those different spells, the four characters you can play as vastly change how you play the game, much like the different weapons in Hades. One character has a counter move, so you spend less time dodging with him and more time trying to time counters. One is ranged, and keeping distance is best. Another is ranged, but has projectiles that can follow you, so dashing through enemies, and having the projectiles follow and hit enemies is the best strategy. I beat runs with all four characters, and just rotated through each time I played. Between the characters and the massive amounts of spells, every run was a unique experience.
Astral Ascent also absolutely masters the risk/reward decision making element of any good roguelite game. Like Hades, you are given choices as to which room you will go to next. Rooms are also given a difficulty rating. If you enter a more difficult room, you get more rewards that can power up your character. Taking on more difficult rooms can pay off when you reach the end game, but if you overdo it, your run can end early. The game also lets you pass up on any perks and spells if you don’t like the options in exchange for resources that you can spend on different ones later. This is also a lovely risk/reward system, as I had runs where I kept passing up on stuff I didn’t like, but then got to a point where I was clearly being a little too picky, and wasn’t strong enough. But sometimes being selective paid off, as if you get the right perks and spells, you can really have a strong build where everything plays off of each other perfectly.
And you will need strong builds, as I would classify the game as tough, but fair. The Zodiac boss fights in particular can be difficult, but are also one of the biggest highlights of the game. All 12 are very unique and come at you with their own intense attack patterns. I had a run success rate of about 10%, which I think is a nice balance for a challenging roguelike game.
The game also does a good job of keeping you engaged in between runs. There are a lot of enhancements, spells, and perks that make the game easier, and it’s not all just the basic “increase HP” kind of upgrades. I will say that upgrading can get a bit grindy. You can only upgrade your character so much at each difficulty tier in the game, so if you get stuck, you can find yourself doing 30-40 minutes worth of gameplay on a run and getting next to no upgrade points for it. Once you get your first ending, this problem mostly goes away, but I had a couple of points in the game where I had multiple runs that felt extremely unproductive.
The One Thing That Kills Its Game Of The Year Run
The one area where Astral Ascent very clearly falls short of its Hades ambitions is its story. There are a lot of story threads between your playable characters and the zodiacs, but the story is never told in any clear way that draws you in. Conversations with NPCs in-between runs rarely reveal much. While the four different characters are fun from a gameplay perspective, it does really hurt the storytelling when compared to having one singular narrative to base everything around.
But other than that, Astral Ascent nails most of its non-gameplay elements. The game looks gorgeous, with tons of great animations, especially on its myriad of spells. There is also a lovely and unique soundtrack that fits the action perfectly. The cutscenes before boss fights are surprisingly well made too. Really, the story is the only true miss with Astral Ascent for me.
Play This So My Blog Is Worth It
There are a lot of reasons why I decided to start blogging about games, but Astral Ascent might be one of my biggest inspirations to do so. I truly think it is a roguelike that can stand with the likes of Hades, but for whatever reason, it’s just one of those indie games that has gone extremely under the radar, and many big names that I might expect to play it still haven’t. Finally, I thought to myself, “if no one is going to write about this, SHIT, I’ll do it”. So here I am. If this blog gets one extra person to play Astral Ascent, I view it as a giant success. This is one of the best games of the year, in a year loaded with fantastic games. Please, give it a try!
Score: 9.5/10
(Note: You can read a short Q + A with the devs of Astral Ascent here as well)
Big Nerd Gaming 
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