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Game
Game2021
Astria Ascending
Developer Artisan Studios
Astria Ascending is a 2021 role-playing game developed by Artisan Studios and published by Dear Villagers. Set in the fantasy world of Orcanon, the story of Astria Ascending follows a group of demigods called the "Fated Eight". They act as the agents of the goddess Yuno, who presides over the integrity of a multicultural society governed by a doctrine known as the Harmony and populated by sentient beings of various… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
163 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Sep 28, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
51
Mixed
72 positive · 69 negative
95% range 43–59%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 72 | 69 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 1 | 2 | 13 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 6 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
81 of 152 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
At a glance
Astria Ascending is a 2021 rpg video game, from Artisan Studios.
- 158 people have posted about this game on Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon
- posts span Jul 4, 2021 to Sep 28, 2026
- 51% of 141 Steam reviewers recommend it (their own thumbs)
- Steam reviewers had played a median of 16 h when they wrote
Assembled from TMDB, Wikidata and Steam fields and our own counts, nothing written by a model. Method
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Astria Ascending sits at 51% positive across 141 opinionated reactions from 3 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Astria Ascending received mixed or average reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 163 · most liked firstI was really enjoying the game... Then I hit a soft lock caused by simple out-of-order event progression. Not like a sequence break, more like the devs assumed everyone would just happen to find the right event first when they're both accessible in the same area. Lost about 5 hours of progress from my last save. Looked at the forums, the devs have known about this for six months and will not patch this game. Bugs are understandable, but you have a community rep "forwarding" issues to devs that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In summary: I really don't understand the negative reviews of this game. The game is really interesting, and quite different from the vast majority of recent j-RPGs, and maybe that's the problem. They evaluate the game for what it is NOT intended to be. The game's story is simple, it's not a cliché, the plots are "reasons", but it provides an interesting adventure and far from being boring, the game basically sets up a scenario where the story will unfold sufficiently. Combat is probably the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Where oh where to begin.... This game has a ton of potential, however there are many game design choices that leave you with a time sink that is not very fulfilling. Let's start with the good: Different class variations to play with. Combat rewards you when you match weaknesses. Exploratory gameplay becomes quite fun in late-game dungeons. Jumping around and solving a few puzzles is fun! The token minigame is a nice side game (until it forces you to 100% random your tokens vs a max difficulty…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Edit 2 with more info: I haven't finished the story yet, and have a feeling some of this will be explained, but I am trying to provide context without spoilers. I am also trying to finish the game to provide updated impressions. The main characters are either intentionally not likeable by being explained further in the story, or its just bad writing. The dialog continues to be really bad and really badly presented. The main characters are racist sociopaths. Plus are constantly jerks to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tl;dr - at this point, i don't recommend it. This review is written at the desert area at chapter 3. The hand-drawn style is great. The whole characters with different sprite classes, and even their enemies have distinct appearance. This was one of the biggest reason why i followed this game from a long time. BUT then, the gameplay disappoint me. At first, i thought this game is inspired by Valkyrie Profile (with 4 diamond lineup, photon/crystal freeze enemies, and so on). But it's not the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Astria Ascending is a classic JRPG developed by Artisan Studios and published by Dear Villagers. It's chock full of pedigree, boasting an amazing score by Hitoshi Sakimoto from FFXII, narrative from FFVII remake's Kazushige Nojima and simply stunning art from CyDesignation's Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba, who have previously worked on both FF and NieR. That's a powerhouse of talent! As soon as you launch the game you can see and feel the painstaking care and attention to detail that's been…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I don't normally write reviews, but I don't understand the abundance of negative reviews at all - I think this game's dope asf. For context, I just beat the third? temple (desert area), and so far I've been really enjoying this game. The music is wonderful and the world is absolutely gorgeous as others have said. One of my gripes, however, would be that thus far the characters feel a little bland dialogue-wise - the character designs themselves are great though. I'm a big fan of more…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Edit: I made it to the credits. Desire to replay the game with different job combinations is dashed. Never found out how to unlock the Ophiuchus nodes in a blind playthrough after exploring all optional temples and side quests I could find. Grain of salt on some topics below - I have NOT cleared a single playthrough at the time of this post. I've also left the game on several times while doing other things - padding the hours some (e.g., like while I'm writing this review to do a little bit of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A game with a lot of potential but so many "small things" making you hate it by the end. Pros: 1) great animations and arts 2) Kinda classic JRPG story. and... that's it. Cons: 1) Still bugged it a lot of places (reviewing in 2023) 2) No skip animation button. After a few hundred battles you can't actually help but WISH TO SELL YOUR SOUL for the ability to skip the same animations in battle. BUT I think the trouble was the FREE EXPLORER passive skill bug which wasn't working in high-end…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a genuinely terrible game. Every idea it has that shows promise is squandered in some way by poor implementation or execution. Combat speed is slow, with no way to speed things up, and this is exacerbated by how on top of your four party members you can have up to 8 enemies in battle acting every turn. Turn order is determined by speed and for some reason in this game most enemies have such high speed stats that only a few party members can ever hope to get the first turn in and that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am actually pretty torn between yes and no when it comes to recommending this game.. This game is a very classical JRPG kind of game. I am talking about Job system, Turn based battle, and quite a cliche save the world kind of plot right from the start. Battle in Astria Ascending is quite challenging. Often times, the boss have a pretty large HP pool and you have to poke around to find what their weaknesses are. The only punishment you get from being wrong is that you are somewhat loses the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The writing was meh, but the thing that bothered me the most is the combat. You need an item to obtain a character's main class, which you're stuck with for the rest of the game. These are given out two at a time over several chapters. There is a class called the hunter that I picked that applies weaknesses to enemies. That character is now useless because boss characters resist all those abilities. There's an assassin class that applies status effects, which also don't effect bosses. I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hello friends, Today I will review the game Astria Ascending. This is a rpg about a group that protects harmony in a world where everyone gets along together, but due to disruptive sources, not everyone agrees with this, so the demi humans are formed to protect it. The players start with all their characters at the beginning of the game, unlike other rpgs, which makes changing them out for strategy for weaknesses for enemies interesting. The artwork in this game is beautiful. The backgrounds…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Summary Astria Ascending is a game with a solid basis, but terrible execution. This ranges from the awful story to the unlikable characters to the unbalanced game play. I would give this game a 4/10 and value it at around $5 or less. Review The hand drawn art style is what initially attracted me to the game. I am also a fan of JRPGs in general. Let's start with some positive points. The in-game art style is still very nice and I like the customization available to your party. Every…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Oh Astria Ascending, where do I begin? I would like to swear to show my immense displeasure but alas, I'm limited to the polite vagaries of language. So instead let me sum up in section why I truly, truly despise this game. Plot: In the land of harmony, people eat harmelons to barely suppress their active hate for each other. Eight people protect this barely existent harmony and will die in three years. Except the plot sort of falls apart because the harmony barely exists as it is and you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's crap. There are some cool things, like the class systems and builds and basic mechanics. But the game faceplants in a lot of ways. There's a lot of QoL things we've had in RPGs for a long time now (like being able to equip weapons directly from the store!) no present in this game. The worst part is the story, which dumps a whole group of eight characters on you at once, expects you to absorb a ton of concepts and then moves away. There's fish people everyone's racist against that eat a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →+ indepth skill and job system + sympathic characters + good 2D animations + good OST + lightweight story + beautiful handdrawn background + easy to learn figthing system + dynamic dialogue reactions from characters +/- feels somehow too many characters for a specific focus - minor technical issues (FPS breakdown from 144 to 50 while screen switching etc., audio missmatch: when you choose japanese dialogue and some skills have still english dialogues) - some things are not properly explained…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like Astria Ascending because I was drawn to the art- it reminded of games by Vanillaware like Odin Sphere and Muramasa. I gave it a serious hour and a half before I couldn't push myself to continue anymore. The story's premise had no hook, the characters and worldbuilding lacked depth, and the puzzles and battle system were boring no matter how much I tried to get into it. Maybe the game gets better further in, but doubtful from what I have seen up to that point. I hope…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Among SO many issues, the top reasons this game failed are: 1. Story and voce acting is so bad that its not even comical, it will make you angry. 2. The fights are designed so that the enemies always go first, nearly. This basically translates to huge time sucks from battle. you cant act until a minute into the fight.....every time. 3. No quest tracking. The quest lines seem to never end and you have no idea where to go. There is a very vague description and then you find yourself…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a mediocre game. There is just no other way to describe it. You'll play 3 gameplays loop. -Watch 2d uninspired scenes about people you don't really care about, with dialogue clearly influenced by B-tier Japanese writting -You'll be walking around a 2D plaform without any challenge. In zones with no identity to the point that they turn to a maze. - You'll play a classic Jrpg battle, except it's bad. With enemies with such hard resist on certain attack type, it can render your whole…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would sing the praises of this game about how good it looks, I would trash it's terrible pacing, mechanics and balance, but it doesn't matter because the game is broken. When you're not softlocked because it bugged out, you'll be angry because no matter how you attack the enemies, they will always start with at least a turn of advantage unless you luck out and the game decides that you caught them off guard this time (Which is almost never). Or you'll be angry because the skills you bought on…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was really trying to love this as the art and animations are exceptionally nice (except for the bubble heads), but the story is plain and bad, the voice play is irritating, and the character development is really disappointing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Im going to give this a positive rating out of the kindness of my heart; because this game really isnt the worst... it just has some really bad pacing issues and lacks basic quality of life improvements imo. First things first. Its basically an ideological mashup of bravely default and octopath traveler; but seems to miss slightly on what made those two game's respective mechanics 'fun' and 'engaging'. The boost mechanic from bravely default is here but its a bit hampered in its…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I’ve just finished the entire game, and the story is terrible. The main plot is weak, the dialogue makes no logical sense, and overall it’s just awful. The gameplay is riddled with UX issues. To top it all off, after completing all 50 achievements for completion purposes, the “Completionist” platinum trophy didn’t unlock — clearly a bug. This game is simply one of the worst. Even with a 90% discount, I wouldn’t recommend buying it — there are plenty of better RPGs out there.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Things you need to know about this game: - Battles drag for too long and it's cumbersome to know what are the enemies resistances or weaknesses; - Has a ton of features that most of us can't care about if we're just up for the turn-base RPG - platforming, minigames, hunts, summons.... - Total lack of direction on the story, and there's a lot of conflicts between party members; - Hard to understand who's talking in those dialogues; - Abrupt ending that make you consider why did you decided to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to like this game because it's very pretty and the music is good in some zones and the character growth system is highly customizable and reminiscent of the FF series' job system; however, the game hasn't left beta yet--don't waste your money on it. Your data won't save even when the dialog says it has, which is beyond frustrating. Additionally, and the audio will glitch out mid-dungeon, which forces you to quit, but then if your data hasn't been saved you're just letting this thing eat…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As of 03.11.2021 the game is a bugfest. Some skills and abilities dont work/dont work properly. In game maps for dungeons are wrong sometime. Half of achievement (both in game and in steam) doesnt work. Music statters in combat. Glitches. Be warned! You are buying a beta at best/maybe early access. Main compaign can be cleared but you will see bugs. Not all of them are too bad. As of game itself: its a nice classic turn based rpg. Story is whatever. Combat is interesting. Class system is good…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game feels like somebody came into the office with their mother's best recipe, but then dropped the ball. There is a skeleton of a game here that could have been fantastic but upon building upon it could not meet their aspirations. There is a "job" system, but it's basically just gated skills, if you don't select 'the' class path you're completely handicapping yourself. There are no reset options and there is lacking massive information. When you first look at the classes, you'll see "end…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do not buy this game without reading the reviews! If you loved Final Fantasy 7-10 and ask yourself: "former final fantasy developers and hand drawn backgrounds! What can go wrong?" Let me tell you, it's a lot! - You are presented with 8 totally uninteresting cliché hero characters which are already demigods. There is no hero's journey, and therefor no attachment to the characters at all. -The combat is slow and uninteresting. You literally have to sit there and wait 30 seconds until a mob…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm glad that I looked past the decidedly mixed reviews, as Astria Ascending is a pretty fun JRPG with platforming exploration. There might have been some nasty bugs on launch, but at this point, I didn't run into anything that mattered. The dialogue is weak and the voice acting and direction is laughable, but the Octopath Traveler-like combat with class options and skill boards is very welcome. Sure, there are a few places that require some minor leveling to proceed, but you often gain needed…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The combat system, on first glance, looks pretty decent. Unfortunately, the voice acting is often irritating and the character designs make many characters look like their neck and/or back is broken, which is incredibly distracting, and some of the designs seem primarily designed to appeal to furries. The initial "something urgent is happening" thing seems oddly unfocused, and the characters can just wander off and have weirdly disjointed conversations in a variety of towns (where they talk to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Astria Ascending has everything a JRPG fan would expect on a JRPG game, BUT, I can't pick a single thing I liked about it, everything was just mediocre, implementation and artistic wise. maybe the graphics of the characters? I don't know. I managed to finish it because I'm such a fan of the genre but I can't recommend it at all - The story is not that engaging. - Combat is fine mechanic-wise but it has some design decisions that make the combat boring (each spell takes forever to give…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game got a lot of (likely deserved) flak for being a buggy unplayable mess on release. I played a little less than a year after launch and while it still had some issues, I experienced nothing game-breaking. What you get here is a classic turn-based style RPG with some interesting mechanics revolving around exploiting weaknesses. The story is pretty bland, I found myself largely uninterested before even reaching the halfway point. Musically the game is fantastic, however the major bug…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For other Anime related reviews, please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40633543/]follow us at Discover Anime! Astria Ascending is an oldschool style JPRG with gorgeous art, beautiful score, and appealing combat. The game is splendidly crafted with lots of charm, having people who previous worked on JRPGs like various Final Fantasy games and Nier Automata, altogether to make solid work out of this. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2619478383…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's your standard JRPG turn-based game. The only good thing about this game is its art, including the unique character and monster designs. That's it. I didn't really connect with or feel interested in the characters, even in the main story. They don't deepen or explore their characters. It lacks in terms of story progression, especially the ending, where you'll think, "That's it?". There is also a lack of quality of life (QoL) features in this game. It's like the developers didn't…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Edit/Update - Okay, I have to say at this point that this game is SPECIAL, imo! Really a fantastic journey with just tons of customization and in-depth character development for combat. The story and cutscenes add intrigue and twists, the voice acting is great, the graphics and music have otherworldly beauty - overall this game is CRIMINALLY underrated. Can't believe only 17% of players who played this actually used a Cosmo Break in the game (it's a limit break "ultimate" attack type thing,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Check out our [url=store.steampowered.com/curator/36364102-Horny-Hentai-Festival/]Steam curator , [url=www.youtube.com/curatorhhf/]YouTube channel and [url=twitter.com/hhfcurator]Twitter! [Kawaii/JRPG] Horizontal 2D adventurous platformer RPG that respects JRPG. Explore as fated eight heroes named "Demigods". Rich story, turn-based battle, tons of customization, 4K hand-drawn visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlF09isCr3w
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I debated whether or not I wanted to write a review for Astria Ascending. But since I hit the recommend button I felt it was appropriate to explain why. ****Slight Spoilers Below**** How to begin? Astria Ascending isn't a good game. It is an average game in almost all respects. There were plenty of bugs I encountered at various points throughout my playtime. I had to reset my game about six times due to various soft lock issues. There were text bugs and some quests which wouldn't finish…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was hesitant about buying this game because of many reviews. The best advice i offer is that if you are a fan of JPRG, you must try it yourself. If YOU are in the same ship, please read all . . . Ok, thanks. Overall is a tad of many classics, and maybe that´s the problem with many reviews: they automatically expect or compare this to all of them labelling it "not a classic". Gameplay wise It has the "charge" mechanic, all the spells and conditions, invocations and the swap character in the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Key illustrations, Aries Astrae, and weapon designs from Astria Ascending. More art from the game: www.creativeuncut.com/art_astria-a...
neutral · AI labelView post →Though I can appreciate a good turn based game, this was unfortunately not it. The puzzles were ok but there were many times that the game would lag in the middle of a dungeon or that it would always freeze moving down in the menu but not up. For those that want to be a completionist, you are forced to be patient as the achievements either do not show up on time, or before you should have received them. Lastly, there are items that do not show unless you have the dlc but the base game will show…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →could be a good game but sadls there's an audio bug that renders the game nigh unplayable after leaving a combat your field music can suddenly (permanently) get boosted by 100%, ingame settings do nothing to fix this. either you close the game completely and reload or you teleport into town (mid dungeon mind you), which is rendering the game absolutly unplayable. the fact that this "bug" has been reported back in January and still is neither fixed nor adressed leaves me to believe the game is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game got nice concept and fun to play until I encounter bugs after bugs which lead me to think "why did I paid full price for this". It's been over a month and there is still no patch. So, do yourself a favor and wait until it goes heavy discount and try. If you want how much bugs has been reported to Developer, join their Discord and find out yourself. The Good: Graphic, Music, Battle and Job System(each characters have some jobs selection) The Bad: Bugs, Job System(you cannot change…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I will never understand for the life of me why this game is maligned. The art and music alone makes this a must play.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game is so inconvenient. Running around looking for npc's for quest obj, no directions hint, no map or mini map in town. wasting so much time running and looking. no quick movement menu to get places faster. Also the main playable characters in the starting are so boring and the playable character are not ,,,relatable? funky character design but maybe it will fly for others.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Finished this game on the Switch shortly after it's original release. It had issues then and probably still has them now (random crashes, including just after the final fight :( ). I had forgotten just how undirecting it's quest lines are, and it is very easy to loose direction and the target of what you are doing (and the unclear locations).
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This Games optimization is really poor , going in setting to adjust graphics it just hangs on the legion go
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Despite reviews that were very not encouraging, I've bought the game because of the cool art direction and combat that seemed interesting. And both of those things are very good indeed. The problem is the rest of the game lack substance so much, that I dropped it after trying to get invested for hours. The art is the main selling point and has fantastic style and vibrant colour usage. Some of the designs of the (totally original) fantasy races, as well as monsters, are very original and have…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would pick a neutral review option but Steam does not allow that. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a bad game, but it could use a lot of quality-of-life improvements. The artstyle and animations are phenomenal, but the overall game feels kinda lacking. The combat system and RPG mechanics are decent, but it's nothing special and nothing that hooked me into the game. The plot isn't too bad, but it certainly isn't great either. The characters have cool designs, but I didn't feel invested in…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game was a massive disappointment. It had everything it should have to have been a future classic and just dropped the ball. The game systems are so poorly designed it feels intentional.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I refrained from buying this game last year because of the mixed reviews. I don't regret my decision simply because I haven't encountered a single bug. I assume that has to do with the patches before I bought this game. I don't know if there is a difficulty selection. I didn't see one when I started the game. But, it feels like it's on hard mode. This game is unforgiving to gamers that don't understand how to play the way developers want you to play. If you're familiar with Final Fantasy games,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Beautiful art, good voice acting, story kinda not good, side quest kinda annoying. Still good thou.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I feel this though. In my daily life, I simply don’t have more than 30-60 mins at a time to sit down and dedicate. I’m deathly afraid that if I start a longer game I’ll lose track of what I was doing and drop it entirely. Happened with Dark Prince, Astria Ascending, Brothership…the list goes on.
neutral · AI labelView post →The PS Store now has the Spring Sale running and two games that stood out to me while I was perusing it were Astria Ascending and Bramble because this is the lowest I have ever seen them. Bramble is a highly praised game while Astria Ascending has mixed reviews.
neutral · AI labelView post →Well is an okay game... a bit bland and becomes really tideous at the end... art work is nice tho so is music... Its one of the games that goes to meh category
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Love the combat system. Not crazy about the platforming. It's kinda cool, but I'd rather more effort put into the world. The only real negative that I can think of is how almost any surprise attack can take out your entire team in one hit. I tried opening a chest in the Gemini temple and the surprise attack got 6 turns before I got one. They were able to take out my tank with the incessant attacks. In the end, I just had to leave the chest alone. Other than that, I really do love the game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I meant to make this post here but I accidentally put it on Twitter. (the UIs are looking really similar lately) Really want to continue playing Astria Ascending—a game that looks this badass with such amazing races of humanoids—but I'm consistently only having the bare minimum of fun.
negative · AI labelView post →So yeah. This game isn't perfect. There's some weird decisions and some Old school JRPG failures in QOL upgrades in the genre over the last couple of decades. But. It's awesome. Character development is deep. Lots of options in combat. Grindy, but you are given plenty of paths to success. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Put japanese voices on immediately. No offense to the English actors but they are terrible across the board.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a really good addition to the JRPG genre. Combat doesn't feel clunky and not overly complex. Graphics is certainly good, the cities, the characters and the effects used in battle. I just don't like how other characters feet are drawn but that's for a few characters. What really interest me is the job system. You can really customize them in many ways and so far none of the classes feels the same nor repetitive. Imagine your tank becoming a black mage and it freaking works well LOL.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →unplayable atm lags and crashes but still fun
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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