Astral Ascent Review (Switch eShop)

In 2019, a small French studio called Hibernian Workshop released a game called Dark Devotion, a promising 2D soulslike that was met with mixed reviews, but managed to garner a passionate fanbase. A couple of years later, the team returned with a Kickstarter pitch for a new roguelite called Astral Ascent, which hit its funding goal within two days and managed to blow past it considerably in the weeks to come. Since then, the crew has been busily working away at it while sharing periodic updates, and the day has now come that Astral Ascent is seeing its full release. We’re happy to report that this is a tremendous new entry in the Switch’s packed roguelite library, quickly inserting itself amongst the very best.

Astral Ascent is set in a modern fantasy land called the Garden, which is a lush and beautiful prison guarded by 12 godlike jailers, each based on a Zodiac symbol. You play as one of the prisoners in this magical place, trying your absolute hardest to break out and secure freedom for both you and your allies. Each of the Zodiacs has a unique personality and clearly knows their prisoners personally, and as you engage in your endless attempts to escape, more of the backstory is slowly revealed that highlights the connections between these characters and why they find themselves locked in this seemingly eternal loop.

It's not exactly a gripping RPG narrative, but there’s an interesting premise explored here, buoyed by brilliant characterization. Not only do the logs you discover across runs reveal complicated histories, but the wildly different personalities coupled with the strong voice acting create a very memorable cast. We found ourselves growing quite fond of them—much like in Hades, it’s an eclectic bunch on varying sides of an ongoing conflict and they all have their own interesting perspectives.

Astral Ascent follows the expected action roguelite formula wherein you endure a difficult gauntlet of enemies and bosses spread across a linear series of biomes, with each biome consisting of randomly generated levels, 12 short ones in this case. Upon clearing a level, you’re usually given a choice between two or three options for which you’ll attempt next, with each alternative tempting you with different potential rewards and difficulties. As you chart your course and prevail over your foes, you slowly level up your character and build up a loadout of attacks and abilities gleaned from your victories. Then, inevitably, you finally run out of gas when a trash mob gets in a lucky shot or you roll up on a boss that you’re underprepared for, resulting in you getting sent back to square one to try again.

If you’ve played the likes of Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy, or just about any other roguelite indie game released in the last decade, you’ll know what to expect here. Astral Ascent isn’t particularly innovative in how it meets the genre standards—it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. And yet, Astral Ascent quickly proves itself to be among the best in the genre we’ve played yet on the Switch. Why? Because it focuses on executing every step of its gameplay loop with precision, mastery, and polish. There’s no dead air or half-baked ideas here, leading to an impressively smooth experience that you can’t help but eagerly run over and over.

Astral Ascent spends a lot of its runtime throwing you into tense combat encounters, and the simple brilliance of the design shines here. In most levels you’ll be swarmed by chaotic masses of independently acting enemies, and yet you almost always feel in control of the situation. Every enemy attack will be telegraphed by either an MMO-style red zone or a brief visual exclamation, giving you a split-second—yet ample—window to react before you take another punch. Your character controls incredibly fluidly, responding to your inputs immediately as they weave through danger and retaliate in kind.

There are a total of four playable characters (only two are available up front), and your approach to combat is almost totally different depending on who you pick. Kiran, for example, is a boxer with flaming fists whose kit is usually geared around getting up close and personal with his foes so he can put his hands to work. He’s a high-risk, high-reward character, and this is most evident in his special skill, which is a powerful counterattack that needs to be timed perfectly to incoming enemy attacks. Ayla, on the other hand, is a sneaky assassin who works to build up crits and debuffs on the enemy with her quick knife attacks, relying on misdirection and tricks to get out of trouble. Her special skill is a teleporting strike that marks her opponent with a rune causing them to take more damage from all sources.

Regardless of who you play as, every character has a basic attack, a dodge, a special skill, and four equippable single-use spells that operate on a cooldown. You have to use all four of your spells before using any of them again, which can lend an interesting bit of strategy to combat encounters. Spells act as the main determinant of your loadout for the run, too, as they’re frequently offered as rewards for beating levels. Each one will have a different elemental affinity and cause a different effect, such as casting a ball of lightning that briefly hangs there and shocks any nearby enemies or shooting a beam of energy from your hands that passes through every enemy it hits.

There is a ton of variety in spell loadouts, and this is helped even more by each character having a list of spells that are exclusive. Figuring out which ones synergize well can be great fun, especially once you recognize that an ability that’s only so-so with one character is borderline broken with another. As you continue a run, each spell can also be leveled up or upgraded with up to four swappable sub-effects that power them up even further. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of theorycrafting to engage in with how to build your characters, yet it never feels overwrought or needlessly complicated; every decision you make feels impactful.

In fact, a big part of the appeal of Astral Ascent is its focus on presenting you with difficult, but meaningful decisions to make. For example, at the end of every stage, you’re given a preview of what the upcoming levels offer as rewards (again, like Hades), alongside a star ranking for the difficulty of each level. You may initially want the stage that offers Quartz—a currency in a shop you later encounter—but picking another stage that offers you keys instead may be a better choice in case you come across some chests in a future level. Neither choice is the ‘right’ answer, and you ideally want both kinds of rewards, so you’ve got to make some hard choices.

Regardless, Astral Ascent does a fantastic job of making every decision feel like an integral part of empowering your character. There’s a thrilling sense of progression to each run that we haven’t seen done so well since Supergiant's game, and this power curve creates a nearly irresistible forward momentum that makes just about every run feel like it could be ‘the one.’ You may not get the spells you want at the start, but you’ll always find a way to make it work anyway and maybe even find some new favorites to watch out for in future attempts.

Special mention needs to be made about the boss encounters, too, which stand out as the stars of the show. Not only does each one feature excellent, distinct character design, but their attack patterns walk that extremely fine line between feeling overwhelming and easy. You can feasibly beat every boss without ever getting hit once, but that’s likely not going to happen due to the tight evasion windows you’re given and the sheer ferocity of their attacks. As you dole out damage, you also slowly fill a secondary bar beneath the boss’s health, and once full, they execute a flashy super attack that’s often reminiscent of something you’d see in a bullet-hell game. These boss fights are each thrilling and memorable in their own way, acting as ‘final exams’ that really test your knowledge of the combat system and your ability to memorize patterns.

For those of you who are put off by the difficulty, a variety of metaprogression elements keep you moving along. You’re given a couple of currencies after the end of a failed run that can be invested in things like permanently boosted stats and more spells for the potential drop pool. The upgrades are no substitute for simple skill, but they do a good job of taking the edge off and making each run feel like it’s getting you closer to that end goal.

For its visuals, Astral Ascent employs a hi-bit art style reminiscent of something like Aegis Defenders or Hyper Light Drifter, presenting a series of dreamlike, larger-than-life locales that feature a staggering amount of detail. Combine this excellent spritework and environment design with silky smooth animations and no performance hiccups, and you’ve got a game that proves itself to be a serious looker all the way throughout its run. It even has cool animated introduction scenes for all the main boss encounters!

This is all matched by a soundtrack that feels like a cross between something you’d hear in a Studio Ghibli film and an Etrian Odyssey title. There’s a kind of whimsical serenity explored in the music here, contributing to the sense of awe as you navigate stages and keeping the tension in fights relatively grounded. At first, this peaceful vibe can feel a little incongruent with all the action, but we came to deeply appreciate this more relaxed approach to the music.

Those of you who have read this far and are wondering what Astral Ascent’s gimmick is, the truth is that there isn’t one. For all its strong execution, Astral Ascent doesn’t have that key defining trait that makes it stand out from the pack of other roguelites on the market. For some, this lack of a USP may be a negative. Yet, ironically, what sets it above many of its peers is how resolutely it endeavors to be ‘ordinary’. Where the competition often divides its focus when trying to innovate with deckbuilding mechanics or crafting systems, Astral Ascent doubles down on getting all the basics down perfectly and logically building on them. This feels like a game that has carefully learned from the various mistakes and successes of roguelites that came before, and it uses that wisdom to deliver one of the most polished, gorgeous, and all-around excellent action roguelite experiences available to date.