If you’ve been looking for your next JRPG, you might be interested in Astria Ascending — a turn-based RPG about a team of demigods and their quest to save the world of Orcanon. Developer Artisan Studios, which was founded in 2016, is the team behind Astria Ascending. The developer currently has one studio in Canada and another in France, and previously worked on Super Neptunia RPG — but is now gearing up for the launch of Astria Ascending later this week. Since the game is out in a matter of days, we thought it might be a good time to reach out to game director Julien Bourgeois for more info on the lovely upcoming JRPG.What is Astria Ascending? Astria Ascending is a beautiful hand-drawn turn-based JRPG in which eight demigods fight to save the world of Orcanon. It boasts over 50 hours of gameplay and over 20 dungeons, and aside from turn-based combat, it also has a number of mini games to offer. When does Astria Ascending launch?You don’t have long to wait at all for this one — Astria Ascending launches this week on September 30th!What’s it about?Astria Ascending revolves around a group of demigods and their efforts to save the world of Orcanon. According to the devs, we’ll be embroiled in a “fascinating narrative rife with betrayal, sacrifice and terrors [and] a story based around adult characters.” Bourgeois expands on this, adding, “the story is not just about restoring Harmony to the world. It’s about the implication it comes with for the demigods, regarding their families, regarding their frustration and those who will be left behind. We tried to approach the story with more mature themes than usual,” Bourgeois adds, “and use many aspects of the characters’ lives to show what they are going through.”How does Astria Ascending play?Astria Ascending features turn-based combat, and this, together with exploration elements, are key to the gameplay experience. Bourgeois expands on what else you’ll be doing, adding that Astria Ascending “offers a variety of different content and experience for the players to enjoy… an engaging story, a strategic and deep battle system, satisfying puzzles in dungeons, and moreover entertaining minigames!” A little more info about those minigames can be found over on Astria Ascending’s Steam page, where we learn that they include shoot ‘em ups, a fantasy card game, and environmental puzzles.As for that turn-based combat itself — it revolves around a Focus Point system, and you’ll have a variety of classes and skills to choose between for your character. Astria Ascending features over 20 dungeons and over 200 monsters to fight, with players able to “collect and summon legendary beasts into the fight and build up your power to wield legendary Cosmo Breaks.” And what are the devs most excited for players to experience? “We hope they will enjoy every aspect of the game, from the story to the battle systems. We hope they will be surprised by the twists and turns, and by the deep possible customization choices available to them thanks to the Job System. There are many ways to play Astria, and we believe each player will have a different gameplay experience depending on the choices they make,” says Bourgeois.What’s the world like?“Six different races live in Orcanon. The world is separated into five big parts, four of them being linked to one of the four core elements (fire, water, earth, air),” begins Bourgeois. “All these parts of the world have a city where the region’s originating race lives. On top of that, you have temples where the Astraes reside. All Astraes represent a Zodiac sign and draw power from the element of its sign. The game features different environments in every place you come across!”One of the most striking aspects of Astria Ascending is its hand-drawn, 2D art style, which is featured throughout. “We’ve always loved 2D. You know — back in the SNS / PS1 or even PS2 eras you had those beautiful character artworks in the booklets or in the strategy guides, but in the game, you only had approximative 3D renders of those characters due to technical limitations,” explains Bourgeois. “When we started making RPGs a few years ago, our mission was to allow players to actually play with the characters’ artworks in game! No render, no loss, no approximative interpretation of a drawing, just pure character art. That’s what drove our team for the past years, and especially on Astria Ascending. We wanted the players to actually immerse themselves with the artwork!”Any news on the Astria Ascending achievements?We’ve already got the full list of Astria Ascending achievements, and there are 50 to work through, almost half of which are secret. “We build in-game achievements to offer players a wide variety of challenges to complete,” says Bourgeois. “The idea was to guide players into experiencing everything the game has to offer through the list of achievements. There are a lot of challenges: super boss, or collecting all the J-Ster tokens will be quite challenging! Good luck to all the achievement hunters out there.”
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