Astral Ascent

This game is painfully derivative and apes Hades at every turn, without ever understanding why Hades was like that. The writing is atrocious and the character relationships don't make any sense because they're all hammered into a mold that doesn't quite fit. Fortunately, this game is also very fun. Fun enough to completely rescue it. The moment-to-moment play feels accidentally brilliant, and while I'm not really sure how much of it was the product of intentional design, it is absolutely worth your time.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Fun, simple, and addicting. Perfect balance of arcade and rpg. Level up, be all powerful and then lose it all and do it over again. I would say it is underrated, but it has 97% positive. There is a reason for that. Give this game your $$$. It is worth it.

It's just not great when it comes down to the core gameplay, specifically how trivial the enemies are - while simultaneously having a couple with cheap shots just so you maybe lose your perfect room clear reward ever so often - and how bland the builds end up being. You have 1 signature spell, 4 normal spell slots, 4 spell modifier slots, and 4 passive effect slots. You never get anything else as far as I played, so you're constantly just switching around your spells for other spells and modifiers for other modifiers, but that's it. Like Dead Cells but if the camera zoomed around every inch you move instead of being more static, and I'm saying this as someone who usually has no motion sickness in any game, and if instead of switching around weapons you're stuck with the same basic attacks forever and once in a while when you have the mana you just nuke entire Elite enemies in one go. It wasn't particularly satisfying and that's a shame because everything here has potential. You can get Assist type rewards where one of many characters is summoned and does a cool flashy Ultimate attack upon using your own Signature Spell, the stat grind - that's my fault for disliking it, this is a Roguelite after all, but at least it's done in-run rather than via metaprogress(there's a little bit of that but it's not too bad) - feels boring but isn't really necessary and won't make or break your run, the spells are indeed very cool, a little reminiscent of Wizard of Legend even... But everything else is just too puddle-deep, too boring, or just otherwise has no reason to exist. I also thought the stages could've been much much cooler given the theme, but they felt very samey and not memorable at all. It's a shame how much of a slog everything feels and how unnecessary the platforming is most of the time, because I'd like to see what the other unlockable characters play like. If you love Neon Abyss or Revita, and want a similar experience but with much better boss fights(especially if you're into Saint Seiya), this is definitely worth the time investment. If you thought the stages in those games and the potential for fun builds was REALLY lacking in Neon Abyss(I think Revita did a much better job at that), you're gonna hate how even worse it feels here. But there's definitely an audience for the game and it's far from the worst action roguelite platformer ever made, otherwise it wouldn't be sitting at 1.7k+ Positive reviews

开水白菜 观寡味浓 画风清新，贯穿游戏始终的精美的手绘像素画。有着相对传统动作肉鸽的低上手门槛，积极正反馈。前期挫败感不强，不至于廖廖几局丧失动力和游玩乐趣。在交互体验上，给予玩家更强的角色操控性，随机事件/房间的加入 ，改变了玩家体验节奏，尽量做到张弛有度 ，舒缓玩家长期战斗的紧张情绪。 局外成长，赋予容错机会，增加伤害要素。 局内构筑，适配不同流派，体验独特魅力。 每局选择的道具附魔搭配，延续了游戏的重复游玩价值，海量的游戏规模，在通关游戏的命6难度后，仍能解锁全新道具、光环。 从不断更新的公告和补丁也能一窥制作组的热情与真诚。 缺点，附魔不可拆卸继承，只能销毁实属可惜；随着命运难度等级的提升，玩家几乎要面对满屏的boss伤害和己方伤害特效，一时间无法分清玩家随处位置，虽然提供换装选择，但特效过多还是不易分辨。

I really enjoyed playing Hades, Dead Cells and similar games. Then I only heard about this game a few days ago.After 10 hours, i believe it´s one of the best games ever. Simply fantastic.

游戏是挺好玩的，但是玩一会就因为英伟达驱动崩溃，更新到最新版也没用，最短10分钟就崩溃一次，boss房玩不了一点。 另外，这游戏的steam社区运营完全不理国人的贴子，我在社区询问的贴子放了快三天了也没回复，早于我晚于我的非中文用户都有运营回复了。而且这与语言无关，我的标题是英文的，贴子内容是双语的，很难说不是故意的

A 2d action roguelite platformer (aka dead cells). Played it mostly on Steam deck. (+) Runs great on SD (the first time booting it up may take a while) (+) Frantic gameplay/combat (+) Quite interesting story to be honest (+) Artstyle may be considered as bland but I really liked it (+) So many builds and options (as expected from roguelites) (-) It is a me thing but I'm so damn tired of roguelites that I played this for a while, got a few clears and decided to not push further

This game has everything going for it. Cool world, great mechanics, fun systems, multiple characters and play styles, and an absolutely [i]fantastic[/i] art style. That said, the gameplay loop is needlessly grindy, the enemies and projectiles will often track and teleport to your location regardless of how well you time your dodge, and the length of your runs are ultimately random, as the enemies seem to scale up right alongside you, making any form of progression feel ultimately pointless. You never deal enough damage, your spells never have mana to cast them when you need it, and attacks build your mana charge so slowly that you’re purposefully putting yourself in danger more often than you are making intelligent plays. And as I said prior, even if you dodge things “correctly” when the game signals that you’re supposed to dodge, enemies might just decide to radically alter their shot arcs or just simply teleport to you, effectively making the sole defensive mechanism you have absolutely useless. I am going to try to get a refund for this game, but since I’ve played it for six hours, I don’t know if Steam will allow me to. I want to play something fun. This is *almost* fun, but its damage and enemy behavior makes it a cruel experience in which the game actively lies to the player in real time at multiple junctures. And while I can absolutely appreciate a difficult game that expects you to learn its rules and how you can bend them to your advantage, I don’t appreciate being [b]♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lied to[/b] by the game’s developers multiple times during the course of a single play session. That’s disrespectful on a whole other level that I simply can’t accept. It’s a shame such an amazing game was ruined by such brazen callousness.