Astral Ascent

Un excellent roguelite qui m'a immédiatement rappelé le génial Dead Cells. Astral Ascent réussit à proposer un gameplay nerveux, fluide et particulièrement satisfaisant. Les combats sont rapides, les déplacements précis et chaque run donne envie d'en lancer une autre immédiatement. Au-delà de son excellente prise en main, le jeu impressionne par la quantité de contenu disponible. Entre les nombreux personnages, les builds possibles, les améliorations, les synergies et les différents systèmes de progression, il y a toujours quelque chose de nouveau à découvrir ou à optimiser. J'apprécie particulièrement la richesse de ses mécaniques : malgré le grand nombre de systèmes de jeu, l'ensemble reste cohérent et offre une vraie profondeur sans être décourageant. Merci aux développeurs pour cette belle réussite. Astral Ascent fait partie de ces jeux capables de capturer ce sentiment de progression et d'addiction positive que j'avais ressenti sur Dead Cells, tout en conservant sa propre identité. Si vous aimez les roguelites dynamiques, exigeants et généreux en contenu, je le recommande sans hésitation.

Astral Ascent feels both familiar and unique. The gameplay feels fairly comparable to Dead Cells, but with multiple characters in place of swappable weapons. This means that there are fewer choices, but they all feel viable, so you never get stuck with bad options. The combat feels fluid and I found the rotating skill system to be engaging and refreshing. The game doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, and I'm 50/50 on the art style (pixel art during gameplay is s-tier but everything else just isn't really my style), however overall its a very solid platformer/action roguelike. I'd honestly say I'm enjoying it as much as, maybe even a little more than Dead Cells. 9/10 if you liked Dead Cells definitely give it a shot!

You got combat in the vein of Dead Cells and unlocks and progression in the form of Hades. The build variety is insane. There are a ton of systems, and it can definitely be overwhelming at first but I was surprised at how well they all work together. Readability can be an issue sometimes if you're doing a proc based build I found turning on the black outlines on in the options menu helpful but it's still an issue I have definitely lost sight of my character more than once or got hit by an enemy projectile I couldn't see. Other than that the game is great, very polished, extremely dense with so many different ways to tailor a build.

To be clear I did not receive this game for free, it only says that because I played during their free weekend, which doesn't include the DLCs by the way. But they make sure to taunt you with what you're missing out on if you don't give them more money by acting like you unlocked a new character with a whole dramatic cutscene in celebration then saying you need to actually pay them first to use the character....and then they lock certain areas during your run behind a DLC paywall as well, classic Dark Pattern tactics. This alone guaranteed I would not be purchasing the game. You're just a piece of sh1t doing that to people. But fixing their broken game clearly isn't a priority. And I definitely didn't play this for 50 hours, most of that is from simply leaving the game on while I sleep and do other things. So I'm not one of these people that will sit here and say nothing but "game is great!", inflating game review ratings with useless one liner reviews like that when I know it really isn't that good to spare feelings, I'm gonna say it like it is. Because it's those people that have the gaming industry in shambles now with almost every new game release being average at best, that's what happens when you're too soft to tell the truth that these game devs and publishers need to get their sh1t together. The game has potential but it is riddled with bugs that made me grow to hate the game and the developer. You think the game deserves nearly as much as a AAA title ($43 originally with all the DLCs, this is what you believe the game is worth) yet you're too lazy to even put in the work to test your game properly. Why am I encountering bugs left and right, getting on my nerves and pissing me off, directly affecting my gameplay experience in my very first day playing the game?! I can look over glitches and bugs with other aspects of the game but these are bugs that make it so I can't even play the game the way I wanted to, bugs affecting core gameplay. Bugs like your spell order being changed after you set it up the way you wanted. You're given the option of changing your spell order so for example if you're about to fight a boss and want to use your strongest spell first you can set it up that way. Well in this game, there is a bug that will make it so after setting up your spells IN THE ORDER YOU WANTED, the game decides to change the order on it's own. And mind you, some of these spells heavily drain your resources, which makes bugs even more infuriating. Under no circumstance should the game be changing your preferences for ANYTHING on it's own. Well this game is so broken that really happens... And it's telling how I found these obvious bugs in just a few hours of gameplay which they haven't even been aware of FOR YEARS. The bug with the spell order I asked about on the forums, waited a full day for a response, that post was at the very top of the list of recent threads, very little people are even posting on the forum, the 'dev' is responding to other threads but clearly avoids my post about this bug...that was all I needed to know. You want $40 from people, taunting people with new character unlocks and new areas that are paywalled, you're that money hungry but when it comes to actually fixing your game, addressing bugs that are pissing people off, you hardly care, that isn't a priority to you. Then you begin to notice how the 'dev' really doesn't know what they're doing - one of the finest examples of this is how YOU CANNOT EVEN CHECK YOUR CURRENT STATS (Strength, Critical, Attack Speed, etc). And what's even funnier is you CAN check DAMAGE totals from abilities, they have a whole main menu option dedicated to just that called 'Damage Meter'. But you can't check your character stats...goes to show where the 'dev' priorities are at. You really created a 'roguelite' WHERE I CAN'T CHECK MY CURRENT STATS?!?!? Brother...even the oldest of games from the '90s knew to do that. Yet here we are in 2026, you have this game and all these DLCs you want people to pay for which total $40+, you lock certain areas in the game behind your DLCs during runs to try and make people feel like they're missing out in hopes of tricking people into giving you more money that way which is despicable, basically telling players "give me more money or you don't get to enjoy the full game", the dirtiest of dark pattern psychological manipulation tactics, yet you aren't even aware of the importance of a character stats screen 😂 I checked everywhere in the game, every single menu option, the inventory, this 'damage meter' page, you actually can't view your character stats. The closest thing to it is vague (especially to new players) ICONS at the top of the screen of available stat upgrades with '+0' and "+0%" like a sword icon and....another icon that looks like this: ">>" As a new player to the game, what the hell am I supposed to even think ">>" means?!?!? Why do you refuse to create a simple stat page for people to keep track of when they're deciding what stat to upgrade next, when they're testing certain stat based builds? When they need to complete achievements that require a certain stat amount?! So you're left to try and GUESS what your current stats even are, this is the type of horrible first impression you're making on new players, doing nothing but causing confusion and frustration for countless new players. But you want $40 for that...why would I give you even $1 to play a game that is going to give me constant headaches like this because you're just that lazy and incompetent? I would've tried to be a little nice with this review but no way I'm doing that when you make it painfully obvious how money hungry you are, to the point of using dark pattern tactics (google search Dark Patterns if you don't know what it is), using predatory psychological manipulation tactics ingame to try and get money out of people. THAT as well as many other issues I'm not even mentioning with the game is why this game only has mere 5k reviews after 2 years.

Stunning animation, pretty nice gameplay loop

玩起来不错吧，后期乱甩技能也挺爽，但是无法挑起我重复游玩的欲望

this is prolly the funnest combat game i've played in a hot minute