A retro-style JRPG with an intriguing story | Asdivine Saga - First Impressions

Asdivine Saga is the latest standalone entry in the somewhat popular and at the same time obscure retro-style JRPG series Asdivine. While made primarily for and popular on mobile platforms, most of the games were also released on PC and consoles but turned out not quite as popular.

Asdivine Saga starts us off with the typical upbeat introduction of the main character, Vyse, an already established hot-headed fighter by the time the game starts. It wastes no time immersing us in the story and the stakes involved. You see, Vyse lives in Nondia, a neutral territory far from the warring kingdoms of Lightoria and Zandark (“light” and “dark”, I see what you did there). Both kingdoms are trying to recruit Nondians to their cause, and Vyse is caught in the middle of the conflict.

There is a hidden power at play here, one that seems to be influencing both sides of the war, and it's up to our hero and his ragtag party of mostly cute and interesting female fighters to investigate this and maybe, save the world from the horrors of full-scale global war.

The gameplay is retro-inspired and the setup best resembles Final Fantasy VI with its beautiful 2D art-style where you can roam around in the levels in traditional 2D exploration, and an Overworld segment to travel across the continent. It also has an instanced turn-based combat system with attack, skill, magic, and item options. Your party is on the right side, the enemies on the left. No special patented mechanic or whatnot and a pretty standard experience so far. During the exploration parts, you can also swap characters to control them instead of the main character

While the gameplay has a lot of modern accessibility features — like different touch control schemes and an auto-battle system, the UI design and experience on the other hand is atrocious and feels like a flash-game made in the early 2000s. It is even more exacerbated when playing the mobile version with big buttons and controls taking up a huge chunk of screen real estate. Luckily, it also works with physical controllers so you may also go that route if you want. (Tested with a Razer Kishi controller)

Gameplay is simplistic and I don’t have any complaints with it. It’s easy enough to find myself focusing more on the amazing storytelling. Don’t get me wrong, it's a cliche story of a group of heroes trying to save a changing world caught in a good vs evil battle. But there is a reason that cliche is used over and over again — it’s interesting — especially when done right.

The English localization is a bit rough, but it does the job in getting the point across. For example, the jokes are still funny, and the tutorials are still understandable enough to be of help to the player. You can also see a transcript of the current dialogue in place so it's a nice feature to be able to go back to some things you might have missed, especially if you have accidentally touched the screen.

If you’re looking for an affordable Retro JRPG experience with an intriguing story to play on your mobile phones and pass the time, and won’t mind a somewhat substandard UI experience, then look no further than Asdivine Saga.

Full Review will be posted soon here on Taptap! Stay tuned!