I want to like this game. I want it to be good. I believe it CAN be good. It's just not there yet. My biggest criticism would be that this feels like game that just came into early access rather than a full release. It has a pretty decent foundation but boy oh boy, it really lacks in content, UI clarification & design, and replay value.

First run of the game and I already had over half of the codex unlocked. There are a very limited number of classes, most of which honestly blend together, and the skill pool is equally shallow. This makes it incredibly easy and consistent to get multiple units that juggernaut their way through the game. The difficulty is a complete joke. I'm 30 hours in, picking the highest difficulty available to me every run, and not once have I felt threatened. I don't even check stats. I rush in regardless of how many enemies there are and I'm never punished for it. There's no effective weaponry and crits are reduced to x1.5 damage I believe so there's no danger whatsoever. And mounts. Oh boy are mounts overpowered. Free stats, large movement, no counterplay. Just a pathetic +1 damage +10% hit from ritual mages who barely tickle. Big deal.

Standard maps have a fair amount of variety which is nice but the boss maps are static. Gets old REAL quick.

The economy even on the lowest difficulty is a joke. Shops are borderline useless without specific memories (think of them like relics from games like StS) that make them affordable. There are random drops of course, but items only sell for 10% value. You're more than likely only visiting a shop once or twice per run unless you randomly got a pickpocket skill / yoink spell to get gold from enemies. Not that you NEED the shop, as I said the game is incredibly easy even without ever buying anything, but I feel like this is bad design that punishes casual players incredibly hard. Instead it is far more efficient to dump everything you aren't using into the alchemist and just working with whatever you're given.

I think one of the biggest disappointments is that the recruited militia units are all pre-generated. You'll see the same faces every run because there's only roughly fourteen of them in the pool. Where's the fun in that? I can handle the lords being static since we have all run to craft them the way we want, but the recruits units should be more random! Even if it means getting worse units overall, any fire emblem vet can tell you that making a bad unit into a god is one of the most enjoyable experiences in the genre. A roguelite game is the perfect platform to play with this, but unfortunately the sandbox that we've been given to play with is rather limited.

All-in-all, would I recommend this game? No. Not right now. Keep an eye on it if you are interested to see what kind of updates happen in the future. As I mentioned before, I think it has the potential to be really good, it just has a ways to go to get there.

7/10

Astral Throne is an incredibly fun game with plenty of potential! Across my playtime, I’ve completed 2 runs on the highest available difficulties (Explorer & Navigator) and played around with a lot of the hero combinations, militia units, and weapons to unlock as many codex entries and memories as possible to explore varying combinations.

Astral Throne is a Fire Emblem game with some roguelite elements mixed in. Every run, the player picks a ‘leader’ that determines their starting relic & militia units, as well as a ‘secondary’ before jumping into the first act. The player is then dropped on an overworld map that is procedurally generated before given the option to select a node that takes them into a battle/shop/event. After 4 battles, or when decided to the player then fights an act boss–this is repeated twice before a final battle occurs (you are provided a few shops before the final fight).

What’s good?

The game’s formula on its own is amazing. Different mixtures of leaders offer distinctive interactions amongst them, and the starting bonuses are unique and offer gameplay variety. The overworld being procedurally generated gives the player the opportunity to plan out roaming the map before moving to the act boss. Building a roster is extremely fun, between skills, memories, and weapons it feels amazing when everything comes together. In my second run, I obtained a memory that allowed my critical hits to deal triple damage, and when coupled with a few characters that had extremely high critical rates–nothing stood in their way. The turn, and grid-based combat is where this game gets a lot of its comparisons to Fire Emblem, and that’s what got my interest in the game initially as well as what’s still holding my attention even now!

What’s lacking?

As amazing as Astral Throne is, it is lacking in some areas–namely the militia units and some of the skill options. The militia units all start with the same base stats, and mostly the same growth rates. There are some slight percentage differences, along with a specific starting weapon archetype. The growth rates and weapon archetype don’t feel significant enough to make each unit stand out from the others in the same class, so when the player winds up with a starting warrior, then proceeds to get 2 more warriors as recruits that don’t feel any more unique–the run becomes more difficult and less interesting. Attribute and support skills in particular are a bit lackluster as they features stat tradeoffs and minor stat gains within range of certain units–the worst moments are when you obtain a level up with all of these skills that provide no meaningful gain for your level up which happens quite frequently. Combat map diversity is another issue, in my playtime I saw a lot of repeat maps–in some cases the same map would appear back to back multiple times in a row and it grows frustrating if its a particularly difficult map (or uninteresting one). Only the units within each map are randomly generated, but it doesn’t change or add much. Between my 2 clears, and multiple attempts in between I saw the same 3 bosses and maps every single time. I’d like to see more different combat maps, as well as different act bosses. I’d love to see more classes, different bases, or more varying growth rates across the militia units personally to have them feel more unique and interesting. Skills could use some kind of system so that some characters don’t get level ups that feature only support/attribute skills multiple times in a row.

What’s bad?

Currently, the biggest issue the game faces is the amount of bugs. The amount of issues that arise because I save and quit to run an errand is a bit unfortunate. I lost a run to my save being deleted, I lost a run to 2 of my strongest units dying despite being ‘saved’ by the end of the map, I have the game crash on a frequent basis when returning to the title screen, I had a units range display incorrectly offering me the option to start combat, I had and have seen others with the issue of clearing a map but not allowing them to move on, I’ve read others having issues with some skills not working altogether–it goes on and on.

Astral Throne is unfortunately a mess of a game to play, but I see a diamond in the rough. I implore anyone that enjoys Fire Emblem to pick this up–sale or otherwise–and give it a try. If you find a bug, please report it to the devs immediately.

Absolutely amazing game! If you like fire emblem a rougelites you will love this game.