![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroZack and Stella are living in an orphanage and generally getting along fine, but the world of Asdivine isn’t about to stay quiet: The two deities that rule it have just gotten into a major tiff and now they live in interesting times.
It’s fairly standard jrpg excitement, if generally goofy: The entire plot hinges on the Light Deity accidentally trapping herself in the body of a wildcat. Who then shouts “MEOWZERS!” a lot. And has additional plot device/cutscene powers in addition to being on the same combat level as the rest of your party.
Despite the fact that the majority of your team is female (everyone except the main character, if you note that the Light Deity is female despite occupying the body of a male cat), it plays more as “a boy and his harem” than as anything progressive.
The mid-game twist hinges on the fact that Asdivine is the “central” world to a network of parallel worlds, main of them very different from the core. The middle third of the game and a chunk of the post-game take place in one of the alternate worlds and features the doubles of many cast members. This actually works very nicely.
The battle system is pretty standard, with an assortment of special abilities. A lot of them are very similar to Illusion of L'Phalcia, including the gem-equip system for magic and the potential for “giga” or “mini” versions of random enemies to show up. The fact that a rapidly-regenerating pool of skill points fuels your skills (rather than sharing the standard MP that fuels your spells) is a nice touch that makes skills more useful in random battles and more strategic in boss battles.
The bonus currency is only available from boulders that randomly spawn in battles and occasionally drop a few “AHP” when destroyed. Which means it really isn’t useful; I never had enough to purchase anything with it.
There’s a sizable “post-game” segment. After you beat the Shadow Deity, there’s an option to save a clear game file and fight the battle again, only this time the plot continues. And it continues into a bunch of fetch-quest filler and a battle against an even bigger big bad. (And a ton of bonus bosses and random challenges.) That started to drag on me, as it’s clear they were out of ideas but needed to fill up more hours of content. The final-final boss handed me my ass because I hadn’t done enough sidequests and postgame grinding (despite having gained nearly 30 levels since beating the first final boss), and I declared myself finished.
Overall: A lot of the reviews think this is one of KEMCO’s strongest games; and from a system perspective I can’t really disagree. There are a lot of battle options, variety of encounters, decent dungeon design (though it could use a minimap), and a very good difficulty curve (at least until the postgame). But even though the world-building was interesting, the plot and characters were so “harem anime” that it made me uncomfortable.
It’s fairly standard jrpg excitement, if generally goofy: The entire plot hinges on the Light Deity accidentally trapping herself in the body of a wildcat. Who then shouts “MEOWZERS!” a lot. And has additional plot device/cutscene powers in addition to being on the same combat level as the rest of your party.
Despite the fact that the majority of your team is female (everyone except the main character, if you note that the Light Deity is female despite occupying the body of a male cat), it plays more as “a boy and his harem” than as anything progressive.
The mid-game twist hinges on the fact that Asdivine is the “central” world to a network of parallel worlds, main of them very different from the core. The middle third of the game and a chunk of the post-game take place in one of the alternate worlds and features the doubles of many cast members. This actually works very nicely.
The battle system is pretty standard, with an assortment of special abilities. A lot of them are very similar to Illusion of L'Phalcia, including the gem-equip system for magic and the potential for “giga” or “mini” versions of random enemies to show up. The fact that a rapidly-regenerating pool of skill points fuels your skills (rather than sharing the standard MP that fuels your spells) is a nice touch that makes skills more useful in random battles and more strategic in boss battles.
The bonus currency is only available from boulders that randomly spawn in battles and occasionally drop a few “AHP” when destroyed. Which means it really isn’t useful; I never had enough to purchase anything with it.
There’s a sizable “post-game” segment. After you beat the Shadow Deity, there’s an option to save a clear game file and fight the battle again, only this time the plot continues. And it continues into a bunch of fetch-quest filler and a battle against an even bigger big bad. (And a ton of bonus bosses and random challenges.) That started to drag on me, as it’s clear they were out of ideas but needed to fill up more hours of content. The final-final boss handed me my ass because I hadn’t done enough sidequests and postgame grinding (despite having gained nearly 30 levels since beating the first final boss), and I declared myself finished.
Overall: A lot of the reviews think this is one of KEMCO’s strongest games; and from a system perspective I can’t really disagree. There are a lot of battle options, variety of encounters, decent dungeon design (though it could use a minimap), and a very good difficulty curve (at least until the postgame). But even though the world-building was interesting, the plot and characters were so “harem anime” that it made me uncomfortable.
