Asdivine Cross (Android)
Apr. 23rd, 2026 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroA member of The Watchers, a robin hood-esque band of thieves, gets caught (because his rival in the group is a dick) and ends up meeting the princess, who was tricked and replaced with a double right before her parents mysteriously died. Turns out the scheme to take over the kingdom is just the tip of the iceberg, because the Shadow Deity is up to something.
A bit older and a bit simpler than the more recent EXE-Create titles, this one also hits you with some tutorials right off the bat. There’s light, dark, and void magic (each character gets one and can equip accessories for the others) and a combo/limit break system (that’s needlessly complex and resets to zero any time a character dies). It’s got the weapon gatcha/enhancement system but relatively little else.
The game is pretty breezy, and I’m wondering if some design decisions were because it was too breezy: You need to revisit several annoying dungeons too many times; there are long overworld forest paths between where you can park the ship/airship and the later dungeons; and the warp item is needlessly hard to come by. Some dungeons are two screens with a few hidden items; others are insanely long and full of twists. There are items hidden behind one-way tiles that I couldn’t figure out how to get, because no item or spell seems to let you negate those tiles.
The economy of the game completely falls apart very quickly, especially if you engage with the IAP at all (the Warehouse Keys get you great weapons for everyone that you can just keep upgrading until the endgame), but that’s not even necessary, because you find plenty of weapon upgrades in dungeons and there stop being new towns/shops at about the halfway point. And that’s your last armor upgrade until the final dungeon—unless you want lots of mid-tier items, there’s nothing else to buy. The final dungeon also offers bonus bosses you can fight for special unique weapons…that have no attached abilities and are worse than the weapons you’ve been continuously upgrading.
There are postgame dungeons/true ending/IAP content that I didn’t bother with; the final dungeon is unnecessarily long and the final boss is an irritating difficulty spike because she’s a gimmick boss (she’s in the back row behind two minions, if the minions die she heals and blasts you for massive damage and then immediately revives them; so you can’t use normal attacks or multi-target attacks effectively at all). I had my fill by that point.
Your third character (the weird girl, as opposed to the naive girl and the stoic girl) is established very quickly to have a weird fetish for getting smacked around, and I’m not sure what to make of that. The characters all basically have one gimmick that they do all game that never really sees any growth. Naïve girl tries to hug weird girl, weird girl calls someone a dunderhead, stoic girl makes a snide comment. The side-scenes that affect your “trust level” with each character feel thrown in and immaterial. Also, the early plot hinges on one character having shape-shifting powers, which she immediately forgets and never come up again. I’m not sure anything will ever beat the Light Deity shouting MEOWZERS! in the first game; and certainly nothing here does.
(And Maidame Curie shows up, but at least it’s only for a relatively minor part of the game and some bonus/optional content.)
SPOILERS: The Shadow Deity isn’t evil; he was being framed by the Light Deity who wants to destroy and replace humanity, which you only learn after you defeat him and seal him away. (The Deities are also on a cycle of death/reincarnation, so these aren’t the same ones as previous games.) So then you have to go beat the Light Deity, too. When you seal them both your characters have to take their places.
Overall: Middling. This is fine, it’s straightforward, it’s playable; but it’s unbalanced, there’s nothing particularly special to it, and the plot and characters are very one-note.
A bit older and a bit simpler than the more recent EXE-Create titles, this one also hits you with some tutorials right off the bat. There’s light, dark, and void magic (each character gets one and can equip accessories for the others) and a combo/limit break system (that’s needlessly complex and resets to zero any time a character dies). It’s got the weapon gatcha/enhancement system but relatively little else.
The game is pretty breezy, and I’m wondering if some design decisions were because it was too breezy: You need to revisit several annoying dungeons too many times; there are long overworld forest paths between where you can park the ship/airship and the later dungeons; and the warp item is needlessly hard to come by. Some dungeons are two screens with a few hidden items; others are insanely long and full of twists. There are items hidden behind one-way tiles that I couldn’t figure out how to get, because no item or spell seems to let you negate those tiles.
The economy of the game completely falls apart very quickly, especially if you engage with the IAP at all (the Warehouse Keys get you great weapons for everyone that you can just keep upgrading until the endgame), but that’s not even necessary, because you find plenty of weapon upgrades in dungeons and there stop being new towns/shops at about the halfway point. And that’s your last armor upgrade until the final dungeon—unless you want lots of mid-tier items, there’s nothing else to buy. The final dungeon also offers bonus bosses you can fight for special unique weapons…that have no attached abilities and are worse than the weapons you’ve been continuously upgrading.
There are postgame dungeons/true ending/IAP content that I didn’t bother with; the final dungeon is unnecessarily long and the final boss is an irritating difficulty spike because she’s a gimmick boss (she’s in the back row behind two minions, if the minions die she heals and blasts you for massive damage and then immediately revives them; so you can’t use normal attacks or multi-target attacks effectively at all). I had my fill by that point.
Your third character (the weird girl, as opposed to the naive girl and the stoic girl) is established very quickly to have a weird fetish for getting smacked around, and I’m not sure what to make of that. The characters all basically have one gimmick that they do all game that never really sees any growth. Naïve girl tries to hug weird girl, weird girl calls someone a dunderhead, stoic girl makes a snide comment. The side-scenes that affect your “trust level” with each character feel thrown in and immaterial. Also, the early plot hinges on one character having shape-shifting powers, which she immediately forgets and never come up again. I’m not sure anything will ever beat the Light Deity shouting MEOWZERS! in the first game; and certainly nothing here does.
(And Maidame Curie shows up, but at least it’s only for a relatively minor part of the game and some bonus/optional content.)
SPOILERS: The Shadow Deity isn’t evil; he was being framed by the Light Deity who wants to destroy and replace humanity, which you only learn after you defeat him and seal him away. (The Deities are also on a cycle of death/reincarnation, so these aren’t the same ones as previous games.) So then you have to go beat the Light Deity, too. When you seal them both your characters have to take their places.
Overall: Middling. This is fine, it’s straightforward, it’s playable; but it’s unbalanced, there’s nothing particularly special to it, and the plot and characters are very one-note.
