Overview:- Estimated achievement difficulty:
2/10 [Achievement Difficulty Rating]- Offline:
50 [1000]- Approximate amount of time to 1000
:
25-40 Hours [Estimated Time to 100%]- Minimum number of playthroughs needed:
1- Missable achievements:
No- Does difficulty affect achievements:
No- Unobtainable/glitched achievements:
No Introduction:Explore a vast world on the brink of chaos in a mature, emotional JRPG. Experience an epic story with rewarding, turn-based combat and expansive customization rendered in glorious 4K hand-drawn visuals.
Step 1: Complete the StoryThere are no difficulty-related achievements in this game, so as soon as you begin the story feel free to change the combat settings to "Very Easy" and you will one-shot any basic enemy and make boss fights a joke. This way, you can simply focus on enjoying the story and the beautiful visuals, and collecting everything the game has to offer. This is your quintissential JRPG list, and you'll need to collect every piece of equipment, find every chest, etc., while also completing all the optional quests, hunts, and playing a ton of the J-Ster mini-game. I would suggest following
this walkthrough to ensure you don't miss anything.
I have read reports of save files going missing, journal entries not updating when you get an item, and various other bugs. The game has had many updates since it launched compared to when I am writing this guide in September 2022, so most of those may be fixed - I personally did not have any of these issues, but be aware just in case and save often in multiple slots to be safe.
Step 2: End-GameAfter the story is complete, you will have an end-game activity to tackle, the Time Rift. This is where a large portion of your equipment collection will be done outside of purchasing everything in shops and the bit we found during the story. You should get nearly 5-7 million gold during this run depending on how many enemies you avoid, which will fund all the purchasing we still need to do. After the Time Rift is complete, empty every shop (including the two secret shops in the Archipelago) and the only equipment left should come from the J-Ster arena challenges.
Step 3: J-SterThe last step is to collect every J-Ster token, and you will win 100 games along the way beating opponents for their pieces. I would suggest doing the arena first, then going in order of token level. Get every Level 1 piece first, then sell them to Migthief so they are taken out of your current inventory in case an opponent has random draw rules. Repeat with Level 2-4, and then going for Level 5 tokens you'll be stocked with only good characters. Once you collect your last token, that should be the completion - congrats!
Conclusion:Astria Ascending is an absolutely gorgeous game. The battle system is tight. I love that you are given a roster of 8 people right from the start and just hit the ground running. Now that the game is fully patched up and can be completed with no issues, it's a must in my opinion - especially while it is still on Game Pass. The completion is fairly simple, especially if you play on Very Easy difficulty, but a guide is definitely needed to get all the treasure chests as the dungeons can be confusing. Also, the J-Ster mini-game is oddly one I enjoyed, which is rare for JRPG mini-games for me.
Note: The time completion for this game will vary greatly depending on what difficulty you play on. I completed it in about 25 hours on Very Easy, but most people on Normal and above will estimate that it took nearly 40.