Astonishia Story

"A gold mine of potential vaporized by the most horrid sense of balance ever created by mankind."

Astonishia Story is a semi-strategy RPG created by the Korean SONNORi that was first published on PC, and again as Astonishia Story R on the GamePark 32.

With certain Role-Playing Games, especially of today's era, you simply have to put aside concepts such as "innovation" and "aesthetic appeal" to truly learn to love and understand an RPG for what it is. With Astonishia, even connoisseurs of the 8-bit era who could care less if a game exercises the platforms full power will find themselves challenged to acknowledge greatness in this title, which is a shame, because it does so many things right that other games of the genre fail in completely.

First of all, the game just doesn't give off a very "professional" feel. Screens and camera angles can change with little to no transitions, making things seem very jumpy and sudden, menu sounds can get repetitive, and you can definitely notice tons of microsecond loading sequences occurring in between small actions such as navigating through menus, interacting with anything that has an accompanying sound clip, or even landing a basic attack on the enemy. Text boxes with story sequences also lack smooth transitioning, which, combined with the above, just makes the game's presentation come off unreasonably abrupt.

The actual graphics are, despite the initial disappointment setup by the magnificent anime sequence, very nicely done. It's a 2D game, so, in the same respect looks similar to an SNES or Genesis era RPG, which, by no means, is a bad thing. All characters in this game, enemy and ally alike, are full to the brim with animation sprites, and they all look absolutely beautiful flowing together on the PSP's wide-screen. This is especially true considering the amount of time taken in the cutscenes, or especially the ones in which a character and their foe combat against each other, the animation schemes are brilliant and only lead to more pleasure with the spell-casting, which truly would have made this shine as something that could likely boggle the aforementioned SNES or Sega Genesis in graphical intensity.

The audio, however, isn't as much of a charm. There are a few exceptional tracks, such as featured in the introductory anime sequence, in-house music, the initial battle theme, Fort Ganberg and especially that of Hakshiman Island, then there are some themes like the dungeon battle theme and boss battle theme that are just complete drivel, could have been outdone by any low-tier composer in the duration of a half hour, and don't really help to emphasize the mood even at the slightest, which is bad, considering half the theatrical sense and continuity of an RPG rely on the perfect portrayal of the scenery's mood. Some things can be excused, but when an RPG of this generation lacks a powerful and definitive final boss theme, that's almost a sin worthy of making the gamer smash the physical media the game is stored on.

SONNORi attempts a very interesting concept with Astonishia Story, as to mix the traditional navigation of games such as Dragon Warrior with the battle system of a game like Shining Force, but instead of just having thirty to forty scripted battles that you can never go back to, you are given a little more freedom as to engage in as many combats as you wish. That freedom, however, is about where it ends; you will find the linearity soon, as you are forced into each small block of areas. If you miss a sidequest and happen to have saved after leaving a continent, there is no way to go back.

The battle system is also the first of many imbalances Astonishia Story contains. By tradition, the strategy-based battle systems of RPGs are bound to be time-consuming, which is why games like Shining Force and Fire Emblem usually kept combat under 50 battles. While Astonishia's battles aren't quite hitting the 15-30 minute barrier as do the aforementioned titles, the difficulty of the game constantly spikes, and as do the stats of the enemies. Normally, this would be no problem, but another flaw of Astonishia comes into play such that equipment really doesn't mean anything given that, even the highest equipment rarely forms 15% of your overall stats. That leaves the dependence of statistic increase weighted heavily on leveling up. Again, something that wouldn't be a problem if not for the ridiculously low experience output resulted from Astonishia's shared experience system. In the later areas of the game, experience must be divided between a lot of party members, yielding around 150-250 experience... hardly enough at any level of this game. Another noticeable bother is that techniques simply absorb far too much MP, which will leave you quaffing Magic Potions by the dozen after every battle.

Astonishia Story just seems to, in many instances, just be holding itself down. There are enough slots for twelve party members, which would, if nothing else, make the game a lot more interesting, but as you progress through the story, you'll see a lot of your party members be cut down on for some really stupid reasons. Even still, if you would, by some odd reason, find some fun through the tedium the battle system becomes, your level is capped at 30, eliminating a lot of potential for the replay value that could exist had this game been balanced. The game, however, does have a sizable amount of boss fights for the boss lovers, and one of the most well-developed storylines of the genre; featuring a deep story of romance, war and treachery involving the legion of our hero Lloyd and a witch who has completely lost focus of her honor and dignity in retaliation against the humankind that opposes elven existence.

In many Strategy RPGs, the player is granted many units, which become so large in number that it becomes difficult to give them all a deep background and story. Even with such a huge cast, Astonishia Story accomplishes the task of keeping it's characters in a constant state of character development, as to avoid the feeling that there are only a few important characters and a bunch of generic followers like so many strategy RPGs do. Contrary to the game's nonprofessional look, the story is very very solid, leaves no plot holes or inconsistencies, and the dialog is very well done. There is also a lot of humor involved for the more "hardcore" gamers to chuckle at.

Astonishia Story, while definitely given the potential to be something marvelous, is held down with a terribly imbalanced status development system that slows everything down, features a less-than efficient soundtrack, and holds itself back too much to be anything more than an average game, even for those whose lower standards will make them want to pick out and polish every good thing about this title.

If you're dead set on buying this, or just want it to say you own the American re-iteration of the only GP32 RPG, go ahead and get it, but don't expect much.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/07