Vortex Gaming

From some point on, mobile games in Korea have naturally been associated with free-to-play, random boxes, gacha, and ad revenue models. This is because almost all new mobile games made by well-known developers have adopted this model.

Perhaps that's why this game, 'Ex Astris,' has been constantly asked, "So, does this have gacha?" from the moment it was first revealed, along with "New game from the Arknights developer." It's not surprising that people are confused since the developer, who comes across as 'avant-garde,' doesn't use the term 'package game' but rather 'B2P'.

Anyway, 'Ex Astris,' which is sold for ₩14,000 on both app stores and has removed all in-app purchase elements, has clearly answered that question. Now, the only thing left is whether this game is worth it. It already had its first overseas offline demo at G-STAR last year, but that alone isn't enough to understand the story and adventure structure that a package game aims to show.

Various systems that break the stereotype of turn-based in classic RPGs

To explain the superficial structure of Ex Astris, it is a turn-based RPG. Set on the alien planet 'Alindo,' it's a game that unfolds a series of stories experienced by 'Yen,' an investigator dispatched from Earth, and 'Vi,' a Doran princess who sets out to complete her engraving, in the form of a classic adventure and RPG.

To explain Ex Astris, you have to use the seemingly contradictory concepts of 'classic' and 'avant-garde' at the same time. This is because the method of unfolding the adventure and the basic system are classic turn-based RPGs, but the combat method and item concept are clearly different from classic RPGs.

I'll write about the story later because it will be long, but to summarize, Yen, Vi, and other members of the party wander around maze-like ruins and facilities due to a series of events in Alindo. In the process, they solve various puzzles and confront enemies blocking their path, moving on to the next chapter in a linear structure. After a chapter is over, you can't go back to the previous chapter's area, which feels like classic RPGs that couldn't show multiple areas and missions at once due to resource limitations. It supports auto-save, but manually saving and even manually uploading to the cloud, as well as only being able to recover health, maintain, craft, and dope at designated locations, are all elements that evoke memories of old JRPGs.

However, once you enter an encounter battle, 'Ex Astris' overturns the existing formula of turn-based RPGs. Usually, turn-based RPGs are based on you hitting once and me hitting once, and if it becomes a little more flexible, you can inflict status ailments or debuffs on the opponent during your turn to prevent them from moving, or bring in an ally's turn to make a so-called 'selfish' deal. Or, you can prepare countermeasures for the enemy's turn by turning on a counterattack skill in advance or equipping a counterattack passive. However, this is still a method that moves within the iron rule of turn-based RPGs, where only the enemy can move actively during the enemy's turn.

In contrast, this game has a system where you can deflect the enemy's attack by pressing defense at the right timing during the enemy's turn. You can't deflect all attacks, but you can deflect almost everything except for the boss's or some special entities' ultimate moves, so in theory, you can clear without taking damage if you deal with it well.

Of course, since I said 'in theory,' there are also elements that make it difficult to block everything in reality. First of all, for enemy attacks that shine in red and blue, you have to designate a character that can defend against that color. And just like allies can act during the enemy's turn, the enemy doesn't just attack once during their turn, but continues to launch a series of attacks. This isn't just for bosses, but most enemies of a certain level will launch a series of attacks, so you can't let your guard down even if you've blocked once.

Furthermore, because the camera zooms in on the character when you defend, some of the enemy's subsequent attacks go out of sight and then come back in, causing you to miss them. Usually, missing an enemy attack once isn't a big deal in a turn-based RPG, but 'Ex Astris' is a little different. Since you have a means to actively deal with the enemy, each enemy attack is quite fatal. To exaggerate a bit, it's like taking an enemy's attack head-on in a Soulslike game without dodging or parrying.

As much as I compared it to a Soulslike game, you'll be reminded of a combat pattern where you perfectly block the enemy's attacks without being greedy and chip away at them little by little. However, 'Ex Astris' also reduces the tedium and adds a sense of speed by varying the skill combo method of your turn from the common sense of a typical turn-based RPG.

Usually, in turn-based RPGs, it's the norm for characters to attack honestly one at a time unless you give an ally an additional turn with an extra turn skill, a conditional additional hit skill, or a skill that increases speed. 'Ex Astris' is a little different. It shares action power and consumes that action power to activate designated skills one by one in order. The turn is passed to the enemy when all of that action power is consumed, or when there are no skills left to activate by consuming action power.

Flipping this around, it also means that you can hit repeatedly as long as 'action power remains' and 'there are skills left to consume that action power.' In fact, at first, action power is consumed one by one each time you attack honestly, but as you raise the 'Orbital Node,' which is a kind of stat board, you start to see conditions attached, such as recovering one action power or activating an additional hit depending on various conditions. The conditions are also like chasing an enemy in the air or hitting a downed opponent with an additional hit, like a combo in a fighting game. It's not just on the surface, but some additional hits have to be crammed in quickly to activate, so it really felt like putting in a combo when playing a fighting game.

In addition, 'Ex Astris' has a meticulous design that provides a system that can maximize that pleasure for a moment. If you deflect an enemy's attack or break a kind of super armor by attacking an enemy, the enemy is momentarily incapacitated, and at this time, you can use skills without limit without consuming action power. Of course, that timing is quite short, but during that timing, the fun of testing the extreme damage combo that you only thought about in theory and renewing the highest combo and damage is certain. Once you taste the pleasure of clearing the field at once by using ultimate moves and Entropyis, a kind of special tool, to complete combos that are usually impossible, you can't help but fall into the battle of 'Ex Astris'.

A narrative that says, "I won't give you the answer you want," from the wording to the terms

Of course, this fun isn't felt right from the beginning of the game. It only shines when the character has grown to some extent and the user themselves has become familiar with the system. Still, the system is opened and the framework is established in a relatively short time, but this is only a personal difference, so other elements are needed to compensate for this.

As mentioned earlier, 'Ex Astris' follows the adventure structure of classic RPGs and adventure games, so it shows a fairly decent appearance in the 'adventure' part. The fun of solving puzzles and finding hidden treasures is certain. There are no jump keys or hanging keys, but if you dash in sections where you can jump, you jump, etc. It's unfriendly, but it has all the fun of 'exploration' that we can commonly think of.

However, it feels quite different when that unfriendlyness is applied to the story development, and the terms and tooltips. And that is the most fatal barrier to entry when you first encounter 'Ex Astris.' If you've already been trained by the developer's previous work, 'Arknights,' you'll already be proficient in Kelsi-style speech (?), so it won't be a problem, but not all users are like that, so this part needed to be explained separately.

First of all, looking at the story of 'Ex Astris,' 'Yen' and 'Vi' set out to explore the Fulltide Singularity because of their respective goals. Only after exploring that Fulltide Singularity to some extent can you get a sense of the series of problems that will occur in Alindo.

To explain it simply without spoiling everything, Alindo has Laila, which is like the source of life, and 'Astrom,' a unique fluid substance derived from it, and 'Astramorph,' a life form composed of these. After detecting alien frequencies, Earthlings who visited Alindo through a wormhole pay attention to the various possibilities of matter gathering and changing into new creatures. Accordingly, they interacted with various races in Alindo and developed the 'Laila Life Project,' a study related to this, but it failed due to resistance from the locals, the 'Storm,' a disaster that periodically strikes Alindo, and various other reasons.

After that, contact with Earth was cut off, but Alindo, which came into contact with a new world, began to change little by little. They began to actively resist things that they had previously taken for granted. Resisting the fate of having to part with loved ones, resisting the law that they cannot escape from Alindo and unfair disasters, or regarding the reality of suffering from the continuous polar night due to strange orbital and rotational periods as unfair, and so on. Investigator 'Yen,' who arrived in Alindo through various difficulties, experienced and recorded these various events that occurred in Alindo and the special environment of Alindo, which is the whole story of 'Ex Astris'.

It's a minus factor that the so-called 'proper noun trap' is laid out even before the storyline is pointed out, but what's more fatal than that is the narrative that flows in the style of "I won't give you the answer you want." In fact, even if there are many proper nouns, if the flow of the story or the message is well-organized, it's not unreasonable to guess and move on along the context. Just like when we see a word we don't know while reading a book or newspaper, we guess and move on based on what we know around it. But if all the words are unknown, and even the sentence structure or context in which they are used is twisted or omitted, it becomes difficult to read.

Unfortunately, Ex Astris is a game that meets all of those conditions. Fortunately, 'Yen' and 'Vi' are quite straightforward characters, so they solve the context little by little by talking to each other after an incident occurs, and some major situations are released in a way that can be interpreted conventionally, so it was possible to fit them together. However, other NPCs generally explain things indirectly rather than saying anything directly, and throw clues out and tell you to find them yourself, and even those clues are incomplete, so you have to look for other stories. The story or flow is not a composition that leads from the main-sub quest to the training-another main quest, and the translated sentences themselves are strange and difficult to read, so it's reluctant to perform such a cumbersome procedure. As mentioned earlier, if you only know the pattern and can put together the optimal combo, the structure is such that you can theoretically clear without any problems, so you don't feel the need to play the sub quests.

Of course, it doesn't mean that a story that explains everything in detail is good, or that it should be done that way. To make people 'read' the story, there are also ways to deliberately omit or twist words to make them curious about the context. They have all the clues to grasp that context, but the biggest problem with 'Ex Astris' is that it has not properly motivated them to go find those clues. In some cases, even situations and themes that can be expressed in a way that touches the heart are often twisted in the way they are spoken, and even the proper noun trap is applied and the translation is strange, so it's impossible to unravel the tangle.

Classic yet formula-breaking, avant-garde charm of 'Ex Astris'

Usually, classic turn-based RPGs are a genre that tastes good when the three elements of combat, story, and character are in balance. Turn-based combat has its own unique fun, but there are sections where it becomes boring if it becomes a routine. The story and characters blend in as a lubricant to smoothly overcome that section, creating the driving force to play to the end.

In that sense, 'Ex Astris' is a very unique case. Some of the developers who were in charge of the art for Arknights were organized, so the characters and the background of the world in which they operate are uniquely and fantastically decorated, but the story in which they operate is quite rough. Furthermore, not only the settings are covered with proper nouns, but also the item introductions and tooltips, and the translation doesn't feel very good, so the more you dig into it, the more question marks keep popping up. These are problems that most Chinese subculture games share, so I wonder if this is a trend in that area, but this 'Ex Astris' had that problem particularly severely.

At the same time, the overall gameplay is a classic adventure style, so you usually don't reach for it. But Ex Astris feels like it completely masks that with a well-made combat system that breaks the limitations of turn-based. Just like the previous work 'Arknights' covered the details of the story that had gaps enough to create the meme "Is that so..." with its own unique and well-made gameplay that other tower defense RPGs didn't show.

Of course, Arknights has now reached the stage of releasing stories that can touch the heart, including 'Rhodes Island Trail,' and if you keep playing 'Ex Astris,' you get the feeling that it's connected to that, so fans of the previous work can fully endure it. I'm not sure how much it will appeal if you don't know the previous work at all. The developer, Hypergryph, is aware of these problems and is receiving feedback, so I hope that this part will be improved and become a complete version. In fact, I thought it was already worth enough just to walk around, solve puzzles, and fight without nitpicking. If they refine the details further in that situation, 'Ex Astris' will be one of the most complete works among mobile paid games.

8.5

엑스 아스트리스

Ex Astris

• The fun of parrying & combo that breaks the mold of turn-based
• Simple yet well-organized puzzles and adventures
• Routes that can be cleared even with minimal repetitive hunting

• The three beats of gaps, roundabout speech, and proper nouns
• No replay elements
• Non-intuitive main-sub quest routes

리뷰 플랫폼: 모바일(iOS)(1.0.3)

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웹진 인벤윤서호 기자
2024-02-29