Astral Ascent has been getting constant content updates for the last year or two. Now they (Hibernian Workshop) have made a full-scale DLC along with a 2.0 update that adds tons of new areas to explore with unique mobs, imprints to put onto your spells as bonus passives, and an optional boss fight against the drink-maker Andromeda.
The Outer Reaches
With the DLC you now have the choice of going to the base game areas or to the new ones. The new zones are definitely a little bit harder with more complicated traps and enemies.
The increased variety of places to travel helps the game feel much less repetitive and having a whole new set of enemy patterns to learn has been tons of fun.
I particularly love the overall presentation of Frostborn Expanses with its snowy foreground and tricky ice traps, and Obsidian Heights’ tactical enemy style.
Unfortunately, beyond choosing which reward rooms to appear, there’s not a big reason to go to the new lands. They also have a sore spot of having identical level generation to the originals. I’d like to see some more exclusivity in the new biomes like spells or bonuses that only show up in a specific area.
Andromeda’s Trial
Andromeda’s boss fight is more of a side-note than anything super special, in my opinion. She’s brutally hard and will give you a massive power up should you actually win, but you cannot be killed in the fight and I don’t find it necessary to go for the benefits.
The optional battle is really cool with some epic patterns, however, and Andromeda does have new dialogue and an ending to go after.
Spell Crafting Got Way Better
I think the real meat of Astral Ascent’s changes is the new imprint mechanic. Spells can now have a focused passive effect on them that does tons of damage under specific circumstances. Things like large lightning strikes, but only if all the spell’s gambits are electric type. This system forces you to be more deliberate in your magic crafting, which is a great change.
Between the implementation of imprints in the free content update and the new zones to explore in the DLC, Astral Ascent is quickly becoming a juggernaut in the genre.
Astral Ascent is out now on PC (Lin, Mac, Win), PS4, PS5, Switch, and Xbox, although The Outer Reaches expansion launched first on PC and will land on consoles some weeks thereafter. We played the game via access kindly provided by developer Hibernian Workshop.
