The continued success of Arknights catapulted GRYPHLINE to new heights, allowing them to create even more ambitious titles. GRYPHLINE’s latest title is Ex Astris, a newly released real-time sci-fi turn based RPG that sends players on an adventure in a strange world. Ex Astris is a compelling title that provides content that other games can’t match at its $9.99 price (without microtransactions, too). In addition, it opens up a major opportunity for new premium mobile games that don’t follow the same path as gacha.
In Ex Astris, players embark on a new journey on Allindo, a planet with a tidally locked orbit where the sun never sets. The main character, Yan, is an investigator from Earth that’s sent to the planet to uncover its secrets. While on a train ride in Allindo, mysterious creatures attack and derail the train, and she teams up with a female passenger, Vi³, to find a way to safety. Yan and Vi³’s intriguing journey together begins in earnest, alongside Manganese.
Ex Astris Brings 20+ Exciting Hours of Adventure and Action
Allindo is a vibrant world to explore and fortunately, the touch controls are simple and responsive enough to let players bask in the scenery. Ex Astris features small hubs with vendors, dungeons, and other areas to explore, find loot and materials, accept and complete side quests, and advance the main story. An RV is used to navigate between the areas in two distinct hemispheres, and the RV itself contains cooking and rest facilities to keep the party in top form.
What’s more, Ex Astris offers a Final Fantasy X-like sphere grid system for unlocking stat boosts, abilities, and modifiers for each party member. The upgrades are relatively easy to unlock, since skill points are available in abundance. Dishes and Laylah-Keys are also useful for empowering the team, since there’s plenty of bosses and enemies to tackle throughout the course of the game.
Obscuran Strategy
Although Ex Astris is a turn-based RPG, the combat incorporates real-time elements and combos while attacking. The Obscuran Maneuver system brings a fresh new take on turn-based combat to the genre, since it allows for team combos and synergies after exploiting weaknesses.
In addition, Obscuran Maneuver lets players counter or negate attacks by pressing the Obscuran Maneuver button as an attack is about to land. To an extent, Obscuran Maneuver incorporates risk and reward similarly to character driven action games and fighting games. These counters are especially useful when certain enemy types require a specific attack type, such as Vi³’s blue counter.
The party can also switch skills between Wave and Particle states on the right side of the screen, allowing them to use different sets of skills. This is quite useful for racking up hits and damage against certain foes, but it can be helpful for defensive plays as well. I switch between these states quite often to find the right attack strategy against certain enemies.
Once an enemy is weakened, downed, or launched in the air, it becomes quite easy for Yan’s team to dish out a lot of damage. Hyper Time is usually activated once balance is broken, allowing players to continuously combo the enemy without restrictions until the timer runs out. Of course, a character-driven mobile game isn’t complete without flashy Ultimate moves, which each of the Ex Astris party members have.
Ex Astris is a 2024 Hidden Gem
Ex Astris doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it also leaves room for fans to want more. This RPG is an excellent debut for a new type of release by GRYPHLINE, and I hope the team considers moving Ex Astris to PC and consoles like Nintendo Switch to let even more players experience what the game brings to the table. The game’s narrative and Japanese voice acting will certainly land well with fans of Arknights and anime as well.
At the game’s low price, there’s no risk seeing what GRYPHLINE brings to the single-player turn-based RPG space. Overall, Ex Astris is a really compelling mobile game that fans should support if they want to see an alternative to gacha. Following Ex Astris, GRYPHLINE has plenty of new games to look out for, including the new Arknights: Endfield.
Disclaimer: GRYPHLINE provided Final Weapon with an Android (Google Play Store) key of Ex Astris for review purposes.
