The mobile market has something for everyone, from idle time wasters to large experiences that can last for a long time. For me personally, most of my mobile game time nowadays is spent on simple, quick games I can play for a few minutes, then move on from. However, if I find a more ambitious game that I can get lost in and spend hours, I try my best to give it a shot and sometimes wonder if I would enjoy it more if I were playing it on either my console or PC. So it’s no surprise that when developers see a game is really popular or has the potential to garner new fans, it gets ported. Sometimes it works out perfectly, and the game is great; other times, I question why they even tried. With Asdivine Knot, it’s unfortunately the latter, as while it’s a decent RPG at best, there are too many lingering effects from its time as a mobile game that bog it down.
Strings of Fate
Asdivine Knot tries hard to tell a story about religion and belief that, at times, gets interesting but fails to hook me, mainly because of the main character. Verselio, the main protagonist, is incredibly bland and not really interesting. While I like his backstory about getting revenge on a group and the belief that robbed him of so much, he’s a character I don’t find myself caring about. A character like his can work in other games; it just doesn’t here. He tries too hard to be standoffish and mysterious but ends up making moments with others awkward. His party members, meanwhile, are a slight improvement; each is given their own moments to shine and unique personalities, even if it’s very basic. However, they feel mostly there to be a potential love interest for one of the many endings the game has. The villains also fare the same; maybe two at best are interesting, as the others sink into forgettability.
The game also has an annoying habit of introducing characters, doing nothing with them, then expecting me to care when they’re important to the plot. Most of the time I forget and move on, but with one character they did this with, I felt really disappointed; their existence was actually interesting, and their interactions with Verselio did make me care, but as stated before, they barely show up. It’s a shame because I can clearly see a potentially good story hidden underneath the paper-thin writing and all the forgettable characters, but it feels as if they did the bare minimum and moved on.
Belief and Order
Asdivine Knot’s gameplay loop can be fun at times but quickly gets tiring. The gameplay takes place on a grid-based arena, each row providing a unique effect, with the front row making physical attacks stronger and the back row increasing magical attacks. Formation changes are done in the menu and are mostly nonconsequential, while the boost to attack is useful; I barely used it. Attacks come in three different elemental types: neutral, dark, and light. At first, I found it all incredibly basic, but as the characters level up, these attacks gained other abilities, like causing poison and blinding enemies. This made combat more fun, but eventually all non-boss fights were too easy, making them a chore. Luckily, there is an option to change the enemy encounter rate, lowering it to move on and only raising it to grind for money and exp later down the line.
Enemies also use a similar grid but have the chance to spawn larger monsters that can take up two slots on the map, which can make them easier to hit with AOE moves. Enemies can also occasionally spawn as Lords, bigger and stronger versions of their base form; with these, it’s much harder to take them down. Their attacks are way too powerful to fight them early on, even if they give out better exp, but by the time I was able to more easily take them out, it was the end of the game, and they became just a nuisance. At that point, it’s better to just focus on grinding with smaller enemies.
The overworld map is promising at first glance; seeing it split into four sections made me wonder what could be hiding in each corner of the map. I traveled the world walking and later via an airship; I ended up finding optional dungeons and OD spots that give a small stat increase and nothing else. I hoped to find anything interesting, but chests and other activities were strictly done in towns. Quests occasionally had me going out to kill monsters near villages or retrieve a material, but most of the time it was just a barren walk between each story beat. Dungeons, far worse, as their level design is so basic and boring; there’s nothing to do except reach the end and find the odd chest scattered about. One or two made me look for an item to move on, but no real gimmicks or memorable moments, making dungeons feel more like long hallways.
One aspect I did enjoy was unlocked once the airship became accessible; that being the ability to create rooms. Each floor of the ship can be filled with shops and other amenities, with a few upgradable ones such as the blacksmith. To increase the attack and defense of each character’s weapons and armor, the blacksmith is used, with the max-level shop able to fully level up said items. At first, it can seem pointless, due to enemies and bosses only providing a small challenge as well as needing quite a bit of materials to fully level up their ship; however, when the final boss rolled around, I had to spend time grinding for money to make my weapons their max level to even stand a chance.
The Mobile Game Cracks
I have issues with Asdivine Knot; the most prominent being its shop and its real-world transactions. As stated earlier, I have no issues with developers porting mobile games to other platforms. But when it comes to this game, it tends to be a looming shadow. The first time I noticed it was with the game’s battle pass; it caught me completely off guard and made me question the game. Why would a single-player RPG need a battle pass? But as I dug deeper, I saw more places to spend money. All of it connected to gems, which are this game’s premium currency and can be used for summoning gear, buying high-value items, increasing important effects, and even opening locked doors in towns that hold items. Fortunately, gems are occasionally earned via battles and not via in-game purchase, but it’s clear where the microtransactions were taken out of for this release.
I also saw this affect gameplay; whenever I lost a battle, the game would either let me restart the encounter, go back to the last saved spot, or spend gems to jump back into battle, fully healed and at the exact moment I died. This just breaks the game, as whenever I found myself going up against a boss or any high-level enemy, I could just buy my way to victory. By the end of the game, I ended up having to grind levels to even stand a chance against the final boss, and it got to a point where it would take minutes to level up once. That’s when I realized there was an option to increase exp gain and other effects with gems or by spending real-world money. It made me wonder: was the game really difficult, or was it because the option to buy gems to make things easier was removed from this version? Either way, when I finally beat the final boss, I didn’t feel accomplished; I felt indifferent, just glad I was done and could move on to better games.
Divine Intervention
It’s a shame when a game that had potential fails to get anywhere near my expectations, but Asdivine Knot is one of them. The only real highlight was the combat; everything else was either potentially good, mediocre, or uninteresting. As a mobile game that I can potentially sink a few minutes a day into, beat after a few weeks, then move on, it’s not the worst thing in the world. But releasing this on platforms where there are thousands of better ways to spend your money, and even better ported mobile games on top of that. I really can’t see any reason to recommend it. If you’re still interested, it’s probably best to play it on your phone, but don’t go expecting too much.
Disclaimer: KEMCO provided a PC (Steam) copy of Asdivine Knot for review purposes.
