Astellia was a pleasant surprise
I normally don’t fall into the eastern MMO traps that seem to be the norm nowadays. Something about Astellia stood out to me. Most people were ready to turn Astellia down simply because of the bad rep that the eastern MMO’s have. I decided to take a chance on Astellia and I was not left with regret.
I mostly played during the head start, and some things may be different with launch.
The graphics are pretty good.
Being an unreal 3 engine game, there was quite a bit of fuss about graphics being sub par to the unreal 4. However I think they are pretty good, maybe not BDO good, but they are nice enough to have a rewarding exploration experience.
Astellia is something new…ish
The game is pretty unique, at least in my opinion. It has a Eudemons feel almost, just in 3d. Keeping in mind I haven’t played that game in years! You get to find and level up minions called Astels, creating almost a team of minions that will benefit you differently based on your in game activities.
Playing solo? Use healers to keep your downtime to a minimal. Taking on a dungeon with a dedicated healer? Switch out to a dps to burn mobs faster. Taking too much damage? Throw in a knight to tank some of the mobs. Now its not super in depth but its enough to make Astellia feel like it has a bit of strategy.
Astel Cards let you min\max your minions.
In Astellia you can add gems to your Astels to give them better stats. Say if you have a healer that is super squishy, gem that bad boy up with some evasion and hp. Or if you want a glass cannon of a minion on your side, go ahead and go pure magic attack. The choice is up to you. Im sure a cookie cutter build will come eventually for those that want to really focus on progression, but the choice is there to do what you want.
Pve in Astellia
So far I’m really happy with the amount of content in Astellia. The dungeons are pretty short, and there is an energy bar to prevent you from spamming the content. That said the rewards make them well worth doing. This is also the best way that I know of to get duplicate Astels for increasing your minions grade.
P2W shop?
From the time that I played Astellia, I would not consider any pay to win items. Will that change? Time will tell. It mostly consists of cosmetic items and some item storage perks. Nothing too significant. However, there does seem to be a way to buy more dungeon tickets with the “Zender” currency which you gain by completing achievements and it says avalon and arena, which I have not been able to try out yet. I do worry that you might be able to purchase Zender with real life money at some point. Giving an unfair advantage in my opinion. I will just hope that this is not the case.
Optimization is a little lacking
For the amount of people playing currently, there does seem to be some jitters here and there. It may be due to server location, or just my internet. But there has been some minimal issues with multiple people trying to collect the same node and it just seemed to pick at random vs the person who got there first. I have stolen a few ores from people, I’m not ashamed to admit.
Controls in Astellia
The controls feel a bit floaty to me, especially with how slow characters move. Its a bit weird and took me a bit to get use to. Definitely make use of the mounts in the game. They have a pretty interesting combat system in Astellia. Instead of writing macros like in most games I have played, you can chose the order of actions right on the action bar. You also get different actions depending on your combination level. So for instance if you start off with an ability it may simply charge, but if its the 3 action it might knock down an opponent. I believe that this will allow for a higher skill cap in pvp, and personally I cant wait to give it a try.
Bugged?
So the dungeons I have completed gave the rewards from the dungeons, however the quests would not register as done. I am not sure if this was due to a bug or if they wanted to balance the head start for the official release. The Gold coins from dungeon quests might be the reason for this, but I did not see an official post on the topic. So I do not know if this issue will be fixed with the official launch.
Gender locked
Astellia was suppose to get rid of gender lock for the western release. So far that is not true. I really wanted to play a mage style class, just to find that I could only play as a female character. This may or may not be a thing for you, but I ended up going with a warrior. When or if this gets patched, I will certainly be re rolling as a mage. Hopefully this will not turn into a common practice for Astellia. Time will tell.
Final Thoughts?
Astellia is pretty fun. I think it is well worth the 30 dollars for the game, even in its current state. I feel that I have already gotten my money out of it. The potential for fun end game and all the achievements and min maxing that you can do seems like its a great game for those in need of a new MMO.
Have you played Astellia?
What are you thoughts? Do you feel like Blessed and BDO have ruined it already? Are you willing to give it a chance? Let me know in the comments below!