Thanks to KEMCO for the review code

Title: Asdivine Hearts
System: Wii U (eShop)
Price: $9.99
Release date: 04/16/2016

The main game/story

In yet another mobile port from Kemco, this EXE Create title stars two teenagers who set out on a quest to investigate mysterious events with the help of the Light Deity, who has temporarily taken the body of their cat. In other words, an incredibly basic and typical RPG plot of save the world from darkness and whatnot.

Graphics

Being made by EXE Create, the folks behind Alphadia, the visuals are unfortunately what’s to be expected from them, with decent looking 2D sprites but incredibly stiff animation and bland backgrounds. Once again, the choppy movement of their titles rears its ugly head, noticeable right away from the moment you see the first cutscene and look at how the characters move. Just like the character movement is the same old song and dance, the design of the overworld and dungeons follow the same routine, using the same sort of bland layouts and colors similar to those from Alphadia. On the plus side, the battles play out in a much better fashion than Alphadia, with character sprites that actually move smoothly during battle, cool enemy designs and a menu that works in favor of the battle system, so it shows that EXE Create were improving in some aspects when they got to this game.

Music and Sound

Once again compared to Alphadia, the music tends to loop a lot and uses generic instruments, the same sort that you’d expect from a stereotypical RPG about war and monsters and whatnot. As an odd side note, the title theme is the world map theme, which seems a bit odd to reuse the title theme for something heard frequently throughout the game. A bit of a small improvement in terms of the overall quality, but not by much.

Gameplay

Pretty much everything outside of battles is identical to the way Alphadia plays, in that you go from town to town, dungeon to dungeon exploring each nook and cranny while running into random encounters. The equipment system is very similar, and the item system is very similar, save for one minor addition, a customizer (called a Rubix in game) very similar to the one from the Mega Man Battle Network series, where fitting together pieces of varying shapes into a small grid can provide extra benefits like more health points, stat boosts and other minor upgrades. Considering how it seems to be copied over and dumped into this game to give the game something to make it more unique, it doesn’t really do much to impress besides be around just to allow for extra customization.

When it comes to battles, rather than the strictly turn based affair that was Alphadia, Asdivine Hearts at least gives a bit of a shake-up in that it brings over the “sliding characters based on speed” system that we’ve seen in Ash and Trails in the Sky SC by now. Still, your best strategy like before is using stat boosts before taking advantage of the weakness each enemy is given, defeating them for EXP to level up. In other words, it’s once again your basic JRPG battle system.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Asdivine Hearts tends to follow the rules of a basic RPG, similar to what its sister game Alphadia did before it. Lacking anything that makes it charming or engaging like Justice Chronicles, Asdivine Hearts seems like it would fit better on the 3DS eShop, but was put on the Wii U instead just to give it a RPG. While this is admirable, I can’t help but wish that one of Hit-Point’s games were ported over instead, as from what it seems those games would be a bit more worthy of engaging console experiences. There are a few difficulty options to make the game adjust to your preferences, making this accessible, but don’t expect anything remotely mind-blowing or unique. I give Asdivine Hearts a 6 out of 10, and only recommend it to folks who are desperate for any kind of RPG on the Wii U, if you’re willing to skip over the Virtual Console RPGS like Golden Sun or Breath of Fire.