Asdivine Knot - PS5 Review

Asdivine Knot by developer EXE Create and publisher Kemco—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes. 

Asdivine Knot is the latest title in the Kemco JRPG library. Following protagonist Verselio, who's on the run from the church that they once served, he'll be accompanied by an odd selection of party members as they all find a reason to band together… whether Verselio wants them there or not. 

It has been a very long time since I've played a KEMCO JRPG. Because of this, I wasn't sure what to expect from a modern day release. What I found was an enjoyable experience that blended a few styles together into something that works with plenty of modern day quality of life features that I would love to see in other titles. The only issue I had overall is the occasional typo. The words in question were close, but not quite right…

Starting off with the story and the dialogue, Asdivine Knot tries to balance the line of serious and flat out harem goofy. Yes. Harem. Goofy. More on that in a bit. The setting itself though is a serious one. Verselio is on the run for their life. Sacrifices are being made to a deity for protection. The world is under the thumb of the current deputy's Church. But in this quest for vengeance, you often forget about it because of how the characters talk to and interact with one another. 

 
The characters are certainly quirky which is fun, until it's weird. What I appreciated though is that the cast are not your typical tropes, but they are certainly tropes. Flamboyant Muscle Mommy who pretends to be a delicate flower. A delicate looking healer that will punch craters into the ground to heal you. The self proclaimed dark deity on her quest for revenge while rocking out with her electric guitar in a fantasy world. 

Finally a nerdy warrior type obsessed with the knowledge of a particular historical figure. And finally, finally, our protagonist who “doesn’t need any help as they can take care of everything on their own”. So whether he likes it or not, Verselio has to navigate everyone's quirks, and their advances, to keep them focused on the mission. Which is where you'll spend as little, or as much time as you want exploring and fighting your way though. 

This is honestly where I think I broke Asdivine Knot…

Mechanically, the gameplay is simple. You move around the map, you pick up items, open treasure chests, stand on permanent stat boost squares, and fight monsters. Items are self explanatory. The stat boost squares known as Od Spots are neat as they retroactively apply to new team members. Fight monsters? Well that’s always been the name of the game. You need to get those experience points somehow!

The combat system is where I saw plenty of quality of life elements. You can speed up combat. You can remove animations to increase performance. You can auto battle where your characters will perform their best actions. You can even select to skip combat entirely if your party is too strong. Recommended? Yes, but only if the next aspect is fixed down the line. On top of experience and gold, you will also receive a certain amount of Dyadlith every few battles. The amount is based on the difficulty level. The lower it is, the more you get. The harder it is, the less you get but the better loot drops you’ll receive.

So why is Dyadlith important? It’s important because it’s what you’re going to primarily use in “The Shop”. Asdivine Knot is a single player JRPG with certain gacha elements along for the ride. You can spend Dyadlith to get much better weapons than the ones you’re picking up. You can also use it to unlock permanent togglable settings such as increases to experience points, gold acquisition, items, or physical and magical strength.

 

This is where I think I broke the game. Also using a more mobile gacha format, your party members have their levels, but also their ranks. Starting off at Rank 1, once a character reaches Rank 50, they’ll go up a rank and restart from level 1. They’ll be stronger, they’ll get new abilities, and it’s automatic so you don’t even need to question whether it’s worth it or not. So with the experience multiplier, I was easily able to change the game over screen to auto battled victory fairly early on in places I'm sure the party had no reason being. Once done? Nothing, and I mean nothing, stood in my way. So I found the next less extreme location until I went back and auto battled to victory.

I needed money for my airship upgrades…

Next thing I know, Rank 3, level who knows what, and the auto win just showed me the victory screen. But then, I don’t know if it was an oversight, or if it’s on purpose, but if you have the skip battle to results set to on? You don’t get any Dyadlith. I thought the game broke. I swapped out equipment. I removed all equipment, all settings one by one, until finding out, skip to results was the culprit. If you want to get everything out of the Secret Room in The Shop? Don’t skip to the results.

This immense power however, available so early on, is why I think I broke the game. Bosses were a two second affair. It was no challenge making me question if I should restart or not. I didn’t. Those airship upgrades like I mentioned are expensive. This is the last interesting feature to Asdivine Knot, the airship which acts as your main everything hub.

Through the airship, you can retrofit the various floors to give you access to build rooms. These rooms can be item shops, upgrade item shops, weapon shops, and various other features like fine running or taking items apart for materials if they are not needed anymore. Where more quality of life comes into play is that once it’s unlocked in your airship? You have access to these services from your in-game menu. No need to travel back and then remember which floor some of these services are on. 

Additional side note commentary!?

Interestingly enough, and more of a side note, I found the most comfortable way to play Asdivine Knot on the PlayStation Portal. The smaller screen just made the adventure feel more comfortable than a larger TV. Kind of makes one miss the days of the PlayStation Vita.

And finallyyyyy, I almost want to say take a shot for every time it was used in this review… While I don’t know how Asdivine Knot stands up against the rest of the modern Kemco library, it has certainly made me want to go explore what else has been made in the time that I’ve been away. So it’s a good thing that I’ve now picked up the Kemco RPG Selection Volumes 1 through 6. What are a few more JRPGs to add to the eternal backlog?

Conclusion

Overall, Asdivine Knot is a fun JRPG. With quirky characters on a quest for vengeance, and to save the world, the various gameplay features come together to allow a fairly customized approach that can be as easy, or as hard, as you want it to be.

 

Score: 7.75 / 10