Ex Astris review: Gloriously fun and in-depth combat you’ll need a PhD for

I’m quite sure that I’ve never uttered so many quiet “ohhhhs” and “ahhhs” to myself as in the last two weeks while I was playing Ex Astris on my phone. There were many moments of discovery and sudden realization to be had in this premium single-player JRPG developed by Nous Wave Studio and published by Hypergryph. This is mainly because of two things: There is a lot of interesting depth to the game’s combat system and lore, but both the tutorials and storytelling don’t exactly manage to get that across all the time. It feels like you need to study to get the most out of the experience – which isn’t a bad thing per se, but a bit surprising. Many people will know Hypergryph as the company behind Arknights, the popular gacha game, so it’s worth noting that Ex Astris is not a title of the same category – it’s a one-time purchase JRPG without any in-game monetization. It’s a bold move for the company to go against the dominating trend and it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out commercially. Ex Astris has tw