Asdivine Menace review for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One

As I?ve written so, so, so many times before, you don?t get a lot of variety from KEMCO RPGs. Truth be told, the only reason I?ve stuck with them this long is because they?ve been consistently released on the Vita, and I?m nothing if not a sucker/completionist. Asdivine Menace marks my first time playing any of the Asdivine games — and any KEMCO game — on a non-Vita platform. It won?t surprise you to learn that the experience is exactly the same, regardless of what platform you play it on.

After all, we?re talking about games that draw pretty much exclusively from late ?80s/early ?90s JRPGs. (Occasionally they?ll take tentative steps towards 3D graphics, but those haven?t gone well.) It?s not like they need to be played on powerful machines to get the full experience. What you see here is what you could?ve gotten on pretty much any platform in the past few decades.

Not only is Asdivine Menace another KEMCO JRPG, it?s also the fourth game in the Asdivine series, which means you really, really should know what you?re getting here. You play as a god who?s irresistible to the ladies despite the fact he?s kind of a jerk, and he?s wandering around his creation for some reason to do with a great evil. Along the way he gets into turn-based battles — and lots of them, it should be noted. I had the battle frequency set to ?normal”, and it felt like I couldn?t move my characters more than a few steps outside of a village without tripping off some battle. You?re allowed to make the fights automatic, but given the sheer number of them, it doesn?t seem like it makes a huge difference.

The truly bad news about Asdivine Menace, though, is that there are microtransactions. This isn?t the first KEMCO game to feature them; I think that would be Wizards of Brandel. However, Brandel at least made up for that by being surprisingly funny (even if I don?t know if that was wholly intentional). Asdivine Menace isn?t, and it doesn?t have anything else to make up for the fact it?s trying to hit you up for money on top of paying for the game — and it even unironically talks that up during one of the many dialogue scenes.

As I?ve always said, KEMCO RPGs exist within a pretty narrow band — they?re never great, but they?re never terrible. They?re really just the same game repeated dozens of times with minor tweaks, and Asdivine Menace is no different. As far as I?m concerned, however, the microtransactions are a step too far, and you?re probably better off getting one of the other KEMCO games that falls closer to the good-ish side of the spectrum.

KEMCO provided us with a Asdivine Menace Switch code for review purposes.