Astrae Oratio | Hands-off Preview

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Genghis Husameddin

3 hours ago

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Dynamis One and NC’s upcoming “Shindenki”1 Magic role-playing game title ‘Astrae Oratio’ is remarkably pristine for what is otherwise seems to be the opening acts of a slice-of-life story about witches of Tokyo in the year 1989. For the time period and anime of the cohort it takes great inspiration from, it lacks the dirtiness of the animation cels that were hurriedly pushed through to meet deadlines and its colour choices are far brighter, more vidid, and far more beautiful.

That’s the first thing I noticed when we first got a look at the announcement of the game months back. The art style appealed to me, largely because I love when worlds and characters are drawn with a soft composition that doesn’t necessarily take away from their ability to be true to themselves—ergo, take themselves and their world seriously. Though that left me wondering what sort of game Astra Oratio would turn out to be—up until earlier this week, where I got a hands-off look at the game with the publisher and some of the development team.

Magical Index

I’m a sucker for stars. Starry nights. Astrae Oratio’s beginning sequence (not pictured above) has the player take up the mantle of three “Magicians” (that is their official moniker but, I mean, they’re witches) from the Minato ward as they duke it out with a Ms. Kujo Yuria from Kyoto after she emerges from an unfortunate helicopter crash landing. Despite the raging fire bellowing from the once expensive piece of equipment, the softly-shaded battleground and the beautiful star-filled sky took up-front-and-centre as Tanaka Erin of long-haired pink braided fame unleashed a flurry of spells at the otherwise antagonistic Kyoto witch.

In Astrae Oratio, players will commandeer a team of three magicians as they take on various foes that stand in their way. Each turn, you will have a set of Action Points to spend, but it’s not as straightforward as firing off all your basic attacks. There is an Active Phase and Engage Phase, and depending on your chosen actions in the prior phase, your actions may win out against the opponents or you might find yourself on the defensive side of things.

This is where the “Engage” part comes in—enemies will respond as you do, and you’ll have to plan out those Action Points wisely lest you find yourself getting staggered.

Yes, so, like every game on the planet these days, Astrae Oratio has a stagger system. Stagger an enemy and they’re vulnerable to your best attacks, which is where a high damage-dealing character would be tagged in to clean up the mess. But mess up enough times, and your characters will find themselves in an endangered state, making them unusable until some time passes.

Enemies will also attempt a preemptive maneuver where they will attack before your action can take place. In moments like these, you’ll need to counter by timing your parry. Unlike certain awful renditions of this, Astrae indicates an enemy’s precise weak point by presenting a bar with two indicators that will be helpful in winning these standoffs. That doesn’t mean timing this parry will be easy, but you won’t be stuck watching enemies file their fingernails prior to gutting you like a fish with split-second differences.

Sometimes, an enemy might deploy a powerful attack that you’ll simply need to tank. How you do that will depend on your party composition.

The Magicians of Tokyo are a scrappy but resourceful sort. The characters I got to take a look at ranged from bubbly, silly, mischievous, to the one personality that cancels all of the above out. In Tanaka’s case, her meek demeanour didn’t stop the combat from getting visceral. As players and their opponents take turns, you’ll find that the battlefield will shift in or against your favour. It didn’t seem to be a factor that influenced gameplay and I didn’t get an answer on that, but relatively small and subtle blip plays a profound effect on the presentation that the otherwise welcoming visual style wouldn’t immediately imply.

The game’s latest trailer offers glimpses of this if you need to see this in motion:

Shunin, Shuujin?

Despite the punchy fight, the Yuria fight ends comically. Ms. Kujo clearly can’t handle these three street punks taking her on and just when she’s about to get “serious”, a billboard above comes crashing down—it’s contents reading a fish making a kissy face. Apparently, that was enough for Kujo to jump out of the rubble that should have finished her, screaming that her “first kiss was stolen”. And that’s Tanaka and company’s cue to bugger off into the starry night skies of Tokyo.

When you’re not taking on combat challenges, you’ll first be going through the game’s initial story act that follows the Minato Magicians. The first story chapter we were given a look at featured a voice acted visual novel segment akin to the likes of a TYPE-MOON production, with CGs backdropping a transparent text box with the monologues of Tanaka Erin. As she prepares to head for school, she ponders the injustices of the world that she sees, her actions, and those that may treat her existence with disdain.

This monologue contrasts the comedic beginnings of Astrae Oratio, but it’s not all somber. Because Ms. Tanaka signs off her thoughts with kindness: wishing that those people, everyone, find happiness.

Dynamis One’s preview stream of Astrae Oratio was a short one and while it was enough for me to grasp the core gameplay elements of the coming magical fantasy-meets-reality title, obviously story details were kept mum. Our playable character is a cat, who is referred to as “Shunin”—a public official of some sort of Bureau that seemingly manages magical incidents and the like. Why is he a cat? Who can say! Why is a Magician from Tokyo going up against a Kyoto one a bad thing? Time will tell. I love the cat, though. It’s just a spitting image of a cuter Salem.

Everything I listed off here is by memory with a bit of a helpful serving from the press kit, so some details might not be 100% accurate, but my feelings about the world of Astrae Oratio are steadfast. It’s a beautiful game, clearly attempting to evoke warm memories many may have (or not at all!), vivid memories from the turning of the century. It doesn’t have the exact visual nuances of animation from that era, but rather its art style is a contemporary reflection of long times past seen. It’s a beautiful game, even as it targets low-end devices such as the Galaxy S20+.

I know some who are tuned into the gaming sphere might be familiar with Dynamis One’s origins and may not exactly be enthused to give Astrae Oratio a whirl. I don’t blame those people, considering how tightly-knit that particular fanbase and their subculture are. It’s certainly not my job to convince those people to play the game, either, but what I can say is this: the developer’s new entry is fairly unique in its presentation that offers a stunning anime-styled RPG with the bones of what could be a compelling combat system.

As for me, it is a bit ironic that I speak of “warmth” from the turn of the century when I was born on the cusp of it. But yet much of my 2000s were spent on media, fiction and nonfiction, from decades prior and even the modern anime works we know now are a far cry from the renditions of animation and other mediums that were slowly but surely adapting to digital platforms.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Astrae Oratio when it comes to mobile platforms—and PC thereafter—in 2027. If a trip back to TMS-era animation with mystical magician and witchery vibes are your calling, I think you ought to do the same. ∎

1. 新伝綺 (Shindenki) is subgenre of urban fantasy in which supernatural and extraordinary elements such as magic are combined with the everyday spaces that exist in reality. ↩︎