The direct sequel to Asdivine Dios! Asdivine Menace has an improved weapon fusion system (good) and adds a system to level up skills (which can get grindy)

This review is for the PS5 version of Asdivine Menace, which starts the player off with 1000 Shop currency and makes it relatively easy to grind more through random battles. This is extremely helpful, since certain Shop purchases aid immensely in leveling up skills or surviving the early game on the higher difficulties.

Asdivine Menace is the direct sequel to Asdivine Dios. Playing Asdivine Dios first is strongly recommended. Although the story recaps highlights from Asdivine Dios and is set 100 years later, there are lots of returning characters, and the plot will be much harder to follow if the player isn’t familiar with the previous game.

The stories of both games stand out because the protagonist, Izayoi, is not a youthful mortal like in most RPGs. Izayoi is the immortal creator-deity of the world Asdivine, and his companions are long-lived spirits (not necessarily immortal, but their lifespans are measured in centuries). In Asdivine Menace, Izayoi embarks on a quest to save not only his own world, but also other worlds in the galaxy, each created by a different creator-deity. Three new spirit companions (all of them female) join his quest.

The “romantic comedy” element of Asdivine games is toned down in Asdivine Menace. Izayoi can befriend and grow close to each of his spirit companions, but this is not necessarily romantic closeness. There are no over-the-top “spirits indulge in lewd mental fantasies involving Izayoi” scenes, although there are some “Freudian slip” scenes and banter.

One of the three spirits, Noelle, appears, acts, and talks like a young child, even though she is hundreds of years old and has powerful magic. There are two questionable scenes involving Noelle.

One storyline NPC is far too attracted to Noelle; this is played for laughs but comes across as very unfunny and involves unwanted touching. Noelle consents to a “group hug” with the NPC only because Izayoi is also participating, and nothing goes any farther than a hug. One ending plays with Noelle’s attraction to Izayoi and wanting to become his “bride” (Izayoi seems a little confused about the prospect); it’s also clearly intended as comedy.

Because of these scenes, I would say that Asdivine Menace is not a game for young children. Not unless an adult is present to supervise, discuss, and emphasize that unwanted touching is never OK.

As a direct sequel, Asdivine Menace reuses graphical assets and some music from Asdivine Dios. Thankfully all battle music and the “final dungeon” music is new, and quite catchy. The gameplay of Asdivine Menace is mostly but not completely similar to its predecessor.

The most welcome improvements are to the weapon fusion system. Weapon enhancements only need to be raised to 30% to transfer now, instead of an unbearable 50%. Fusing weapons with the same enhancement results in a larger boost to the fused weapon. It’s now possible to actually customize weapons that improve one’s character before the postgame!

However, “delete fossils” still remove only the rightmost weapon enhancement. Improperly customizing a weapon can be painful (I recommend saving the game before customizing). Sometimes the player will just have to deal with bad enhancements on a good weapon.

A brand new weapon enhancement, “limit break percentage”, is severely overpowered and also very rare. It increases the chance of performing “limit breaks”, or free attacks with skills. Chaining skills over and over again is absurdly broken and can potentially trivialize boss battles. “Limit breaks” also trigger from using offensive magic.

Perhaps the biggest change is that skills can now be leveled up. Leveled-up skills do much more damage, and every skill gets unique bonuses (such as buffing party members, debuffing the enemy, inflicting bad status, or dishing out more hits) at levels 20 and 50. This makes skill usage much more appealing, but can get very grindy.

Furthermore, the player doesn’t know what special bonuses a skill will unlock at level 20+ unless they level it up or check a guide. I recommend checking a guide. Even with Shop purchases to increase skill level-ups, grinding skills up to level 20+ takes time. It is impossible to max out all skills in a normal playthrough, and endgame skills require so much grinding to power up that most of them are nearly useless.

I say “nearly” because leveling up or maxing out endgame skills does have one purpose: to obtain high scores in postgame challenges. There is a 20-turn damage challenge, and a “Training Accelerator” that lets the player battle an infinite(?) series of scaled-up battles. If you thought the ultimate optional superboss was rough, wait until you run into a scaled-up superboss during the Training Accelerator!

Parallel to skills being powered up, magic has been powered down. Like Asdivine Dios, each character has an affinity for one of three magic types; equipping certain rings is required to learn or cast the other types. Unlike Asdivine Dios, offensive magic is pitifully weak compared to leveled-up skills. Even the game-breaking Galaxy X spell hits like a wet noodle (although it still delays the enemy’s turn).

Buff/debuff support magic is still strong, but only spells that target individual players or enemies are quick to use. All multi-target buff, debuff, or healing magic is restricted to Unison spells, which have a long cast time, take two party members’ turns, get canceled if either member is KO’d or hit with bad status, and have a cooldown period for the initiator.

There are no skill-based Unisons, only spell-based ones. The skill-based Unisons from Asdivine Dios have been removed.

In my judgment, the battle system of Asdivine Menace is more fun than the battle system of Asdivine Dios. Leveling up skills gives even the most routine battle value. Maxing out stats, skills, or weapons is a slog, but the player doesn’t need ultra-high stats to earn the true ending, and doesn’t need max stats on more than one character to finish all postgame challenges.

Another nice improvement over Asdivine Dios is that all trophies/achievements for Asdivine Menace are reasonable to get. There are no achievements for tedious tasks like “open every treasure chest” or “raise a weapon to +999” this time around.

Overall, Asdivine Menace is a worthy sequel to Asdivine Dios. The story retains the refreshing twist of playing as a creator-deity instead of a typical teenaged hero. The gameplay is notably better.

Just be aware that playing Asdivine Dios first is borderline required to follow the story, and that a couple cringe-inducing scenes involving Noelle make Asdivine Menace unsuitable for young children.

A Worthy Sequel to Asdivine Dios

Asdivine Menace is a direct sequel to Asdivine Dios that runs on a similar underlying engine, so many of my remarks here will reference and make comparisons to Dios.

The characters are very well fleshed out and really add to the storyline. One nice thing about Menace (as compared to Dios) is that the romance side of the characters was heavily toned down. Characters like Noelle and Nemesis are memorable and have their unique aspects. The plot on the other hand could use some work; it’s another pretty generic one that is more or less a continuation of the plot from Asdivine Dios. If you found Dios’s plot to be okay, then this one is around the same quality.

The game’s mechanics are fairly typical, and if you played the prequel Asdivine Dios, they are almost entirely the same. You have MP to cast magic and BP to use skills. Unlike MP, BP recharges each time. One difference from the prequel is that in this game, you can level up skills by using them frequently. This makes them more powerful, and when the skills reach level 20 and 50, they gain extra effects. The downside to this system is it somewhat locks you in to using certain skills based on choices you make early, and this is an issue since you do not know what the additional effects are in advance. There is also a crafting system that is mostly unchanged from Dios though they did make it where you can transfer and upgrade weapons sooner by lowering the requirements. Overall, if you liked Dios mechanically, this one is basically the same but slightly better.

Balance is much worse in this game compared to its prequel. In particular, magic has been nerfed into oblivion; whereas it was useful in Dios, it deals far less damage than your skills in Menace. This might be a side effect from allowing skills to be upgraded. They also added charge time to Quattro Pressure, one of the more useful spells from Dios, rendering it useless. Gold is still as plentiful as ever, and it is even easier to maintain enough BP to use all the skills you want. Overall pacing seems reasonable enough if you play with double encounter rate though bosses still tend to be much stronger (as in you need to grind a level or two stronger) than the surrounding field enemies.

The game feels somewhat polished. In some areas, the game feels a step forward and in others a step backwards from the prequel. For instance, translation errors and typos seem to be much more common in this version. (They are still relatively rare, but if you are reading attentively, you will notice quite a few.) Using the upgraded Death Slash skill against enemies in the rearguard always results in a delay for some odd reason. The same bug from Asdivine Dios where saving over a file that has already
seen the ending once (while committing to the same ending) exists in this game as well.

Overall, if you liked Dios, you will like this game. It is around the same quality; the story and characters are somewhat better than in Dios, but the game’s balance is slightly worse. I would not recommend buying the premium version as it is rather expensive ($7 or so) and the lack of replayability means it is not a great deal. If the premium version is on sell for say $4, then you should consider buying it to support the developers. (The perks are certainly not worth it although no ads is always nice.)

Pretty good I suppose

I love the storyline and humor/emotional. However, this was my first rpg and I could have used a more informative tutorial. I mean, I spent an hour trying to figure out how to use unisons, since the help section wasn’t very, er, helpful, in my situation.
Also, WHY is it so difficult to get the pearls you need for Maid Weapons sdkfjdkls
Lastly, Murk Abyss is a nightmare, even with the minimap.

Where can I find the 6 bright pearls?
I need them for the door that gives Noelle maid’s weapon.

Very good one !