This sci-fantasy RPG came out of nowhere and had pretty much everything stacked against it, but somehow I ended up loving it anyway

I do not like mobile games, nor do I really play many of them. I've got nothing inherently against the platform; I know from experience that some mobile games play great elsewhere, especially on PC. But if I'm in a game-playing mood, I'm sure to have access to more powerful devices with bigger screens, so I generally just don't play games on my phone. It also doesn't help that my stupid defective eyeballs get all starburst-y and migraine-y if I look at small screens for too long, which is frankly the bigger reason I avoid mobile gaming.

I say all of this not just because I love to complain, but to put into perspective just how good Ex Astris, a new mobile-only RPG, had to be in order to get me on board. And to be clear up front, I am very on board. I'm on board like a skateboarding sailor. It's a new turn-based game from Arknights studio and gacha powerhouse Hypergryph, and in what can only be described as a miracle, it's completely microtransaction-free, billed as the first "premium 3D RPG" from the publisher. (I now hope it's the first of many.) Not only that, it's just $10 on Android and iOS, no strings attached. Hypergryph chiseled a hunk out of its mountain of gacha money and spent it on an honest-to-goodness, no-nonsense RPG, and it absolutely whips.

All in on Allindo

There's always emulators like Bluestacks, but part of me does wish Ex Astris was on PC or console. That's partly because of the eyeball thing – this has joined the exclusive list of games that convinced me to endure physical pain. But it's primarily because it could absolutely hold its own on major platforms and I wish I could recommend it to those audiences without asking, "Don't you guys have phones?" (For the record, I do have a phone, a Samsung S23, and it ran this game great.) It is not 'good by the standards of mobile games.' Take it from me, someone who doesn't really know the standards of mobile games. This is just a good-ass RPG, and it's worth playing even if it's your first mobile experience.

Ex Astris begins with stoic, Earth-born investigator Yan exploring the fantastical, ever-sunny planet Allindo with a blue-eyed cinnamon roll named Vi3 (pronounced Vee) and her mystical dragon owl named Manganese. These characters become the default party of three, but you can sub in what looks like several others as you meet them throughout the story, which whisks you around Allindo in a futuristic RV where you can rest up between excursions and cook meals for combat buffs using gathered ingredients. The load times between areas are a bit long, but I do love the homey vibe of the RV.

I'm only a few hours into Ex Astris so I don't have the best grasp on the story yet, but what I can say is that it's presented well and with enough mystery to hold my attention. There's clear bad blood between the Earth-born and the Allindish, so Yan's interactions with the locals, often smoothed over by Vi, are interesting to watch. Voice acting is plentiful and rock-solid, too, even for side characters. The narrative throughline is bio-organic tech tied to a resource called Astrom which, I gather, is to Allindo almost what Coral is to Armored Core 6's Rubicon – nature's lifeblood as well as a catalyst for research and conflict.

Allindo itself is the star of the show for me. It begins as a pastel dreamscape baked in the never-setting sun, every new story destination lovelier than the last. Ivory structures pop out from seas of waving, painterly grass – both green and blue – flanked by sloping mountains reaching for the clouds. On the other side of the orbit-locked planet, night is eternal, blanketing life in contrasting blacks and reds that frame a harsher beauty. It's a truly gorgeous game – a joy to explore when rooting around for chests and other secrets, and a treat to take in through many, many cutscenes. All that being said, it's the combat that really sold me on Ex Astris.

Taptical

I was a little unclear when Hypergryph called this a hybrid turn-based action RPG, but now I see exactly what it meant. It's a turn-based game where you reactively dodge enemy attacks and combo your own, and both sides of this exchange feel great.

Ex Astris is turn-based in the strictest sense, but turns sort of happen all at once. Your team goes, then the enemies go. There's no one-at-a-time turn order. You spend all your action points (AP) attacking, and then when the enemies take their turn you tap dodge or block at just the right time to reduce incoming damage, deal extra stagger, or trigger other bonus effects. You simply tap your party members to attack, their skills unleashed in the same sequence you arranged them in the planning menu, but they still feel good to land thanks to lavish animations. The same is true of blocking and parrying, which pump out truly delicious sound effects and slow-mo. These simple processes are elevated by so many fascinating variables, and there's a delightful sense of timing and tactility to it all that few turn-based games manage.

Ideally, you'll start a fight by hitting an enemy in the overworld, activating bonus effects based on who your party leader is and slipping into a smooth battle transition. You'll probably only have one or two AP on your first turn, but you can do so much with it using careful ordering. All party members have Wave and Particle stances, each with their own assigned moves. These are essentially two loadouts with three skills each, and you can swap stances (but not mid-combo) based on what you're fighting. Many skills are stance-agonistic, too, so you can really get creative on how you assign things. It's sort of like programming combos, similar to games like Tales of Berseria.

My current favorite combo can turn just one AP into a string of five attacks – often enough to stagger weak enemies and enable an all-out attack where you just tap everyone as much as you can to spam attacks freely, easily racking up 50 or 60 hits. There's a Xenoblade Chronicles 2-type system of launching and downing enemies, and landing aerial strikes or downed attacks will grant bonus AP to keep your combo going. Starting skills, when used first in a combo, also refund one AP, which adds another wrinkle to how you order your attacks. All of these things combine to form combos like this: use a starting skill with Yan that lifts the target, aerial and drop them with Manganese, tap Vi for a downed strike that lifts again, add in another aerial with Manganese, and then drop them one more time with Yan for bonus damage.

I don't even have all of the skills unlocked for the few party members I have – their mostly linear skill trees have 28 items, and I have about a third of them – yet it's already engrossing to create combos like this. You're directly encouraged to go nuts with it, too, because overkilling enemies nets bonus rewards. I've taken to using a lift-focused Wave combo on smaller targets, with Particle stance skills bringing downed and AoE hits for bosses and groups. There are also modifiers that affect how you approach fights, with some enemies taking defensive positions that you can shatter with collectible, upgradable, and customizable gadgets called Entropiths. On top of that, characters like Yan can generate bonus AP every few turns, further extending your plays and letting you go beyond the same familiar combos. It's remarkably dynamic for such a simple-looking system (which has some clean UI).

All of this makes good use of a touch screen, too. There is the mobile problem of the screen being the controller and your hands therefore getting in the way at times, but that's kind of inevitable, and not terribly obstructive. Ex Astris could easily be translated to a gamepad or keyboard, but it's genuinely fun to physically tap all these things on my phone. Sometimes you have to block color-coded attacks with certain characters, tagging them in before defending. Some enemies use multi-hit attacks that require tighter parry timing. Once you hit 100% charge, you can use an ultimate on a specific character by dragging an energy orb to them mid-combo. It's all very intuitive even for mobile noobs, and there may be nobody on this Earth more qualified to say that than me.

I went into Ex Astris with high hopes, in no small part because I would love to see more companies like Hypergryph make more premium games like this, whether they're mobile-exclusive or (preferably) not. There are more than enough free-to-play and gacha games in this space, and far too few self-contained, extremely fairly priced games like this. At $10, Ex Astris feels like a steal. It's just a cool game that I want to finish now (after Hypergryph provided a code), and which happens to be on mobile – a welcome surprise in what's fast becoming the year of JRPGs.