Astral Chain

2025-03-19
Astral Chain is another one of those games like Fantasy Life for me where over the years since I've played it it pops up in my head and I'm like "Man, Astral Chain fucking RULED, huh?" At the time I was like yeah this is great but now I'm like no, it's excellent, and absolutely a top 5 Switch game for me. But why? Oh, so many reasons.

First you get slapped upside the head with that banger anime opening song, Savior. And you're like ok Platinum you have this weeb's FULL attention. Next thing you know it you're on the back of a motorcycle with a Slide button and your eyes are getting blasted with Astral Chain's glitzy, shiny, futuristic world full of reds and blues and you are delighted, because for my money this is Platinum's best looking game. Soon after you're getting introduced to your Legion, a robot-monster combat companion you swing around on a chain--an ASTRAL chain--and then they just absolutely throw the book at you with a bunch of combo moves, a ton of tutorials that despite their count do not explain everything, and then you're off to the races. There's just enough depth here to keep it engaging for it's 15+ hour runtime and especially because the plethora of cool looking and fun boss fights. Well...minus the final boss who is an OHKO-filled slog who also coincides with the story, which was middling at best the whole way through, reaching peak incoherence.

And you could take each of those elements and pick them apart. "But the combat isn't as good as Bayonetta." "It's not as interesting as Nier Automata." "The story is stinky trash garbage." And those are all valid. But somehow I don't care because you can play as a detective doing your little investigations and you listen to absolute prog metal bops when you're fighting bosses and you can fight someone in a dog mascot costume and customize your dumb future-cop with hats and shirts and... well, that's it. I look at Bayonetta and say, sure, that's a good game. It's fine. But Astral Chain's got vibes baby. And for a dilettante like me, vibes are everything.

2025-03-19
It's one of those games that every time I remember I'm like "That game fucking RULED." The music FUCK yeah. That anime intro theme and all the badass prog metal shit. God and it's sooo fucking stylish. I think it might be my favorite looking Platinum game.

I kind of want to bump this game's rating up just because for whatever reason it's like a really memorable heart pick for me and feels somewhat underrated and forgotten.

(2021???)
Super fun game. Reminds me a ton of Devil May Cry. Hyper stylish, fun combat, ratings on your performance in combat, and tons of bosses. Also it's pretty difficult at times. It's a mixture of a bunch of different genres. There's kind of detective sections. There's weird motorcycle combat sections. There's puzzles. Platforming. It really mixes things up which is nice.

The combat is actually really fun. They kind of just toss the whole book at you immediately with a bunch of different combo moves and then keep expanding it as the game goes along by adding more Legions to your arsenal. It's kind of overwhelming at first, especially since they just legit throw you into a super long series of rote tutorials that are short and don't really give you time to practice in any way that isn't abysmally boring (doing the same tutorial mission over and over). But in the end I was able to basically use the same combo for the whole game and still enjoyed it.

Bosses are pretty damn fun. With the exception of the final boss who is total horseshit and has OHKO moves and is just kind of tedious with way too many phases. Way too much of a spike in difficulty.

It's also a very stylish game. The music is awesome. Almost all the combat music is like prog metal which is sick. The outfits are cool, and there's a whole "unlock different pieces of clothing for your outfit" system. Which actually was sick in theory but they make getting the unlocks too rare and far between which was kind of lame. The anime portions are very cool. The use of color and the futurism of the city is very cool.

Story is pretty trash. Barely worth mentioning. It's very forgettable and almost entirely incoherent. Kind of shame but only a minor detractor from a Cool Game.

Overall totally worth a playthrough. IT didn't overstay its welcome and I had fun pretty much the entirety of my like 18 hours or so playing it.