I'm in the mood for a ramble, so, wall of text time~!
I'm someone who really wanted to like Platinum Games'... games. Like, I really enjoy their in-depth combat mechanics and the tight gameplay; so few other developers just nail the act of playing a game the way Platinum can! But they've always surrounded their excellent mechanics with stuff I really don't want. Bayonetta, for example. Fantastic combat system, but its surrounded by a hyper sexual protagonist, rude and gross humor, pacing problems, etc. I really wanted to like the games, but there was just so much that I disliked that I just wasn't enjoying them. I played each bayonetta game for about an hour then abandoned them. That experience made me crave that combat though, so I've been kind of helicoptering around Platinum Games, watching their every release to see if any looked promising for me to try. Neir Automata caught my eye as a potential candidate, but the more I investigated it, the less I wanted to play it. It's built around multiple playthroughs, not something I enjoy, and the final true ending is, well, to avoid spoiling anything I'll just call it "heavy-handed bologna". Its one of those "you love it or you hate it" kind of endings and I'm firmly in the hate it camp; I think how they went about it was god-awful, and they put it as a barrier for completing the game! No thanks. Even if I played it I wasn't going to finish the game anyway, so I just skipped on that one too.
Then came Astral Chain, and after investigating it a bit, I didn't hear of any nasties, and it was lauded as the most accessible Platinum game yet! So I went for it, and I've been playing through it. Currently I'm about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the way through it, and my feelings on it are... complicated. Like, on the one hand, I adore it. The combat is fantastic, the pacing is very well done with a nice mix of detectiving, side quests, puzzles, collectibles, and the bloody amazing combat systems. Did I mention the combat is amazing? It's amazing. It is easily among the best combat I have EVER played! Every action just feels so good, yet it has tremendous depth. I basically never increase difficulty in games, but the combat in Astral Chain is just so rich and deep, I actually increased its difficulty so I can fully explore it! It's just so good! This is probably the best platinum combat yet, and platinum is already known for some of the best combat in video games. I'm not exaggerating, it. is. fantastic!
But Astral Chain is far from a perfect game. Its story is good, but so far, only good. It has a lot of weird conflicts in the story in a very anime way, like, it's the end of the world, with extra-dimensional enemies invading, yet everyone's fine? Which is probably for the best in some ways, like, end of the world depression would completely ruin this game, it does not mesh with the game at all. But still, I'm still a little disappointed by it. Like, if existential dread doesn't fit your game and you aren't willing to go there in the first place, why pick a setting that would create existential dread? Maybe pick a different setting, one where you can go all out? It's just weird, and I don't understand that line of thinking as a story teller. Cool first, I guess? I don't know. But the story is enjoyable in a shounen kind of way, and it has lots of humor and pretty good writing.
The worst bits of Astral Chain for me though are when the balancing falters and the mechanics collide. It happens a LOT. Here's an example: Astral Chain is a game with a lot of collectibles and side quests, and I'm someone who likes to collect collectibles and side quests. Yay! But the game also still a spectacle fighter. It usually balances this out, but it often creates scenarios where it wants to show me cool things and I'm like, stop it, I'm trying to pick up this thing or complete this quest! For example, today I encountered one. The setting is a big (literal) bad trashing the city, and I'm pursuing them. But as always, it has collectibles and side quests and things on the way, there isn't really any real urgency (which is fine, urgency is stressful, and I don't like stress!). So I came across a string of collectibles on a bridge, and went to collect them. But then the big bad popped up. The game wanted to show me some spectacle here, and have me run away from the big bad as tons of crazy attacks happened behind me and the bridge is destroyed. But I didn't care, I just wanted it to give me by my camera control back so I could get the collectibles. It didn't. Instead, it pushed me away from the collectibles and sealed off the area behind me, collectibles unearned. UGH! This is just dumb! Any space where a game wants to take control away from the player to show them something cool should be free of all other distractions: no combat, no collectibles, nothing. Then it is ok to take camera control away and do stuff like that. Spectacle is fine! It looks cool! But spectacle is meaningless, so if it's a choice between watching flashy graphics and doing game things, basically everyone is going to do the game things and ignore the flashy scene. This kind of WHY GAME moment is surprisingly common in Astral Chain. If you are wondering, I had to close the game and restart it at an autosave, then got the collectibles while running away. Still didn't watch the spectacle - I was focusing on making sure I got the goodies while running toward the camera.
That's another thing: the save system in the game is quite bad. You can manually save, but only within the base. Out in the field, the vast majority of the game, it completely relies on auto saving. Once I missed a thing I wanted to do and wanted to go back, but it autosaved after I missed it so I would have had to restart to the beginning of the chapter in order to get it. That's terrible. In the end, I finished the chapter, then came back and got it.
Which is itself a painful process. The bad saving system wouldn't be as big of an issue if you could just go back to old areas, ala a metroidvania. But you can't unless you go "back in time" by replay old chapters. You do it with your current gear, which is sort of metroidvania-y as there are things you can't get on the first pass through, and the chapters are subdivided so you don't typically have to replay *much* of the old content to reach what you missed, but still, it's really clunky and awkward. The fact that to get things you missed you have to replay old content is just, bad. And it even likes to hide items in tiny areas that once you pass through them, they close behind you and you can only access by reloaded the old chapter and playing to that point again. Why gaaaame. I just wish Astral Chain properly embraced its metroidvania-ness and let me travel to old locations to get things I missed. It would just be SO much nicer.
Also due to how I can miss things and how many times its burned me, I'm using guides for everything I might miss. I very much prefer naturally discovering things, and really enjoy trying to collect and do all the things without guides, but this game has burned me so much with missing things and having to replay old content to get it, I've had to sacrifice that. Just, bleh.
Here's another good example of the weird conflicts this game has. So, Astral Chain has monster logs, ala the scan visor in metroid prime games, and rewards you for recording lots of monsters with goodies and the 3D model and info blurbs. You know, proper scan visor mechanics! But to record their data you need to photograph them with the photomode, not the general purpose scanner called IRIS. That makes no sense. You can't really move in photomode, you can't slow down or stop time in photomode, and *monsters still attack you*. While that's annoying, it gets compounded by the scoring system: the game scores you for playing well, and the scoring system does not give a flip about photo mode. The time and damage you take recording a monster negatively affects your score. Yuck. This is just such an easy thing to solve! Have IRIS do the recording and have photo mode be only a photo mode. And/or have photo mode slow down or pause the game. Just, anything could make this better. Oh, and to compound this even more, to display enemy health on screen, another typical scan-visor thing, you have to scan the enemy with IRIS. Just, why game.
So um, in conclusion to this bit of rambling... Astral Chain is really good! I know I've complained a lot, and well, it's earned it, but I'm still enjoying my time with it. I can't think of a game that is both so good and yet so bad at being a video game! Like, it NAILS the core fundamentals of just bit by bit gameplay, but fails so hard on the boring bits that help you get to and interact with its great gameplay. Seriously, even little things, like pause is on minus, not plus. Whhhyyyyy. But summed up, the game itself is really REALLY fun, with great pacing, good story, and combat mechanics that are some of the best I have ever played. It just has a lot of dumb choices surrounded that great gameplay. My thoughts may change when I finish the game, but so far, I'm really enjoying it. Hopefully this will be the first Platinum game I ever complete! (unless you count Okami~)
I'm someone who really wanted to like Platinum Games'... games. Like, I really enjoy their in-depth combat mechanics and the tight gameplay; so few other developers just nail the act of playing a game the way Platinum can! But they've always surrounded their excellent mechanics with stuff I really don't want. Bayonetta, for example. Fantastic combat system, but its surrounded by a hyper sexual protagonist, rude and gross humor, pacing problems, etc. I really wanted to like the games, but there was just so much that I disliked that I just wasn't enjoying them. I played each bayonetta game for about an hour then abandoned them. That experience made me crave that combat though, so I've been kind of helicoptering around Platinum Games, watching their every release to see if any looked promising for me to try. Neir Automata caught my eye as a potential candidate, but the more I investigated it, the less I wanted to play it. It's built around multiple playthroughs, not something I enjoy, and the final true ending is, well, to avoid spoiling anything I'll just call it "heavy-handed bologna". Its one of those "you love it or you hate it" kind of endings and I'm firmly in the hate it camp; I think how they went about it was god-awful, and they put it as a barrier for completing the game! No thanks. Even if I played it I wasn't going to finish the game anyway, so I just skipped on that one too.
Then came Astral Chain, and after investigating it a bit, I didn't hear of any nasties, and it was lauded as the most accessible Platinum game yet! So I went for it, and I've been playing through it. Currently I'm about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the way through it, and my feelings on it are... complicated. Like, on the one hand, I adore it. The combat is fantastic, the pacing is very well done with a nice mix of detectiving, side quests, puzzles, collectibles, and the bloody amazing combat systems. Did I mention the combat is amazing? It's amazing. It is easily among the best combat I have EVER played! Every action just feels so good, yet it has tremendous depth. I basically never increase difficulty in games, but the combat in Astral Chain is just so rich and deep, I actually increased its difficulty so I can fully explore it! It's just so good! This is probably the best platinum combat yet, and platinum is already known for some of the best combat in video games. I'm not exaggerating, it. is. fantastic!
But Astral Chain is far from a perfect game. Its story is good, but so far, only good. It has a lot of weird conflicts in the story in a very anime way, like, it's the end of the world, with extra-dimensional enemies invading, yet everyone's fine? Which is probably for the best in some ways, like, end of the world depression would completely ruin this game, it does not mesh with the game at all. But still, I'm still a little disappointed by it. Like, if existential dread doesn't fit your game and you aren't willing to go there in the first place, why pick a setting that would create existential dread? Maybe pick a different setting, one where you can go all out? It's just weird, and I don't understand that line of thinking as a story teller. Cool first, I guess? I don't know. But the story is enjoyable in a shounen kind of way, and it has lots of humor and pretty good writing.
The worst bits of Astral Chain for me though are when the balancing falters and the mechanics collide. It happens a LOT. Here's an example: Astral Chain is a game with a lot of collectibles and side quests, and I'm someone who likes to collect collectibles and side quests. Yay! But the game also still a spectacle fighter. It usually balances this out, but it often creates scenarios where it wants to show me cool things and I'm like, stop it, I'm trying to pick up this thing or complete this quest! For example, today I encountered one. The setting is a big (literal) bad trashing the city, and I'm pursuing them. But as always, it has collectibles and side quests and things on the way, there isn't really any real urgency (which is fine, urgency is stressful, and I don't like stress!). So I came across a string of collectibles on a bridge, and went to collect them. But then the big bad popped up. The game wanted to show me some spectacle here, and have me run away from the big bad as tons of crazy attacks happened behind me and the bridge is destroyed. But I didn't care, I just wanted it to give me by my camera control back so I could get the collectibles. It didn't. Instead, it pushed me away from the collectibles and sealed off the area behind me, collectibles unearned. UGH! This is just dumb! Any space where a game wants to take control away from the player to show them something cool should be free of all other distractions: no combat, no collectibles, nothing. Then it is ok to take camera control away and do stuff like that. Spectacle is fine! It looks cool! But spectacle is meaningless, so if it's a choice between watching flashy graphics and doing game things, basically everyone is going to do the game things and ignore the flashy scene. This kind of WHY GAME moment is surprisingly common in Astral Chain. If you are wondering, I had to close the game and restart it at an autosave, then got the collectibles while running away. Still didn't watch the spectacle - I was focusing on making sure I got the goodies while running toward the camera.
That's another thing: the save system in the game is quite bad. You can manually save, but only within the base. Out in the field, the vast majority of the game, it completely relies on auto saving. Once I missed a thing I wanted to do and wanted to go back, but it autosaved after I missed it so I would have had to restart to the beginning of the chapter in order to get it. That's terrible. In the end, I finished the chapter, then came back and got it.
Which is itself a painful process. The bad saving system wouldn't be as big of an issue if you could just go back to old areas, ala a metroidvania. But you can't unless you go "back in time" by replay old chapters. You do it with your current gear, which is sort of metroidvania-y as there are things you can't get on the first pass through, and the chapters are subdivided so you don't typically have to replay *much* of the old content to reach what you missed, but still, it's really clunky and awkward. The fact that to get things you missed you have to replay old content is just, bad. And it even likes to hide items in tiny areas that once you pass through them, they close behind you and you can only access by reloaded the old chapter and playing to that point again. Why gaaaame. I just wish Astral Chain properly embraced its metroidvania-ness and let me travel to old locations to get things I missed. It would just be SO much nicer.
Also due to how I can miss things and how many times its burned me, I'm using guides for everything I might miss. I very much prefer naturally discovering things, and really enjoy trying to collect and do all the things without guides, but this game has burned me so much with missing things and having to replay old content to get it, I've had to sacrifice that. Just, bleh.
Here's another good example of the weird conflicts this game has. So, Astral Chain has monster logs, ala the scan visor in metroid prime games, and rewards you for recording lots of monsters with goodies and the 3D model and info blurbs. You know, proper scan visor mechanics! But to record their data you need to photograph them with the photomode, not the general purpose scanner called IRIS. That makes no sense. You can't really move in photomode, you can't slow down or stop time in photomode, and *monsters still attack you*. While that's annoying, it gets compounded by the scoring system: the game scores you for playing well, and the scoring system does not give a flip about photo mode. The time and damage you take recording a monster negatively affects your score. Yuck. This is just such an easy thing to solve! Have IRIS do the recording and have photo mode be only a photo mode. And/or have photo mode slow down or pause the game. Just, anything could make this better. Oh, and to compound this even more, to display enemy health on screen, another typical scan-visor thing, you have to scan the enemy with IRIS. Just, why game.
So um, in conclusion to this bit of rambling... Astral Chain is really good! I know I've complained a lot, and well, it's earned it, but I'm still enjoying my time with it. I can't think of a game that is both so good and yet so bad at being a video game! Like, it NAILS the core fundamentals of just bit by bit gameplay, but fails so hard on the boring bits that help you get to and interact with its great gameplay. Seriously, even little things, like pause is on minus, not plus. Whhhyyyyy. But summed up, the game itself is really REALLY fun, with great pacing, good story, and combat mechanics that are some of the best I have ever played. It just has a lot of dumb choices surrounded that great gameplay. My thoughts may change when I finish the game, but so far, I'm really enjoying it. Hopefully this will be the first Platinum game I ever complete! (unless you count Okami~)
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