Astral Chain (Nintendo Switch)

Astral Chain was a game I wasn't quite sure whether to buy - I have a mixed history with Platinum Games. I loved Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising, but couldn't get on with Vanquish or The Wonderful 101. When they do things well, they are amazing, but sometimes their more experimental concepts don't really make much sense to me or give me much satisfaction. However, I heard a ton of praise and high scores online so decided I'd take the plunge. The game had visuals that looked great, Bayonetta-like enemies and had a Legion system that sounded uncannily like Chaos Legion, a Capcom game I loved on the PS2.However, I've found myself frustrated by design ideas throughout the whole game, and soon got tired of the game's combat and storyline once I realised it just isn't what it could have been.The game's missions (called Files) are long affairs that typically take a couple of hours each.The first section of most Files involves visiting the game's futuristic Police HQ for story, briefing, training, shopping for items and customisation. Then you next wander around a small semi-free roam environment talking to civilians, doing little side quests and finding out clues toward the main case of that chapter, and move onto the final segment of the mission which is a more linear affair battling through enemies with your Legions.The problem I find is that every has good ideas, but execution that wasn't that great. The game's story is slow and predictable, and the cutscenes are lazily dubbed with distracting lack of lip-sync. The visuals work well in combat, but it all feels a bit lifeless when characters are standing around talking in the office.The side quests feel tacked on and not particularly interesting - I love games like Yakuza with their charming and silly side characters, but helping the citizens felt lazily thrown together and offered boring rewards - almost always just some credits to spend in the shop.While the city's areas look nice, I found myself hitting invisible barriers at the edges of areas that feel like they are more open. I would have enjoyed exploring the game a lot more of they had stitched the city together as a big open world like Batman, or otherwise lost these segments in favour of focusing purely on the linear combat stages. Doing sometimes upto an hour without much combat between the linear stages just had me feeling like I had to get back into the flow of the game's fighting when it rolled around again.In terms of combat, you start off with a simple baton and gun initially, before earning your first Legion to fight by your side. The main character's attacks feel weak and there isn't a huge amount of variety in combos, so its mostly a matter of mashing attack and dodging while you command your Legion.The Legions have more options available. They automatically attack when active, connected to you by a chain. You can manually move your Legion around to bind enemies with the chain, or interrupt a charging enemy to send them reeling back, and later learn cooldown moves to have them activate stronger combos or do follow-up attacks to your own.It all sounded good to me, but in practice I find combat both boring and messy. The main character doesnt have many options, so it's more about using your Legion while mashing away and dodging where you can.However, I found the controls for the Legion incredibly messy, and even after 20 hours felt really uncomfortable. Between manipulating the Legions' positions, using their own attacks, special link attacks and using the chain, it doesn't all flow together in a way that felt natural as the way they are each controlled feels clunky and messy rather than smooth (especially compared to say, Metal Gear Rising). And when you do use all the moves, it doesn't really seem any more effective or efficient to do so, so I didn't find myself needing to utilise every ability in meaningful ways.The Legions themselves seemed cool, until I realised that in combat it never really felt much different which one I used. Aside from occasionally switching to the ranged Legion for flying enemies, I'd execute the same few available combos and link attacks, half the time not even caring which Legion was active. The game's visuals in combat are often flashy and messy to the point I couldn't really focus on what my Legion was doing.With the main character's own attacks being limited, its not like playing say, Bayonetta, with an AI partner. It's like having a basic character with a few combos while relying on an AI to fight on the side and occasionally activate damaging moves with a button press. I really could have enjoyed the combat a lot more if the main character had more combat potential, even if it was more strategic things like juggling enemies into combos than dealing big damage.At around the third file, the game opened up most of it's options and I felt like it waa getting interesting. But by the sixth file I found combat just felt the same every time. Every enemy was dealt with in pretty much the same way (with a few exceptions like these little creatures that bury themselves and shield other creatures), and I just found myself wishing each mission would hurry up.I don't like to sound negative, but after reading so many positive reviews I am just confused what other people were getting out of it. The visuals are cool and the designs are nice, but it's just so *boring*. I honestly found myself trying to force myself to finish the game because I'd paid full price and hoped it would pick up, but 20 hours in I gave up. Watching the game in trailers, it looked fantastic - but with a controller in my hand it just felt tedious and repetitive.Unfortunately, this is one of those Platinum Games that just didn't work for me. It feels kind of half baked - and compared to say, Devil May Cry 5, I got so much less bang for my buck.

This game totally blew me away, I got it expecting a fun little hack and slash game but it totally went beyond that. Gameplay is deep and interesting and there are a lot of fun and thrilling puzzles alongside combat and recon work. Visuals are stunning especially for the Switch. I love this game!

I was very much looking forward to playing this game, all the promotional material had me drawn in and i thought this would be a good fit for my game preference.However, the combat really disappointed me, yes there are some things to master but for the most part it is repetitive, chaotic and frustrating at times.I've only got about halfway through the game so far and am struggling to find the motivation to continue, hopefully there will be a quiet period when i can revisit the game and hopefully discover some hidden love for it that i haven't found yet.

The plot is incredibly cliché and has been done to death and basic, with a very unsatisfying ending too.VA is decent with a couple of characters (Yoseph and Akira) sounding like typical anime VAs that I find cringe worthy.The environment, you have the Ark, where the citizens live, and the astral plane, a dimension existing outside the Ark. Both environments seem very 'samey' particularly the astral plane. Areas in the Ark also could have been so much better, I never really liked going back to it and I never really missed it enough when I was away from the game. But this could be forgiven due to the hardware limitations of the Switch.Combat gameplay – it’s not button mashing, and you do have to put some thought into which legion you have to use, depending on the enemy type that is. But, personally, at times it does feel like you’re simply just using QTEs to execute most of your moves, except the game masks it well and makes it seem like you’re ‘syncing’ attacks, most games are blatant and just give a button prompt, here, you get a flash after a series of melee attacks using one button, no difference.In fact, if you play it long enough and you’re an experienced gamer, the games combat tends to become repetitive and you see straight through the over the top stylised combat and presentation, I’d go as far as saying that the OTT stylised combat masks a lot.Then you have what are known as blue cases, and these side quests are the same as any typical game, simply used for character progression and can be a bore to complete.But there are other aspects of the game that the developers have tried their utmost to make sure it’s not repetitive; for example you are encouraged to platform using your legion, find hidden items using your legions and iris, using your iris to investigate and solve puzzles etc. – there are also stealth sections, and again, you have to use your legions.Another positive is the enemy design, they are beautiful and very imaginative and there is a decent variety, mostly with the bosses though and there is a good amount of them and well placed throughout the game – again, you exploit weaknesses of the bosses by using the correct legions – and for some, this will go a long way to making the combat not seem repetitive in the long run.Some have argued that Astral Chain is Platinum's best, sorry, not for me - it’s good for a first play-through, but it’s not a game I will be coming back to.

Good action game - Speaking of PlatinumGames I preferred Bayonetta 1 &2 & The Wonderful 101 to this, but it certainly has a unique and well executed concept for what it is.It's slow to get into it. Much of the first part of the game felt like a very long tutorial - for me personally, that limited my desire to replay missions.I wanted to love it the same way as I do the Bayonetta / Devil May Cry series, but it left me feeling a little cold...didn't feel much of an attachment to any of the characters either, which is something I usually hope for in a game. I know that's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's how my brain works. This is more of an "Avatar" game - you can make your character look however you want them to with lots of hair and skin colour options (more as you unlock them) - which is certainly a nice feature. It is a very well made game - high quality and worth playing.