Astral Chain

Astral Chain is a 2019 action-adventure hack and slash video game developed by PlatinumGames and published by Nintendo. First announced during a February 2019 Nintendo Direct and having an estimated five-year development cycle, it was released on August 30, 2019, for the Nintendo Switch.

Why It’ll Be Your Savior

 * 1) While many PlatinumGames developed titles, such as the Bayonetta series or Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, feature awesome and decently fun combat systems, the one in this game is unique in that you control two characters at once — in this case, a Neuron officer and a Legion — to pull off all sorts of crazy combos.
 * 2) *It is especially satisfying whenever you pull off Sync Attacks with your Legion, which can be executed by pressing the ZL trigger whenever a blue light flashes onscreen after completing a string of attacks.
 * 3) Stylish animesque presentation, with gorgeous cel-shaded graphics that really make the game pop, on par with Bayonetta 2, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Friday Night Funkin', or even mh:crappygames:Super Meat Boy Forever, and great character and monster designs by renowned manga artist, Masakazu Katsura. You would even want to look at them for so long by just playing the game for a long hours, or even watching videos and stopping them on YouTube just to look at them.
 * 4) The soundtrack — composed by Satoshi Igarashi — is great, with the EDM inspired score really helping to sell the cyberpunk setting of the game. The vocal tracks — sung by William Aoyama of the Japanese boy band, INTERSECTION, and Filipino pop singer, Beverly — "Savior," "Dark Hero" and "The Answer" are also a good listen. Also, It would make you want to try to get it to your head or play the levels longer to listen to the music, or even go to YouTube and download the music on your computer, phone or tablet.
 * 5) Up to five different Legions to play with, each with their own playstyle and having different strengths and weaknesses.
 * 6) * The Sword Legion serves as the Jack of all trades, providing a balance of power and speed.
 * 7) * The Arrow Legion excels in long range combat, which is especially useful against flying enemies and those with ranged attacks.
 * 8) * The Arm Legion can be used to lift heavy objects the others can't, as well as hover over large puddles of goop that can slow the player down and move floating platforms around.
 * 9) * The Beast Legion, while unable to hover like the others, can be used to cover a lot of ground while riding it, as well as dig for hidden items and run across vanishing platforms in the Astral Plane.
 * 10) * The Axe Legion, while by far the slowest, easily has the strongest attacks and can even shield the player with a forcefield to withstand enemy attacks or stave off environmental hazards like poisonous gas or fire.
 * 11) A great cast of characters, such as the clumsy but adorable Neuron Officer, Marie Wentz, and the violent and mysterious leader of the Hermits, Kyle Merkulov.
 * 12) Great world-building, especially once you get to File 06 and explore the quarantined Zone 09.
 * 13) A large variety of enemies to fight, whether they be chimeras, aberrations, or Hermits.
 * 14) Awesome boss battles peppered throughout.
 * 15) * Some of the most notable fights include:
 * 16) ** The Enceladus you encounter in the Astral Plane near the end of File 02.
 * 17) ** All of the fights against Jena's Homunculi that you encounter over the course of the game:
 * 18) *** Homunculus α in the Ark Mall at the end of File 04.
 * 19) *** Homunculus β in Zone 09 at the end of File 06.
 * 20) *** Homunculus γ on top of a rooftop at the end of File 07.
 * 21) *** Homunculus Δ in the center of Harmony Square at the beginning of File 09.
 * 22) ** The one-on-one fight against Kyle after you dispatch his henchmen in the middle of File 06.
 * 23) ** The fights with Jena at the end of File 09, starting on the helicopter pad atop Neuron HQ against her Aberrant form, then in the middle of a highway against her Asymptote form, and finally, in the sky above the highway while running across flying rubble against her Apotheosis form.
 * 24) ** The fight against the Legion-fused Akira in the Ark sewers at the end of File 10.
 * 25) ** The final battle against the chimeric abomination created by Yoseph Calvert, Noah, especially Noah Prime, at the end of File 11.
 * 26) You can customize your character with all kinds of clothing and accessories, including a costume of Neuron's very own mascot, Lappy.
 * 27) Lots of replay value in replaying stages for higher ranks or customizing your Legions' builds with Ability nodes you can collect from defeated enemies.
 * 28) Skill trees where you can level up and unlock all kinds of skills for each of the five Legions.
 * 29) * Each of the five Legions share certain skills, but they also have skills that are exclusive to them.
 * 30) ** The Sword Legion can summon swords that will circle around the player and harm enemies on contact and launch a projectile that travels across the chain it's attached to.
 * 31) ** The Arrow Legion can launch projectiles that will temporarily slow enemies down and make it rain arrows behind them.
 * 32) ** The Arm Legion can create pseudo black holes that will pull enemies in and fire bullets while spinning around.
 * 33) ** The Beast Legion can stun enemies with a howl and create an electrified chain that will harm them on contact.
 * 34) ** The Axe Legion can summon shields around the player that will protect them from three hits and plant bombs that will explode on contact.
 * 35) The end of File 10, where your character fights their berserk Legion-fused twin after merging with their Legion for the second time with "Dark Hero" playing in the background, is beyond hype!
 * 36) A large number of post-game challenges become available after you've cleared the main campaign, putting your Legionic combat skills to the test, especially the R3 challenges.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While not BAD by any means, the story is pretty mediocre, with some plot points you can see coming a mile away, such as (spoilers by the way) Yoseph's reveal as the main villain. It's as if the story had been made by a college student who spent more time listening music and drinking a beverage than inventing an engaging and original plot.
 * 2) Sometimes, the game's framerate can be very inconsistent and terrible, when there are so many things happening onscreen, this is especially noticeable in the early parts of File 07 and File 08.
 * 3) The graphics, while gorgeous, can be a little hard on the eyes for some players whenever there are tons of bright lights or flashes onscreen, especially if they suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, similar to the final boss (Lance) of Balan Wonderworld pre-patch or the Braindance sequences in Cyberpunk 2077.
 * 4) *Speaking of graphics, if you're not a fan of Masakazu Katsura's style, then the characters' faces can look a little weird or sometimes bit hideous to you. The NPC's in particular have less detailed faces than any of the main characters.
 * 5) The soundtrack, while great, is very forgettable unlike other PlatinumGames games, some songs are easy to forget and hard to remember.
 * 6) There are a couple of stealth sections that break the flow of the game. Luckily, only a few of them are mandatory to get through.
 * 7) Sometimes, the English voice acting can be pretty hit-or-miss and awkward for some people and players. For example, some characters like Marie Wentz and Kyle Merkulov, sound excellent while others, like Jena Anderson, suffer from bad and cringe-worthy direction which in particular seems to sound like a cell from phone call or it looks like it was made by Audacity but very poorly done and they put very little effort into expressing their character and it feels like you don't want to do it at all.
 * 8) *It also doesn’t sync in with the character’s mouths, making it feel like they did the voice acting for the Japanese version first, but then when they did the English dubbing, they forgot to even match the mouths.
 * 9) Compare to most Platinum titles previously, the dodge mechanic is EXTREMELY clunky, it has no post invincibility-frames and when your attacking, you can not dodge until your done attacking, or you get hit by an enemy.
 * 10) The game has one of the oddest uses of a silent protagonist in recent memory, especially since your character has some sort of established backstory, being the older of two twins who joined the Neuron Task Force, as well as having a mysterious past about Zone 09.
 * 11) The very start of the game and near the end of File 09 have motorcycle sections, and they are pretty janky compared to the rest of the game.
 * 12) The game's co-op mode, where one player controls the officer while the other controls the Legions, is rather clunky and very unenjoyable and you will also make you refuse to invite a friend to play multiplayer because of how clunky multiplayer is.

Reception
When it was released in August of 2019, Astral Chain received critical acclaim from critics and players alike, with many praising the dual character combat, presentation, and world-building, though it received some minor criticism for its use of a silent protagonist.

By the end of 2019, Astral Chain had managed to sell over 1 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling games on the Switch.

Trivia

 * During early stages of development, Astral Chain was originally envisioned as a fantasy game where the player would utilize magic, but Nintendo requested for it to be changed to a cyberpunk setting, as they believed there was an over-saturation of fantasy games on the market at the time and that the cyberpunk setting would help the game stand out more. Astral Chain's director, Takahisa Taura, has even gone on record saying that the game's setting took inspiration from various anime, such as Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, as well as the works of Masakazu Katsura, who was brought on board as the game's lead character designer.
 * When the game was first released, Astral Chain became a target of review-bombing on Metacritic on the grounds that it was a Switch-exclusive game. The review bombs were removed by Metacritic less than a week after launch.
 * When asked about the possibility of Astral Chain becoming available on non-Nintendo platforms in a February 2020 interview (focused on the then-recently announced The Wonderful 101: Remastered Kickstarter campaign), PlatinumGames' own Atsushi Inaba stated that "it's too early to say", and that "ultimately, it's Nintendo's call, not [theirs. ]"
 * In January 2021, however, following reports that PlatinumGames was no longer listed as a copyright holder for Astral Chain according to Platinum's Japanese website, Inaba confirmed that Nintendo now had full ownership of the Astral Chain intellectual property, stating “It’s as it is written on the website: Astral Chain is their IP and as such there are limitations on how much we feel we should talk about.”

Reviews
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The Soundtrack
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