Astral chain is the most recent blood pumping action title from Platinum games. The setting for you pummeling bad guys is the Ark, an artificial island created after a cataclysmic event rendered Earth inhospitable. The Ark is still plagued by attacks from Aberrations and Chimeras, which are invisible to most humans, but not you. You have the power to not only see these monstrous beings, you can wield the ultimate weapon against them, a Legion; it's like a Chimera that you keep on a space lead. First and foremost, Astral chain is an action game with the main focus on fighting hordes of enemies with devastating combos, but there is so much more to it, with RPG elements, open world exploration sections and a heavily story driven campaign that make this a really special experience.
Right from the beginning of the game, I felt completely immersed in the world. The mix between high tech sci-fi weaponry and post-apocalyptic deprivation provided an interesting world to explore. As a result, the open world sections between cinematic fights were fun and engaging. One thing that did put me off a bit were some minor items like red matter clean up, where you have to get your legion to go off into dark corners searching for red goo to clean. When the story turned to intense time pressured events, it felt a bit weird to take your legion off for a jolly in the goo. It did give you a good reason to explore, though, and sometimes gave you hints as to where you could find items and secret areas, so it was used in positive ways as well.
The story was wonderfully weird, nonsensical and tense throughout. Although there were many cheesy cut-scenes and some elements of the story were quite predictable, there were also a lot of surprising events and I was always eager to find out what was going to happen next. Some parts of the story were totally bizarre and jarring in a way, but overall I felt like it gave the game more charm and it was unlike anything I had experienced before.
As you might expect, the combat system was fantastic. I followed some of the build up to the release and was worried that it would be complicated and cumbersome, but all the way through I felt like my legion was an extension of my character, further adding to the immersion in the world. This is mostly down to the great progression through the game. You learn new skills as you progress through the story, starting with just one attack button and slowly gathering skills until you feel like a pain machine churning out ridiculous combos to crush your enemies. There is also a decent RPG mechanic for upgrading your legion through skill trees. There are so many different things you could do so it would be easy to settle into a move set that you find comfortable to avoid complications, but the rating system after each encounter encourages you to vary your tactics to improve your score, which I feel also improves the experience. You're always learning new techniques and combos to keep the combat fresh and exciting and it never felt boring or tedious in the ~30 hours that it took for me to complete the campaign.
Without spoilers, it is worth mentioning the ending. I found the final boss much more difficult than previous enemies, which is OK to some degree, however I did find myself resorting to some cheap tactics to try and claw my way through the last encounter. This almost tarnished my view, but after scrapping my way past, it did give me an enormous sense of achievement, having to fight in a different way to overcome a completely new breed of foe, and perhaps that is what is required of the final showdown in an epic story.
Overall, I can't recommend this game enough. There were a few niggles but I found it easy to forget about these as I was kicking ass and taking names in a bizarre and fascinating world. An extremely varied yet fluid combat system with a wacky yet exciting story make this an absolute winner for me.
