Astral Chain - Review

PlatinumGames has a reputation for making action games that are both incredibly stylish and delightfully weird. Its latest, the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain, wholeheartedly embraces this tradition and pushes each aspect to the max. This is Platinum at its finest - its innovative combat system cleverly manages to make controlling two characters at once feel intuitive and deeply rewarding. Equally as impressive, the non-combat sequences charmingly bring this peculiar world and the characters who inhabit it to life.

The setup is a fairly typical one: after Earth became uninhabitable due to alien pollution, humanity migrated to the Ark, a futuristic metropolis filled with neon lights and, surprise(!), an alien invasion problem of its own.You know, the usual. You play as one of the two Howard twins - male or female - who is a part of an anti-alien task force that fights using robot allies called Legions. That’s where the eponymous Astral Chain comes in - it’s the tether between you and your Legion and lets you see the aliens, which are called Chimeras.

Though it’s a boilerplate futuristic dystopia at face value, the plot has some fun twists and turns that keep it mostly entertaining throughout. But while many of the characters ooze personality, the Howard twin you play as sadly isn’t one of them. Many games have silent protagonists, but Astral Chain’s quiet hero feels particularly out of place next to the energetic voice actors behind all the other characters, including whichever twin you didn’t pick, who plays an important role in the story. And it’s not like your character doesn’t have a backstory. I would’ve loved to hear the back and forth between the two siblings instead of having to fill in the blanks based on the hero’s generally expressionless looks.

The duo of human and machine conduct a symphony of action awesomeness.

It’s easy to forget about your Howard’s lack of personality once the combat gets started, though. Together with a Legion, the duo of human and machine conduct a symphony of action awesomeness, complete with a flurry of particle effects and stylized animations. I cannot stress enough how ridiculously cool the combat looks in motion, thanks to bright, cartoonish graphics that look great both docked and on the go. While it performs flawlessly in handheld mode, the fast-moving and flashy animations are easier to appreciate on the big screen at higher resolution.

Fighting alongside your Legion is held together by intuitive controls. Core attacks are mapped to the triggers and bumpers: you can instantly summon your Legion with ZL, then fling it toward a Chimera using the left stick to attack automatically when in range. Howard’s trio of weapons - the Blaster, police baton, and Gladius (heavy sword) - are mapped to ZR. I preferred a combo of police baton and Blaster, though the Gladius packed a serious and satisfying punch against Chimera whose attack patterns I had memorized.

Flashy combos can be strung together easily thanks to the simplistic controls. Attacking Chimeras in tandem with your Legion opens up synchronized attack opportunities that flash on screen. These can stack together if you keep the combo going, but only if you execute perfect dodges. Well-timed dodges slow down time for a moment, giving you room to attack the weaker backsides of Chimeras and string together more synchronized attacks. Chimeras attack frequently, both up close and from afar, so much of the combat revolves around dodging, getting your blows in, then dodging some more.

Though Astral Chain lacks a deep combo system, it makes up for that and then some with its roster of Legions.

Of course, fights would be too easy if you could keep your Legion in play indefinitely, so they each have limiters that count down. If you let that hit zero without manually recalling them then they’ll take even longer to recharge before you can call them back out to help you. The system forces you to be smart, make swift decisions, and keep a watchful eye on the limiter.

The Astral Chain that connects them to you also comes with two cool tricks that complement the combat extraordinarily well. The Chain Jump lets you slingshot across the battlefield toward your Legion, granting you extra mobility around the combat areas. Also, you can also bind Chimeras and hold them in place by encircling them. The former is awesome for dispatching groups of enemies, while the latter is particularly helpful when fighting large bosses who have multiple limbs that you’d rather not have attacking you the whole time.

Though Astral Chain lacks a deep combo system, it makes up for that and then some with its roster of Legions. You gradually unlock five of them, each with their own unique play style and action moves. The Sword can slice through Chimeras and sever their defensive systems. The Arrow, quite naturally, can be used to manually shoot arrows that knock flying Chimeras from the sky. You can take a ride on the Beast’s back and its snout and paws are good for getting Chimeras out from under the ground. You can commandeer the Arm and become a mech with giant fists. And the Axe, which you unlock much later than the others, can conjure a protective dome which comes in handy when up against near-undodgeable attacks.

Each Legion also has its own skill tree and ability slots for stat and item buffs. It’s a bit of a bummer that most skills are the same across all five Legions, but there are some unique and worthwhile abilities hidden in there. My favorite is the Arm’s Round Bullet, which commands it to spin like a top while shooting blasts in every direction. Overall, the Beast is my Legion of choice, partly because riding the giant dog is a great way to get around, but also because I love how it uses its paws of fury to viciously claw at Chimera.

I love how the Beast Legion uses its paws of fury to viciously claw at Chimera.

Throughout the 11 lengthy missions Chimeras come in all shapes and sizes, from standard shielded baddies to large four-legged beasts to annoying dudes with huge wings, serpents, and more. Sometimes you have to fight corrupted humans, but thankfully you don’t have to wade through wave upon wave of these mindless grunts. Each mission also has at least a couple of boss Chimeras, some of whom are so large you can only see half of their body on screen while fighting them. They are sometimes reconfigurations of previous boss fights, but most add something new to the mix so they’re not straight repeats.

No stylish action game is complete with a rankings system, and in Astral Chain you’re graded for each “case” you complete in a mission, as well as given an overall grade at the end. I’ve already gone back to try to raise my grade in several missions by maximizing style and speed and minimizing damage taken.

In a welcome move, Platinum included difficulty options for both aficionados and action newcomers alike. After finishing a mission on Platinum Standard you can try your hand at the harder Platinum Ultimate, which eliminates revives (called batteries) and ups the intensity. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Unchained mode, a customizable difficulty level that lets you toggle 15 different settings to fit your needs. You can go as far as automating combat entirely if you just want to watch the story. The wealth of options reminded me of Celeste’s great Assist mode.

Co-op Drop

The weirdest and most difficult way to play Astral Chain is in couch co-op, which has players use a single Joy-Con each as one controls Howard and the other plays as the Legion. Co-op could have been a nice inclusion, but I found coordinating with a partner to be more of a headache than it was worth. Being forced to use one Joy-Con - Pro Controller and paired Joy-Con support in co-op is bafflingly absent - for an action game didn’t help either, as one player controls movement and the other controls the camera. You can imagine how frustrating this can get if you aren’t completely in sync with your partner. It’s just awkward and takes away the most novel aspect of the combat: learning to control two characters yourself.

Beyond shooting for higher ranks, there are tangible reasons to replay missions, too. The Ark isn’t an open world, but each mission takes place in a large level with numerous optional areas. Sure, you can move through linearly, only speaking to people you need to in order to advance the story, but if you take the time to explore with the all-knowing scanning technology IRIS (which is downright Orwellian) you’ll quickly discover hidden alleyways with side quests, optional combat scenarios, and areas that are inaccessible without the help of a specific Legion. In fact, simply completing the mainline activities in a mission usually amounts to about half the content that’s actually in there. And the optional stuff doesn’t feel like filler - it rounds out the world.

You can find hidden side quests and combat scenarios by taking the time to explore, and that optional stuff doesn't feel like filler.

Sure, some of it is menial tasks, like helping a man find a burger joint or getting a kid’s balloon out of a tree, but they’re oddly charming. It was hilarious to me that a special agent tasked with saving the world would also take the time to help citizens with arguably non-problems amidst a terrifying alien invasion, but this is hardly the first video game to be ridiculous in that particular way.

Even the Neuron Headquarters, the starting and ending point for most missions, is interesting to explore. Here you can buy medicinal items, visit the training room to learn new moves, change cosmetic-only clothing items in the locker room, buy stat buff concoctions from the talking vending machine, upgrade your weapons and Legions, and talk to the other agents who almost always have something interesting to add. The Ark is a strange place and, without spoiling anything, I can say it gets much stranger if you ask around. Despite being framed as a fight to save humanity, Astral Chain still often feels lighthearted. The HQ tour is given by a woman who dresses as a dog mascot named Lappy. She takes it very seriously, and I respect that.

In what was a thorough surprise to me, I wound up enjoying the non-combat portions of missions almost as much as the stellar fights. Exploration can take up about half of the campaign’s runtime depending on how diligently you look around, and it never felt like a waste to do so.

A number of missions start with investigations. Using the IRIS and your social skills, you have to search for clues to advance the story. Sometimes people will just give you the info you need; other times you have to work for it by running errands, catching bad guys, corralling lost cats, solving riddles, eavesdropping, and more. All of this provides a nice break from the action with quirky and fun dialogue, so I always went out of my way to talk to as many people as I could. At the end of the investigation a teammate asks you what you learned, and if you paid attention to the clues, you can get a good ranking for the sequence. You’ll still move on with wrong answers, but I have to say I very much cared about getting the answers right - the wrong answer sound hurt my soul.

On top of that, Astral Chain’s light puzzles and platforming further break up the action. Most of these, like the combat sequences, are found in the hellish Astral Plane you enter through rift gates. While this dreary world of darkness harbors many of the most dangerous Chimeras, it also houses some non-combat challenges for you and your Legions: Shooting arrows to reveal hidden passageways, hopping across platforms through chain leaps, or galloping across gradually disappearing ground on the back of the Beast Legion. None of these sequences are particularly challenging, but they do add to the variety and gave me time to really appreciate my surroundings.