Review Laser's Review: Astral Chain

Astral Chain got many things right but like every other game out there, it can do some things better.

Spoiler: Story/Characters Spoiler Warning

Score: 8.5/10
Astral Chain takes place in a futuristic Earth where there is only one place that is considered habitable known as the Ark.
I loved all of the characters to some degree, except for Jena Anderson, still mad that she tried to stab my character and stabbed the sibling.
The build-up to the fights against Jena was very well-paced, giving you some idea of what she is capable of and what you were likely to fight and then once the final confrontation happens, they exceed what you would've expected from Jena and her chimeras.
I also liked that they threw back to Captain Max's death a couple of times throughout the story and how it affected each character. Though we, as the player, didn't have much connection to Max, we at least get to see how each character had interacted with him before when the story began. And that is how to do character deaths, cause no one just simply brushes off the death of a close comrade, as they show in so many movies and games nowadays.

At the beginning of this game; you did feel like a policeman. You looked for clues, questioned locals, helped civilians or other officers when you can, but as the story progressed; the story seemed less focused on that and more concentrated on you as the player going commando. Doing these side quests gave more life towards the areas that you are introduced to, which is a good thing for a game to do. Now I can see why they did this; they wanted to end the game and you were already familiar with the area that the final fights were at, but I think that it was a missed opportunity to see how the Research Institute had developed as the game went on or have you evacuate some of the civilians that you had seen in there before this moment.

For everything that I love about the story, I do have complaints about the story. First of all, I didn't like the Hermit story arc. You had some build-up to meeting them and then you talk to them, fight beside them, and after that, you don't hear anything of them again. You even get arrested for going to that area! Sure they may have lost a part of their team because they turned into aberrations, but it would have been cool to have what is left of them to come and help you when Yoseph betrays you, even if it was just to save you.
The second complaint that I have is the fact that everything after Yoseph betrays you feel so rushed and not as well written as the beginning. Yoseph was determined to fight the Chimeras and Jena at the beginning but then suddenly after seeing you merged with a chimera, he suddenly wants to merge everyone with the chimeras? Project Noah was also developed so fast, in maybe a little over three days? That would be impressive by modern-day standards of developing anything and he also developed clones of the main character's sibling fast as well and there was no sign prior that they had the technology to be able to do this. It does beg us the question; is our sibling one of the clones or our actual sibling? Even with that in mind, it feels forced.

Spoiler: Gameplay

Score: 8/10
With this game coming out, they introduced the idea of controlling two characters at the same time, overall they had done a good job presenting this idea. The controls, for a noob like me, took some time to get used to but was relatively easy to learn, and this is coming from a person that is used to turn-based RPGs. But with that said, I don't have many games for reference so you might have to go to someone else for better review but this is from a noob's perspective of the gameplay.

Here are the legions that you are presented with:
Sword: you start with this, can float, pretty mobile, overall average stats
Arrow: Long-range specialist, average stats, can float
Arm: strong physical Attack, strong defense, average speed, can float
Beast (Best Doggo): pretty weak defense and attack, but very mobile, can't float
Axe: Has a shield area of effect (protects you from any poison gases and any incoming enemy attacks), strong attack and defense, but is the slowest thing in the game

Now there is an ability that you can activate that is specific on the type of legion that you have out:
Sword: you choose the angle in which the sword swings, but it can cut connections between electronics and chimeras
Arrow: you point the bow and shoot an arrow, but it does help in shooting targets that the auto-targeting can't seem to read
Arm: you wear it like armor; good for floating over certain obstacles and allowed for a more personal touch in dealing with opponents but I never used it after they introduced the mechanic since it made me so slow.
Beast: You can ride the legion and that allows for more mobility, but you can only use the large sword weapon while on the legion. And I found that it was hard to control and lost a lot of HP for falling off the map when I first got the legion and it was hard to do combat while riding.
Axe: Instead of going off and trying to attack the opponent, it tries to protect you from any coming attacks with its shield.

Now you can't keep your legion out at all times, there is a timer for how long a legion can be out and it can be upgraded so that you can keep the legion out for longer. And if your legion takes damage, the timer is cut shorter depending on how high their defense is. At first, it was annoying since the timer was so short but as I upgraded the legatus (which is where the legion is kept out of combat) and was given a longer timer, I started not noticing the timer as much (But boy did I use every second of it in the final fights).

Late into the game; they introduced a mechanic that allowed you to merge with your legion. This state is timed and can only happen after you do so many sync attacks with your legions. After the timer goes out, your health is replenished and the legatus timer is also reset. During the story, I only used it twice (once for a big fight before the final boss and once for the final boss). I do see uses for this gameplay-wise, but it is so hard to replenish this ability that I wouldn't recommend using it unless you just have to.

Going to the more calm part of the gameplay; the clue finding. You mostly got clue words from doing some of the side quests or questioning the locals. But there was a lot of overlap between each civilian and I highly doubt that different people would describe a chimera the same way.
Another thing, for every mission, you can find a cat that you can adopt, you get rewarded if you manage to find the cat through the achievements (more on that later) and as a cat-lover I find this to be rather amusing and in my first playthrough, I didn't find most of them. I was more interested in the story at first and just didn't notice them at first.

Now normally I would give a 9/10 for what I've said above, but here's where the game did so poorly that I had to give it the 8/10. The co-op mode was the worst experience of the entire game. @1mightydragon and I tried the co-op mode for one mission (thankfully an easier mission) and just stopped because it wasn't good at all. One player was given control over the legion and the main character. Good so far, right? Well, they gave half of the controls to one person and the other half to the other and wouldn't allow for you to use anything except the joy-cons. The Legion player didn't have an attack button and they are the one that controls the camera, lock-on, but only if the legion wasn't in combat. Not only that, to use the legion properly, there had to be more coordination between both players than I would think necessary. It was nice that they offered the co-op mode but it is very clear that it wasn't given the attention that it needed.

Spoiler: Customization

Score: 6/10
This is one of the areas of the game that could use some improvement. If you wanted to do a lot of color customizations on your character or your legions, you are going to have to earn I by doing some of the achievements, while most of them are easy (use x amount of items, use this ability x amount of times) but some of them require you to play perfectly (Get S+ rank in a mission). And there aren't a lot of colors for you to work with just by playing through the game, though you can earn some colors and customizable items that way. And that left me disappointed.

Spoiler: Post-Story

Score: 7.5/10
Some cases are more of challenge missions that go back to some familiar areas, cause there is still the chimera threat after the story ends. You do get customize items for doing the missions. You can also go back and do some missions with the upgrades and legions that you currently have and find secrets (such as the cats) and bosses

Spoiler: Final Thoughts

Overall: 8.8/10
Coming from someone new to this type of game; it was a good experience and might make me go to more games with similar playstyles. It had what I mostly look for; a good story with decent gameplay. It blew away my expectations where I thought it would be awkward or hard to get used to (gameplay with the control over legions and player) but it also disappointed me where I thought it would succeed (such as the co-op). It also had excellent music and the graphics were very well made by my standards. It is clear to me that they want to make this an anime and I would support them all the way if they decided to go through with making this thing an anime.

Overall; I would recommend this game to anyone that wants either a good story or good single-player gameplay, but not to anyone that wants a lot of customization or good multiplayer options.