
You gradually unlock five of them, each with their own unique play style and action moves.

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

Also, you can also bind Chimeras and hold them in place by encircling them. The Chain Jump lets you slingshot across the battlefield toward your Legion, granting you extra mobility around the combat areas. The Astral Chain that connects them to you also comes with two cool tricks that complement the combat extraordinarily well. The system forces you to be smart, make swift decisions, and keep a watchful eye on the limiter. 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. Of course, fights would be too easy if you could keep your Legion in play indefinitely, so they each have limiters that count down. 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. Howard’s trio of weapons - the Blaster, police baton, and Gladius (heavy sword) - are mapped to ZR. 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. While it performs flawlessly in handheld mode, the fast-moving and flashy animations are easier to appreciate on the big screen at higher resolution.įighting alongside your Legion is held together by intuitive controls. 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. 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. It’s easy to forget about your Howard’s lack of personality once the combat gets started, though. 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. 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. 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. Equally as impressive, the non-combat sequences charmingly bring this peculiar world and the characters who inhabit it to life. This is Platinum at its finest - its innovative combat system cleverly manages to make controlling two characters at once feel intuitive and deeply rewarding. Its latest, the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain, wholeheartedly embraces this tradition and pushes each aspect to the max.
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A small detail that I loved with this is the way your legions kind of fidget in place as if they want to break free but cannot, not a major detail but it added to the immersion of this creature being bound against its will to fight at your side.Īstral Chain is unique as it is an action-heavy game, which is to be expected from the team who made Bayonetta, but at the same time, there are many prolonged periods of time when you will not fight a single enemy, which helps to break up the monotony of combat.PlatinumGames has a reputation for making action games that are both incredibly stylish and delightfully weird.

To put it simply, Legions act kind of like Pokémon in a sense as they are chimeras that have been captured and bound to officers via a psychic link, changing their colour palette from dark reds to deep blues, which enables them to be used for combat and investigation purposes. This task force is unique as they utilise “Legions” as their main attack against the ongoing Chimera threat and stand as civilisations last chance at putting an end to this war.

You play as a newly recruited Neuron Officer tasked with combating this ongoing threat, along with your fellow cast of colourful teammates, including your twin Akria (based on being the opposite sex to what you as the player chooses).
