By Neil Flynn 18.07.2019
Fans were somewhat a little miffed when Platinum Games announced Astral Chain, mainly as hoards of people were somewhat expecting to see at least gameplay footage of Bayonetta 3 before any other Platinum reveals. Nonetheless, Nintendo has decidedly put enough faith in Platinum Games to publish yet another exclusive title, Astral Chain. How does the early build look?
The premise of Astral Chain is not awe inspiring. An evil alien race, the Chimera, has invaded through inter-dimensional gates, and humanity is down to close extinction. One of the last settlements left is known as 'The Ark,' and that is where the two twinned protagonists reside. The Ark police force have put together a special unit to help tackle the Chimera known as Neuron, equipping the police with bio-weapons known as the Legion.
The Legion are synergetic beings which thrive off the kinship with the player, and can be used to attack, defend, or cooperatively solve puzzles and environmental traps. There were many puzzle-solving mechanics in during the demonstration of Astral Chain, which appeared to formulate a lot of the stage before any combat would take place. The start of the stage is laid out in a crime scene manner and the player needs to use their detective skills to find out what happened either by using their Legion (which is invisible to the naked eye) to sneak up and listen to conversations or use Iris, their AR detective tool which can be used to access The Ark's CCTV system or collect notes for future use. These clues then need to be put together to progress by answering a number of questions asked by the superior police officer. Combat is divided up between controlling the protagonist's Legion or directly using their own offence to get in shots. The idea is to sync up the attacks to score even higher enemy damage, which can also be utilised later on by unlocking more and more combos.
There is still so much to be learned about Astral Chain, but what has been shown off so far would lead to the belief that there are heavy elements of discovery, investigation, and puzzle solving complemented by high intense action sequences. The only issue with this, is that the pace can feel off if there are slow investigative sequences then followed by a high intense boss to then only going back to scanning and solving puzzles, which means those used to hordes of endless enemies might be slightly frustrated with the slower and more thoughtful elements of Astral Chain. Cubed3 will be reviewing Astral Chain for when it launches at the end of August 2019.
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