Astlibra Revision is one of the most unstable games I’ve played all year, but I don’t want to let it go. I watched this self-described ‘Final Fantasy and Castlevania’ 2D action RPG last month, shortly after it debuted on Steam (opens in a new tab), an enormous 14 years later. year was in development and received nearly 3,000 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews at the time. At the time of this writing, it has jumped to 5971 glowing reviews, making Astlibra Revision one of the highest rated new Steam releases of 2022. After deleting its preface, I’d like to give my own advice and get to 5972.
Shameless might be the best way to describe this game, and I mean it in a good way. The title itself is a sophisticated textbook JRPG, and one of the first things the game tells you is that its introduction is “no action scenes and it’s too long”, which seriously encourages you to decide whether or not to play it. I recommend you do, but the developers weren’t kidding about extending the opening a bit. Short version, you are a blonde warrior who stumbles upon a world devoid of humans and befriends a magical raven after escaping a demonic attack with his now-missing childhood friend. However, you should respect the honesty of this warning. Hideo Kojima would never have done that.
Not the most exciting start (Image credit: Keidos)
Astlibra Revision isn’t entirely perfect, but it’s fun. It also has some of the best and worst artwork I’ve seen all year. Equipment, characters and enemies – especially giant bosses – they look great. From dragons shimmering in gold flakes to sarcastic animated skeletons, here’s some real vanilla grade stuff. At the same time, the levels are downright awful. The game’s opening hour consists of simple subtleties in matching forests, consisting of about three randomly patterned tree entities on a strange tiled floor, like an old RPG Maker passion project.
But Astlibra Revision doesn’t care. “Yeah, our environments look like someone breaded and fried in an NES game, but that’s not what you came here for, right?” seems to be asking. And you know, you’re right, it’s a video game. I came here to smash buttons and kill a million monsters in the most spectacular way possible, and this game is so, lots It’s a splendid side-scrolling game with just the right amount of hitstops to hammer the effect of combos into the human brain, I think, the beat’em-up receptor located right next to the hippocampus, without damaging the rhythm of the game. .struggle .
Attacks are so satisfying that hitting objects royal club I put a smile on my face and the game got exponentially more fun as I unlocked new weapons and abilities, less than 1% of the total arsenal as far as I can tell. Block, dodge, step back, use your talking raven to transform into a little dragon for fire-breathing invincibility for a few seconds – all the side scrolling punches are here. Some of these options, especially blocking and dodging, should really be available from the start of the game, but you start shooting at full speed pretty quickly.
Triple slash, uppercut, skyrocket, shield slash – it almost reminds me of rhythm games like Thumper in the way in which you dodge and parry in time with enemy attacks you analyze in full screens, precisely punching your entire being with your every move. . The combat is begging to be broken, and the sheer physicality of all this is positively exhilarating, forcing you into longer combos and starving you for upgrades that let you kick even harder if you can imagine it.
i like this more (Image credit: Keizo)
Astlibra is constantly throwing new things at you and it feels like you’re catching it with a teaspoon. It can be overwhelming, and I say this as a Xenoblade Chronicles fan. I mean, you can level up almost any gear to unlock unique bonuses or permanent abilities. Moves like double jumping and dashing depend on assignable magic crystals that you can find in random corners of the levels. In addition to XP to spend on stats like strength and agility, enemies will drop crystals you drop into a cosmic skill tree built like a primitive dungeon. You cannot simply buy equipment from traders; You’ll also need to bring them the right crafting materials and balance it out with your own freeform craft recipes to stock yourself with arrows for your bow, keys to open dropped chests, or disposable pickaxes for mining.
Cooking is another important and unpredictable part of getting stronger, and I’m not just talking about being healthy. For reference, I needed pie dough to make the legendary armor, the recipe of which I found in a cave, so frankly, I killed trees until someone fell a sliced piece of butter. A screenshot on the game’s Steam page shows that you need metal sticks and ores, as well as cakes like cream puffs and cupcakes, to craft some legendary swords that look like typical fantasy weapons. Don’t overthink. Oh, and almost all the ingredients. at game It has special attributes that can be used to grant passive bonuses, but only when you balance the weight of its items on the god’s golden scales.
If that sounds ridiculous, because it is, but somehow it works because Astlibra Revision takes it seriously. This is an absolutely ridiculous game that’s more fun than it should be. It’s a mix of ups and downs, but the lows are weird and often fun, and the highs are atmospheric.
You can play Astlibra Revision now on Steam, and it’s coming to Switch next year with its first DLC.
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