Haha!
Best Buy charged me. Picking it up tomorrow. I had a $5 Reward Cert too so it knocked it down to $45 including my still exising Gamer’s Club Unlocked deal. I’m really going to miss that next year. :(
Also, I don’t see this direct linked, and it’s Tim Rogers, who is really good in this format IMO…
The game is now live in the U.S. (and several other places in the world, I expect).
I’m starting up my digital copy as soon as I submit this post.
Bel the faerie cracks me up.
Game is nuts, in a typically great Platinum way. Just got done fighting Enceladas which was a cool boss fight, then it got even more epic. Man… and it’s the opening hours.
I’m enjoying this quite a bit. It’s pretty slow early on, as the mechanics are super simple and limited, but then as you start unlocking more abilities and skills and stuff, it starts to get more interesting.
I’m still getting used to controlling the legion… print it on a shift control of the stick that controls the camera isn’t a bad choice, but it does add a layer of control complexity that takes getting used to. I’m getting the hang of it though I think. Overall, the combo system is simpler than some, so it fits together with this extra movement complexity fairly well. It has some good witcher-esque investigations too, which is neat.
Overall, it’s fun so far, and i never even really liked the Bayonetta or Nier games.
I’m loving the game. This is just a drive-by post till I’m at a genuine keyboard, but everything is clicking superbly for me.
I only got through tutorials last night, but the control of the legion reminded me a little bit of Wonderful 101. Different reason for control and more direct, but still similar in how you’re basically drawing with it.
Also, you could compare it a little to driving both dogs in Animal Crossing Sweet Day.
Legion control on the R stick is particularly weird, I think, if you’re an inverted X-axis camera player, like me. Since the camera follows the Legion a bit, holding the Legion button completely flips the camera behavior.
It’s almost enough for me to try to force myself to relearn my camera instincts…almost.
I’m not totally sold on putting primary attack on the shoulder button either…and the lack of a jump even for navigation feels a little weird. But I’m barely into File 2, so I assume I’ll get used to those.
One of the other control modes puts attack on a face button. Might be worth trying.
They do give you a horizontal jump for crossing gaps, rather than a vertical jump (so far).
Did you, though? I think I’m still seeing tutorials… ;)
There are also a bunch of moves in the Help menu that I’ve not seen tutorials for yet, though I’m unsure if I actually will.
How does Astral Chain play in handheld mode? Is the action clear enough or is a larger screen essential if you want to avoid frustration?
Edit: Digital Foundry quelled my fears! Will pick this up after I finish Control.
I can see this being unplayable… I’m actually surprised they would even allow inversion of the camera.
Currently I’m on Chapter File 4: Siege. I’m plating on PT Standard, the hardest available difficulty on a first play through, but the one that supposed to deliver a “classic Platinum Experience”. While I can imagine a lot of new players might take a bit to get used to controlling two different characters on screen, for whatever reason it just felt completely natural to me from the get-go. This surprises me because I was expecting a bit more of a learning curve here for myself, but thankfully I was able to just dive right in and take control without too much effort on my part.
One mechanic that seems identical has actually changed a bit, dodge. It’s taking me a little longer to get used to the new way dodge works compared to other Platinum games, but unlike other Platinum games, healing items seem a little more plentiful. Although dodge might seem identical to the dodge used in Bayonetta (as an example, both slow down time on a well-timed dodge, with Bayonetta calling it Witch Time), there is a key difference between the way dodge works in Astral Chain.
In Bayonetta, dodging a monster’s attack is all about timing. If you dodge at the right time the attack will phase right through you. But in Astral Chain attacks don’t phase through you when you’re dodging, you have to actually move yourself out of the way. Simply dodging in any direction won’t cut it, if you’re hit you’re hit, regardless of when you pushed the button. This took me a bit to get used to, because I’m carrying over my expectations (and muscle memory) from other Platinum games, but it isn’t a deal breaker at all. I’m just trying to figure out the best new invulnerability frames besides dodge, as there are skills that grant these for other types of maneuvers.
Using the chain and Legion has been a joy. As a rampant jumper in other Platinum games, it did take me a moment to get used to the idea that I can’t actually jump jump jump through battles, but flinging myself all around the battlefield with the chain is great fun. Send in monster then pull myself in for an attack. Wrap a monster only half-way, then do a sort of swinging tether-ball attack with myself. I’m quite maneuverable thanks to this chain.
So far the game is scoring quite well with me. I do wish it was 60fps and had a higher resolution, but this isn’t a deal breaker here, and the game feels perfectly fine, I’m just hung up on how glorious Bayonetta 2 looked and performed on the WiiU.
Yeah, the dodging takes some adjustment. I think that dodging in Astral Chain may be slower to start, or not interrupt all attack animations or something?
I did the first two files in Casual, then replayed them in Pt Standard. Standard feels like “normal” difficulty. Healing items are pretty ubiquitous so far, so it seems like you’re supposed to use them, so the limited number of continues seems like mostly a non issue?
The standard Platinum difficulty is actually pretty easy, but I don’t think it’s just the medicine. I take a while to get accustomed to the timing and mechanics of a brawler, but even as I’ve been figuring out what the hell is going on, a lot of Astral Chain seems to play itself for me. I’ll lose focus in the swirl of graphical noise, and then I’m just spazzing out and, oh, look, I won the battle. I’ve almost never had to use continues, and I’ve almost never used all the medicine I’ve found, which is plentiful, assuming you do any search or side missions.
Of course, the really gratifying battles are the ones where I’ve sussed out what I wanted to do and made it happen. One thing I find very helpful is popping into ISIS view during battle to take a quick look at the battle with the graphical noise stripped out. I’ve actually learned a fair bit I wouldn’t have otherwise known from the ISIS view.
The real test of skill is obviously will be the unlocked harder difficulty (difficulties, plural?) with no continues. I went back to try to play through the third file that way, and hoo boy, that’s going to require a lot more skill and/or leveling up for my legions. I got to one of the sub-boss battles and simply couldn’t stay alive long enough to do any meaningful damage.
-Tom
IRIS.
Not to be confused with ISIS:
They even named it after part of your eye!
I keep thinking of this as Platinum’s Arkham City. There’s a lot of light traversal / puzzle solving and exploration, and the combat scoring seems built towards rewarding variety and mixing up the toys that you have available.
I toyed with the idea of changing control schemes, but I assume there’s a reason they had the default scheme put dodge on B instead of on a trigger, and I’m slowly coming around to it. My biggest miss is that I keep trying to exit the “special legion more (L button)” using B, but I just dodge while remaining in that mode. Which makes sense, but I keep expecting B to be a “reset me to normal” button. I’m slowly re-learning though. I suspect I will never be able to use the sword slash thing in actual combat.
The combat scoring is pretty all over the place I can get S+ or C kind of at random, when I think I’m performing about the same. The only time I’ve ever felt totally screwed by the combat system is when one of the little buff-armor guys was flying above my head and I just couldn’t find him for several minutes and multiple lives. But the recovery items and AEDs were generous enough to let me tank through.
I like the dumb world-exploration stuff, and I like the Field-Supply item balance: on the first run, you explore everything, and get lots of items, and you’re also probably bad at combat. On subsequent runs, you can skip all the chests and exploration, but you probably don’t need what’s in them because you’re getting better.