It’s Surprisingly Accessible for Action Newbies
PlatinumGames is renowned for creating intense action games that, oftentimes, are exceedingly difficult as well. While Astral Chain certainly can be hugely difficult, it doesn’t have to be.
The good news is that Platinum has included a variety of options and difficulties to make Astral Chain hugely accessible to pretty much anyone and everyone.
When you start off the game, you’ll have access to three different difficulty options. Casual, Pt Standard, and Unchained.
Casual and Unchained are the two options here that will make the game most accessible. Casual functions as your easy difficulty, toning down the damage enemies cause and giving you four AEDs, which will instantly revive you if you die.
Unchained, on the other hand, completely lets the game take care of combat, letting you just enjoy the spectacle and the story, if you want.
Longtime action fans have their own options, however. Pt Standard is your usual normal difficulty, but once you’ve beaten each File (chapter) once you’ll unlock the ability to play it on Pt Ultimate, which doesn’t give you any revives at all. Once your health is gone, you lose.
This wide array of difficulty options is highly adaptive, meaning you can pick up Astral Chain no matter your proficiency at action games.
You’re Basically Playing an Anime
I’ve played a lot of anime games in my life, believe me, but I mean it wholeheartedly when I say that Astral Chain is the closest I’ve ever actually felt to playing an anime.
On a surface level this, of course, applies to the game’s art style and graphics. Astral Chain’s cel-shaded anime style is absolutely gorgeous to behold, and there’s exceptional cutscene direction that really gives the game that intense anime style.
However, this idea applies to the gameplay and actual structure of the game as well. Astral Chain is split into a number of “Files,” each of which serve as a chapter.
These Files are all built around a single word that the game shows on a black screen at the start of each one. Astral Chain clearly takes inspiration from the structure of one-shot 12-episode anime series.
Each File essentially has its own self-contained events while forwarding the overall narrative, and the absurdly flashy combat only helps emphasize the idea that you’re essentially playing a season of anime.
Reinforcing this idea, even more, is the fact that you get essentially an anime opening and ending in Astral Chain, which even feature their own original J-pop songs.
You can still, of course, play Astral Chain if you don’t like anime, as it does appeal simply through its cyberpunk aesthetic. But go in knowing where the game draws its inspirations from.
You Can Play Co-Op in Astral Chain
Like most of Platinum’s games Astral Chain is a primarily single-player focused event. However, there is a bit of a co-op system in the game, although it might not be what you’re expecting.
Using just two Joy-Cons you can play co-op, with one player taking control of the main character while the other controls the Legion. Because you’re linked together, you can’t go too far from one another, but it’s an interesting little twist on gameplay.
Playing co-op makes Astral Chain quite a bit more difficult, since you suddenly don’t have complete control over all of your skills, and have to rely on another playing taking control of the Legion.
Still, it can make it much easier to bind enemies in your chain, as the Legion player can simply focus on getting the chain around, while the character player is able to just avoid and/or attack.
You might not want to play the entire game in co-op, but it’s worth trying at least just to see how different it is.
It’s Linear, But There’s Still a Ton of Optional Content
Despite what you might think, Astral Chain is a fairly linear action game. There’s no open world to explore or anything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton of exploration to be done.
While each File has you, usually, advancing on a linear path the game sprinkles in a ton of optional little pathways and things to discover. There are chests tucked away containing valuable items, extra missions to uncover, collectibles like toilets and cats, and more.
At the end of each File you’ll be judged on how much you’ve completed and how well you did, that includes all the missions you’ve completed and the Red Matter, a resource scattered all over chapters, that you’ve collected.
It’s easily worth going off the beaten track as there’s often fun little missions to undertake, or challenging battles.
On top of this, after you beat the game you’ll unlock a ton of super challenging combat missions.
Although the main story is quite long, there’s plenty to keep you busy for hours on end with Astral Chain.
If you need any help while playing through Astral Chain, make sure to check out our Astral Chain guide wiki.
About the author
