 Hello everyone. Today I am reviewing a highly requested game by everyone on Twitter. So here's my review of Astral Chain, an exclusive game for the Nintendo Switch and gifted to me by Jeff Vengeance Early, a subscriber of the channel. Thank you. Now Astral Chain is an action combat hack and slash RPG with a sprinkle of investigation elements and it is by Platinum Games published by Nintendo in August 2019. So it's not a very old game by any means. It was a game that I missed out on when it was released but I have now recently played it and oh boy it has been a blast and one of my subscribers actually described this game as criminally underrated. Story. You choose to play as one of the twin recruits to the police force, male or female, with customization options for your hairstyle and later down the line also with the option to change out your outfit. So you work as a policeman or policewoman in the year of 2078 in a world with not many humans left because of an extra-dimensional war going on with creatures called Chimeras. The human race has invented a device called the Legadas, which members of the police force wear on their arm with the ability to control certain Chimeras and then calling them legions, which they can maintain control over because of the Astral Chain. The lore of this brand new IP goes deeper than you may think and you can really dig deep and read a bunch about it in something called data files. You will get to know your colleagues and also somewhat get to know the general people of the megafloat island of Ark. You are actually on a megafloat island and that is like a artificial megacity metropolis created by humans because the earth's surface is full of red matter also known as corruption. The story is easy to follow along to and most of the dialogue is voiced, which is always appreciated. Gameplay. This is a game where you will immediately feel that the controls are good and the game even opens up with you on a motorcycle. I had such a great first impression with the controls and the entire feel of the game. It doesn't feel like a cheap game. It feels like an expensive game. In this game you have the police headquarters which serves as your hub world throughout the entire game and the game from here is divided into 12 chapters called files. So this is by no means an open world but this time I had no problems with the linearity of playing the game bit by bit by restricted chapters because that is how this game is set up. I just made sure I was up for a whole chapter before starting on even though this game has autosave while within a certain file you can only manual save in between files on your computer at the HQ. Each of these 12 files has a continuous storyline, main objectives and often a bunch of side quests. I love side quests and a bunch of collectibles and you can of course re-enter these places later if you want to go for that 100% sweep. I actually recommend that you do all the side quests when they are presented to you so that you don't have to go back. Just do all the side quests as you get them. That's what I recommend because you'll get an evaluation at the end of each file giving you bonuses based on how much you have completed within each file. The side quests are good. This one time I had to bring an ice cream to a girl without dropping it and I had to keep it balanced using the gyro controls. That was so random. With your iris you can see information for people and things around you down to the details of people's birthdays and blood types. You know there are so many details in this game. So many details. Some quests include detective work where you question citizens on a recent event, making notes with your finds and later having a quiz take place based on those findings. You can pick up trash in this game as any good old police woman would do. Sometimes you will have to purify people with corruption on them and sometimes you have to help people find lost items by using your beast legion to sniff and track the items down. All blue and red dots on the map are side quests and the yellow being your main quest within each file. There is a photo mode and for each person you photograph you unlock their backstory at your PC. There are a bunch of items in which you can assign to the quick menu and this game also has a lot of harder difficulties if you're up to that stuff. Another side quest is to rescue cats and get them to the animal shelter at your base. There is a challenge list in this game that is really fun. The list has a lot of objectives and a lot of them are really fun. There is actually so many objectives on this list that I would like to see the person who has actually completed the whole list. When it comes to combat the game will teach you everything you need to know down in the training room and I recommend doing all of these training missions because they made sense and they are also getting straight to the point. No messing around and you will quickly learn the controls. There is a bunch of stuff to the combat in this game. I mean you have your legion, you have several legions, you can swap them out and they have different playstyles and abilities to them and also you have several types of guns and melee attacks. Some of the legions are like a sword legion and arrow legion, arms legion and a beast legion just to mention some. With a beast legion you can dig up stuff underground. With the arrow legion you can shoot stuff that is off in the distance. With the sword legion you can cut wires and with the arms legion you can lift up stuff. You can upgrade your batons and gun and of course you can upgrade your legions as well making them acquire active and passive skills and also equip them with certain abilities for example increasing your movement speed, a bunch of other useful things. There is just so much to this game that it is hard to really cover it all. Incredible variations in the gameplay and it is all very enjoyable. For example I love cleaning up the red matter scattered across every world and everywhere. It is just so satisfying. When it comes to the gameplay in this game I just love the combat. Graphics, they are so sharp and so crisp. Maybe even the best graphics I have seen on the entire system. Performance is perfect, flawless. I love the art style and the characters and the menus. They look so good and the text font they're using and the menu is also customizable to be whichever color you prefer. Your character is customizable. You can truly make this game feel like your very own game but in cutscenes the lips don't really seem to sync up well. This game has just really beautiful colors. I love the effects that they are using and the animations and oh my god all the flashiness on the screen colors. My brain really responds really well to bright colors like this. I mean all legions look cool and they are also color customizable. The level design though is a little lackluster and a bit simplistic especially when you get to the extra dimension. Very simple, very simple and also I wish some of the locations and levels were a bit bigger. To say it like this there's no location that feels really big by any means. All locations feels very small. Maybe that is something that they can do in a sequel. I definitely want a sequel of this game. Let's all hope for that music. Okay guys, guys, listen to this. Tell me how you did not just instantly love that piece of music. It was so surprising to me. First time I heard that. That is some of the best hub music I've ever heard. Some places has just ambient music in them and in the extra dimension I even felt like the music reminded me of something from Zelda Twilight Princess. It was just something that I felt when I was playing in the extra dimension. Voice acting is good, really good and sound effects are excellent. The overall music style is techno and rock and generally a type of music that I find myself to be enjoying. Perfect. This game is amazing and unique. It is stunning visually. Incredible soundtrack but above all this game is just so much fun. It is fun. It is exactly what a game is supposed to be. And on the list of most salt switch games this game is on 30th place. It deserves to be higher on that list. The cons in this game which aren't many is that I wish there were more areas and bigger levels. Some places really feel confined and restricted and often there are also invisible walls but other than that I like everything. I love controlling my legions. Just remember to do maintenance on your legions every once in a while or between each file that you play. Combat is actually like a dance. It's beautiful. There's so much heart and soul in this game. It is so unique. I never thought I would like this game as much as I do. I definitely want to replay this game. It is so unique. It is a gem. I'm giving it 9.5 out of 10 which is a really good score. This one is definitely the serving of that score and I hope you enjoy this game as well if you decide to pick it up. Now that was all for today everyone. I really appreciate you coming in here to listen to my reviews. I hope I do my reviews as thorough and detailed as you deserve. I've also done like a lot of other reviews on this channel. So I will leave a link down below to a playlist of all my reviews in the buy or not series. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you later.