Astral Chain has had an odd lead up to release, before the direct at the start of the year, we didn’t even know this game existed, then we heard about it and its planned release date, but then E3 came and the game was not playable, but the game is out now and, it is pretty amazing.

Astral Chain tells a very generic story, at least as far as an anime/manga inspired story can be, the world has got to heck, creatures known as Chimera started to appear all over the world and wherever they showed up, corruption soon followed. As the humans started to fight back, the fight on land was lost and they had to flee to the Ark, a man-made island, composed of various districts and they quickly regrouped and began to fight back again, however the peace was not to last. Years have passed and you are about to take your first steps on your first day, having been transferred to Neuron, a special department of the police force and it is here the action kicks in. As you begin to attempt to understand what is happening around you, you are pulled through a gate and into the world of the Chimera’s and when the squad comes through to help, you not only lose someone to the realm, but your squad loses their Legions, leaving you as the last remaining one.

While you are the only one with a Legion, you are not alone, and the members of Neuron will do what they can to help, the problem with he story is, as I said before, follows the extremely familiar beats that almost all anime/manga follow, even down to characters. That is not to say it is bad, just something that we have seen before, though thankfully, even though the beats are the same, some of the characters help elevate it to a higher place. The story does not change if you pick one of the twins over the other, in fact the only change is that for some unexplained reason, your character becomes mute and does not speak, with the other characters even calling point to this at times. There are some characters that stand out as interesting, some are annoying and some are Lappy, but they all have a charm that helps sell the story, even the civilians you interact with whilst on duty are done quite well, while not the strongest point, Astral Chain has a solid foundation.

The gameplay is actually broken up into two parts, the combat portions, which will be quite familiar to anyone who has played Bayonet and actual police work, with elements from the CSI games making an appearance. Most of the games missions follow a similar pattern, at least until the story kicks into gear and that is that something has happened, so you need to head to the location and investigate, this can take many forms, but the basic two are speaking with people who might have witnessed the incident and scanning the world, in an attempt to locate more clues. There were parts of this that feel like actual work, as you will speak with dozens of people, only to have to ignore many of the collected clues, as they are not relevant to the investigation. When you have enough information, your partner for the mission will ask you questions, which then requires you to supply matching information, like what the suspect was thought to be wearing and such, but worry not, if you get it wrong, your partner will just disagree with your choice and you move on. Once you have established the clues and determined the next course of action, you are free to proceed, but you don’t have to push forward in the main case, you can actually explore the world some more.

Littered around the world are plenty of little cases that will require some thought to complete, they might be as simple as helping a child get their balloon down from a tree, or as complex as locating the source of why a trash bin is moving around on its own. These missions all help you level up, which is important as not only does it boost your skills, but the missions reward you with items that you can use to not only upgrade your gear, but also the Legions themselves. As you level up the Legion, you can assign new skills and attacks to them, equip buffs that not only increase the amount of damage that they can deal, but also the cooldown timer on a special move. There are many options for levelling up any of the Legions, which is good as you will find yourself choose one or two over the rest and deciding on how best to level them up, is going to give you a different experience than the rest. Combat takes place on the Ark, but more often is done in the Chimera’s world, which is good, as you can really let loose there, and while combat is basic, there is a significant amount of depth to discover in there, which given the developer, is not surprising.

Perhaps the most complicated part of Astral Chain is that there are times when you will control both your human character and the deployed Legion, and it does take some time to adjust to controlling two characters at once. When you enter into combat, the Legion will take action on its own, but there are times you will want to take some manual control, for example, if you direct the Legion to wrap the chain, that connects it to yourself, around an enemy, you can bind them, giving you a moment to wail upon them. At other times, if you pull the chain taught, you can use it to knock enemies down, giving you another chance to dish out the damage; the fun is that you need to adapt to the scenarios that the game throws at you on the fly. When you are just wanting to hurt the enemy, you can do it in one of two ways, the first is just by letting the Legion do it, which is fine and again you can give it some commands at times if you wanted to, the other is by running into he fight yourself. This is where things will likely take the longest to adjust to, as not only is attack mapped to the right trigger, you need to swap through weapons using the dpad and dodge with B. Once you have got the basics down, you can then learn combo patterns and such, letting you bash the enemy with some flair.

The game offers up three difficulty levels, depending on your experience with this type of game, the levels only impact combat though, nothing else, so those wanting the full Platinum Games combat experience, need not worry there. If you are a somewhat regular gamer, then casual mode is where you will spend your time, the game gives you some lives, as well as other options, to help you out, but the mode that is for newcomers is Unleashed and it takes care of combat for you. You will still need to explore the world and complete investigations on your own, but when you enter combat, the game will pick the Legion best suited for the enemies around you and take care of everything, from basic attacks, to combo ones, it does it all. There are a few little caveats to that, first is that the game will not do finishing moves, you still have to do that manually and they are worth doing, no matter the mode, as it will refill your health, second is that if an enemy or boss creature requires you to use the Legion in a specific way, you need to do that yourself. You can swap between play styles at the end of a mission, so if you feel combat is getting to hard, you can drop it down for a mission or two, then bring it back up and it is a nice way to see some advanced moves in action, I tested it out on a mission and honestly put the controller down, left the room and came back to see both my character and the Legion kicking butt.

Another area where some butt is well and truly kicked are the visuals, somehow, Platinum Games have managed to make a game that runs smooth and still look as amazing as it does. The characters have a very anime inspired look to them, which suits the story being told, and while some background characters look basic, they still look a treat. The Chimera have a look that feels familiar but has a touch of an otherworldly quality to them, which helps them stand out, especially against the basic aberration creatures. The locations you explore, all look great and they are quite large and again, somehow full of life, not just a few people here or there, but everywhere, with cars and other items included. When you enter the Chimera world, there is a complete tonal shift, from the lack of colour and techno inspired music, to the lack of things happening, the world is shades of grey, with splashes of red all over, and as you spend equal time in both worlds, the distinction is welcome. All that said, there are some issue with the visuals, mostly when it comes to shadows, with one particular instance happening, once you have visited Zone 09, the lack of quality on the shadow stands out a mile and once you see it, you will notice it everywhere else.

On the audio side, things are a little more mixed, the game sports voice acting for the major moments, cutscenes and some investigation and the acting is top notch across the board, as one would expect it to be The game opens and you see the actors names front and centre, so you would hope it be great; the only real issue to it, is that your character, the twin you select does not speak at all, just grunts and moans from time to time. Given that this is not meant to be you, but a character that you are playing, it stands out as a missed chance, more so when you consider that the twin you did not select, goes through quite the story arc, a few spoken lines back would have helped sell it so much more. The music is pretty wonderful across the board as well, the reason I say that, is the track that you have to listen, each time you are in the Neuron headquarters, just does not fit. The track selection for when you are out and about, does merge wonderfully with the game, just that one track really does not, but personal choice, might see that not be an issue.

Astral Chain is a really amazing title, it has some superb combat, great use of investigation techniques and all topped off with many little touches to boot. While the story is not the best, given it is quite predictable, it still manages to make itself stand out from others attempting similar things, with a great cast of characters, that are all brought to life by wonderful acting. IF you are looking for something different from the normal, then you really need to look no further.

Review code provided by Nintendo