Elsewhere though, Platinum have done an absolute bang-up job of making sure the experience of playing Astral Chain is as smooth and customisable as possible. Outside of just being able to customise the appearance of your character, their equipment and your Legions, there are an impressive number of tweaks and options to tailor the experience to your liking. Most immediate are the difficulty options. These run from the ‘Uninhibited’ mode, which has a laundry list of assists toggles to either reduce combat difficulty or automate it entirely for those who just want to see the story through unchallenged, to the default ‘Casual’ and then ‘Platinum Standard’ and ‘Platinum Ultimate’. Casual is definitely still a My First Action Game-style scenario, so I’d recommend ratcheting that up to Platinum Standard, which is the highest available on any first playthrough. The great thing about Astral Chain is that it’s set up to be super replayable, giving players a File/Chapter select option at any time to jump back and clean up missed quests or replay on higher difficulties to grind out some extra rewards, even before finishing the main game. This came in especially handy when I would constantly skip cutscenes by accident because the – button is pause and the + button is skip cutscene why?! It’s the little things I love the most though, the quality-of-life additions that really make playing Astral Chain an absolute joy. Being able to customise the UI and HUD right down to the colour scheme, and even having separate settings for playing on TV or handheld, is awesome. Also, the feature that automatically cashes in any items you pick up that you’re already carrying at full capacity is a stroke of genius.

Final Thoughts

Astral Chain is a gorgeous and superbly original game with an interesting world, stellar writing and ultra-compelling gameplay. It’s not perfect, but it approaches everything it does with an equal focus on accessibility and flash, and when its disparate elements gel together the result is bold and exhilarating in the kinds of ways that only PlatinumGames can get away with. It almost seems like it happens every other week at this point, but the Switch just got another killer app.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch // Review code supplied by publisher

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