Topic: Astral Chain

@carlos82, I agree that PS4's release schedule is slowing down because of next gen, but to be fair it still has Concrete Genie, Death Stranding, Dreams, Iron Man VR, & the MediEvil remake for exclusives coming out this year, plus whatever 3rd parties are coming out with.

I agree that it's overall not exciting as what Nintendo has going on for the rest of the year exclusive wise though, and am eagerly awaiting for my copy of Astral Chain to arrive in the mail.

@RR529 I'm not sure about Death Stranding yet, I'm definitely curious and I'll probably be picking up MediEvil as i really enjoyed the original, but I don't really care for the annual FIFA and COD releases and don't want to buy anything from EA. In reality for me the only games I'm excited about on the PS4 (that I can't get on Switch) are FFVII remake and of course Cyberpunk which obviously are for next year. Where as on Switch it seems to be wall to wall games starting with this and continuing all the way up until Christmas with the likes of Zelda Luigi's Mansion 3, Pokemon and Panzer Dragoon amongst many others

As always these go in cycles and this time last year it was very much the other way round for me, including the likes of Spider-Man and Astro Bot

@carlos82
That idea makes too much sense. So you know they’ll never do it 😉

I’m not in favor of censoring bad reviews if the review came from someone who actually saw the movie/played the game/partook of the entertainment in question (provided they’re not 0/10, those should just be auto scrubbed by a bot- but continue to allow people to score at 0/10 so that it filters out many of the trolls, and just don’t make it public they’re being scrubbed behind the scenes after a week, 7 days so the person doesn’t realize it’s being scrubbed), but when the vast majority of review bombing comes from people who haven’t played the game, it dilutes the meaning of the aggregate and by extension, 50% of the services rendered by the site.

Hi Everyone! I’m new to the forum. I think this game looks amazing. Would love to see the main characters show up in Smash. Also the amiibos for this game would be amazing if they make them. Thanks everyone!

@scubydo yep that was one of the tough ones for me too..

Okay, so, wow... what a ride this game is. First impressions; it’s very fun, deep and more varied than I thought it would be. But I’m also bit conflicted. So first the goods; the combat is very, very awesome. I’m amazed at how well the dual combat works; you really get to pull off great moves and it largely makes sense and feels right. I like that there’s just that bit of extra exploration if you take your time and look around. So again, combat is working for me, except for the bigger dudes. I had one very anticlimactic “win” against one the earlier bosses after using 2 batteries and taking more medicine than I would like to count.

So I just stopped playing, but something doesn’t feel quite right. I started doing what looked like an easygoing quest, a bit of detective work and solving some riddles(very fun), which became more involved and dangerous, exploring a twilight like dungeon. Which is great. But. Then you complete it. And return to normal world. With a surprise attack and all. Which. Is still great. But it just keeps going and going! Now I’m at twilight again.... Where is my breather!? I need to save dammit! And now I’m stuck following a legion, not knowing what to do. And I need sleep because yesterday I didn’t really... so, sleep well....ngguuuhh.

@NintendoByNature yeah I just started file 3. And the second training more dual combat phase was a bit of an overload for me. But I will get the hang of it.

@Spanjard yeah, I try to make sure I have a chunk of time before starting an actual combat mission.

@carlos82 yeah I figured I wasn’t missing out on much. And it was telling me how to clothes line within the game later on anyway so I may not even return to training. My wife wants to play the co-op option so I’ll let her run through them.

@NintendoByNature do you know what I played God of War very recently so didn’t find the control setup unusual. I might try the other option though.

Has anyone figured out the purpose of Maintenance yet? Outside of feeling like a parody of Fates minigame (at least to me), I have no idea what the point is.

@Spanjard were at the same part and I felt the same way. I thought the file was coming to a close and boom, back into the astral plane. But it does save very often at least. @scubydo file 3 isn't too bad, but there's a couple bosses i had trouble with( triple headed beast and a big dude with a little dude connected to him). Used a lot of meds fyi. @Filth_Element yea that's what Carlos82 said too. It was just tough for me. The option I went with was more bayo like so i rolled with it .

@link3710 that's a good question. I think I remember hearing someone say what it does, but I'm not sure. It more than likely recharges the legions health/energy

So just finished my first 2 combat sections, got D's in both. lol
I thought I did quite well in the first but no matter. Platinum games usually start out this way for me.
But overall, loving the game so far.
I'm really invested in the world and I think it looks great both docked and in handheld mode.
I NEED the soundtrack!!

Thoughts on difficulty?

Casual mode or Pt Standard? (Btw I love how the use the Periodic Table of Elements to abbreviate Platinum as Pt)

I switched to Pt Standard but, I’m thinking it may be a little too brutal.

I am doing Pt standard...I lost my first two batteries against the first boss in the other world (can't remember its name). It was sad.

Do the batteries recover after each file is over, or do they wait until a game over?

I'm just about to get started, well in around half an hour as I'm going to play some Virtua Racing first. I think I'll go with Pt Standard and stick with it. Just inserted the game card in there, love the icon art. Can't wait to get stuck in, though it's already gone 2am.

Tried Pt Standard and it’s perfect. Got a D, but then I got an S+ in the next battle! Definitely the right call for difficulty.

This game gets better and better. I may even like it more than Fire Emblem and Dragon Quest XI S... well, let’s not get carried away here. But I know it’s at least as good. Probably all 3 of those games are equal in my eyes. Equally some of the best video games on Switch.

So I'm on file 4 and wow, talk about difficulty spike. After trying for a solid 8 or 10 times on a particular boss, I had to load the file at casual ( not restart, just reload at the last Save point). It was THAT hard. Changed it back to platinum and was doing fine until arms nemesis in the mall. I have no clue what the heck is going on but I can't get a hit in. Going to put my switch down for the night so i can regroup and come back tomorrow fresh. Let me know if anyone got to that point yet and if they have any tips, thanks in advance.

I'm loving this game so far, and I'm in the exact same boat between these two modes. One seems excessively easy, the other occasionally impossible. I wonder if it's intentional, it makes you treat each file as a world in an arcade.

This game is just awesome.