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Despite having spoken about Astral Chain for an hour with Steve, I’m left thinking of the little things we had failed to touch upon. Each Legion, for example, is able to equip modifiers to their statistics that can have an impact on your play style. I don’t think such things are a necessity in such a discussion, but it certainly goes to show the breadth of the game’s design.

Yet that design is also restrained in a manner that I cannot help but disagree with any sentiment that claims it doesn’t know what it wishes to be. I think the developers at PlatinumGames had far grander plans for Astral Chain, but managed to tighten that vision up into a solid deliverable. That the plot seems to drop so many elements is, to me, an indication that they had to cut and rush a lot of elements in order to ship the game on time, working with what they could in order to tell as coherent a story as possible. The story experience suffers, but the gameplay was clearly prioritized. A wise choice, I think, as the world is still wonderful to be in, and I long to keep coming back to find more of its secrets and master its many challenges.

You’ll no doubt notice Steve and I sound different this week. We had to swap to a different microphone due to my lack of communication ahead of time, and so we performed a bit of an experiment. It could lead to improved recordings in the future, or we could simply revert to the old one. I hope the change isn’t too much of a bother for anyone listening.

What did you think of Astral Chain? Feel free to comment below, or send us an e-mail with your thoughts.

Opening theme music by my buddy Brandon, a.k.a. Fallen Prophecy.