Astral Chain

Platinum delivers another winner with Astral Chain. Fans of fast-paced action games shouldn't hesitate to pick this one up.

Astral Chain constantly impresses with its enthralling premise, frenetic action, and abundance of content. Even in its quietest moments, it exudes heart and intrigue, and for those willing to dig deeper, The Ark and its mysteries are a joy to discover. Beautiful visuals and incredible presentation values round things out to make it one of the Switch’s must-own titles.

Aside from the lackluster co-op and slow start, Astral Chain is one of those rare games where it's difficult to say anything bad about it. The story and world building may fall short of the masterpiece that was NieR: Automata, which also involved Astral Chain director Takahisa Taura, but I dare say this is the best combat action in a Platinum Games title to date. The dual control of one of the Howard twins and the Legion in an innovative twist in battle and makes combat as fun to watch as it is to play. The exploration and detective work make The Ark a world that I wanted to protect from the C...

While fans are waiting for Bayonetta 3 to finally come out, PlatinumGames has released yet another gem on a Nintendo platform with one of their best and most entertaining combat systems to date in Astral Chain.

I’ve played every PlatinumGames title there is out there, so I went into Astral Chain already expecting some quality action. It’s not every day that a game completely blows away my expectations, and makes it immediately clear that it’s something special.

Whatever criticism you can throw at Astral Chain, you can’t say it isn’t unique. In the first few hours, I was all over the place when it came to an assessment, as it can take some time to really turn it up. But when it does it just clicks, and I don’t want to stop playing it.

Astral Chain features a perfectly realized world filled with wonderful characters and awesome architecture. It runs perfect on the Nintendo Switch and looks stellar, too. The predictable story is one of the only faults of this over-the-top, incredibly fun action game.

Astral Chain is a new IP that's a must-have for Nintendo Switch users looking for a new hack n' slash game to dive into.

There's nothing quite like the look and feel of Astral Chain.

Astral Chain is one of the Switch's best action games yet, with unique, two-character combat and a striking sense of style.

This review has largely been gushing, but I want you to know that Astral Chain isn't perfect. The non-combat side of the game is often fairly pedestrian and the story can be pretty overwrought even if it is largely told in a knowing, tongue-in-cheek manner. With that noted, this is absolutely a worthy successor to Nier Automata - and like that game, Astral Chain is definitely a contender for one of my favourite games of the year.

As it is now, Astral Chain is a great action game with a few blemishes. It might not be perfect, but it should be a high priority for any Switch owners, and fans of the action genre as a whole.