Make a charging enemy run into your chain and you’ll fling them backward stunning them. Control the Legion and have it run a ring around an enemy and you’ll bind them momentarily. Of course, part of the deal here is that you’re connected to the Legion with the Astral Chain, and you can even use the chain in combat to do things. For example, the Sword Legion goes into a slicing mode that’s one-for-one the slicing mode from Metal Gear Rising, while the Beast Legion lets you hop on its back and run around at high speed.Įach of the five Legions in the game function totally differently, and you constantly want to swap between them during combat. Tapping the ZL button will instantly summon the Legion back to your side, and then when it’s at your side tapping it again will fling the Legion toward the enemy you’re focusing on.Įach Legion has two abilities it can equip and use in combat, as well as a special move mapped to the left bumper. The Legion will attack on its own, but you’ll need to influence its location and target on the battlefield. This gauge, generally, doesn’t deplete very fast, but as you use the Legion it’ll go down, and once empty it’ll need to recharge restricting you from using the Legion until it does. You can summon the Legion at any time, and dismiss it at any time, and you’ll need to manage its Energy Gauge while the Legion is fighting. While doing this, you can still have your own character move, dodge, and attack. You can summon your Legion by pressing ZL, and holding down the button will let you move the Legion around. The cel-shaded style works wonders, and Astral Chain looks like an anime that you can play.įantastic cutscene direction helps keep the story surging onward, and combat is incredibly flashy and fun. You and your twin brother or sister join the Neuron Task Force, an elite group combating the Chimeras that come through the Astral Plane gates.įirst things first, there aren’t enough good things I can say about Astral Chain’s visual style and aesthetic. You can choose to play as either a male or female character, with the one you don’t choose playing the other major character in the game, your brother or sister Akira. Humanity has moved to a technologically advanced city called The Ark, where you serve as a police officer keeping the peace and protecting humanity from the otherworldly threat. It’s not every day that a game completely blows away my expectations, and makes it immediately clear that it’s something special.Īstral Chain takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where gates to another dimension called the Astral Plane have corrupted the world and turned people into aberrations. I’ve played every PlatinumGames title there is out there, so I went into Astral Chain already expecting some quality action.