Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to season nine of the Gaming Backlog Book club. We just wrapped up season eight about Final Fantasy vi and the Epic Dark Adventure. Had us on the edge of our seats throughout the whole second act, wouldn’t you say?

[00:00:13] Speaker B: Oh yeah, definitely.

[00:00:15] Speaker A: What have you been playing since finishing Final Fantasy 6?

[00:00:20] Speaker B: Pokemon Leaf Green.

I bought both the Pokemon Firered and Leafgreen ports that they brought over to Switch to or to Switch just recently.

Yeah. So I got. I’ve been playing old school Pokemon. It’s been fun. I also do have Pocopia, but I have not played it yet.

[00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, if it has the Pokemon name in it, I expect you to have it by the time we talk.

[00:00:43] Speaker B: I know. I’m a big fan. I know I’ve been seeing so many good things about Pocopia. So I will play that here very soon.

[00:00:49] Speaker A: Isn’t it just Animal Crossing?

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah.

Pokemon and you play as a ditto.

[00:00:55] Speaker A: It’s just funny that they’re both coming from the. From you know, Nintendo affiliated. Yeah, like rather than being something totally different. But whatever. I mean, I guess you just double dip while they’re Animal Crossing teams building the next one.

[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, yeah, that’s what I’ve been playing. I haven’t had any time. I’ve been bad. I need to get back into like I started Red Dead 2. I need to get back into all that. I just haven’t had. Final Fantasy 6 was a grind and took up a lot of time. So now that.

[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, the. The final third I would say was a bit of a grind, but it was. It was still entertaining and a good way to wrap it up.

And obviously the story there is great. But hey, check out our last episode of that season for. For more info there. I’ve just been playing a bit of.

I mean we’ve had our side quest as Hades and I just got super, super into it and have been really just run after run after run because I’m obsessed. Hades won.

[00:01:53] Speaker B: So nice.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: I do have other, other personal games I actually really want to be playing too, but Hades has me addicted. So there we are.

[00:02:01] Speaker B: Good. Yeah, I need to get back into my Hades runs.

[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, we do have a final episode to record for that one sometime.

[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yes, we do. So I will get back into those and I’m sure. I know like once I get back in, do like a two or three runs, I’ll get sucked back in as well. So I just.

[00:02:15] Speaker A: Oh yeah. For sure.

Yeah.

Well, on to season nine. So this season we will be playing Astral Chain for background if you aren’t yet familiar with this game. Astral Chain was released in 2019, developed by Platinum Games and published by Nintendo as a Nintendo exclusive. It was released to highly positive reviews and praise thanks to its open dual character gameplay, world building, presentation customization and gameplay variety, as well as its soundtrack. So. So it’s got a lot of things going for.

Was a bit of a cult hit. There was some criticism of its silent protagonist, but I kind of just view that as a natural byproduct of being a Nintendo game. To be honest, there aren’t all that many spoken main characters Nintendo games.

[00:03:00] Speaker B: No there aren’t.

They’re mostly.

[00:03:04] Speaker A: I don’t know if any of them come to mind at all. They make some grunts and noises, but

[00:03:08] Speaker B: I was going to say most of them just. Yeah, they really just make grunts and noises.

[00:03:13] Speaker A: I think I’m so used to them like just reading.

[00:03:15] Speaker B: Reading text bubbles.

[00:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s true. Occasionally you have a speaker, but through text, not. Not through voice acting. So all good by me. So before I continue on to the story and gameplay, I wanted to see what your experience and opinions are on character action games, which is what this kind of falls into. Platinum Game has made tons of characters character action games including Mad World Way back when, Bayonetta 1 through 3 and Bayonetta origins, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising, Revengeance, the Wonderful 101 Nier Automata, and most recently Ninja Gaiden 4 which has been really highly praised.

[00:03:53] Speaker B: Huh.

[00:03:54] Speaker A: There are also some. Actually just to in case you’re not super familiar, there’s some other non Platinum developed character action games including the Devil May Cry series.

I think you could somewhat call the original Grease set God of War games to semi fall within this category. The older 3D Ninja Gaiden games, there’s that series that’s called no More Heroes, which was cel shaded and had a guy with like a lightsaber, but that was actually just a LED light on it.

[00:04:22] Speaker B: I remember when a new one of those came out on Switch it got.

[00:04:24] Speaker A: People were very Dante’s Inferno was one that was developed by ea, which was somewhat of a Inferno adaptation in the God of War style. And then also Scarlet Nexus which was a bit more recent, which I know we’ve discussed a bit, but haven’t played yet, but curious what your experiences are here.

[00:04:41] Speaker B: Well, I will say out of that all those games that you mentioned, I haven’t played any of the. Except for the God of War I’ve played like the original God of War series but otherwise I don’t think I’ve played. I’ve played a long time ago. I played a bit of Bayonetta 1, but I never beat it. So I need to like it’s a series. It’s always intrigued me. I need to go back and like the Devil May Cry series always looked interesting, but again I never. I didn’t play them when they were on PS2 when they first came out. It’s just they weren’t games back then that I.

I played. So yeah, it’s just. Yeah, a lot of those games that you just said I have not played and. But they’re all so intriguing to me. So one day I will get to a good amount of them.

[00:05:26] Speaker A: Well, you’re in for a treat with Astral Chain then. Or hopefully be in for a treat. I haven’t played it either, but it sounds like this should be a fun one. There are obviously many more CAGs as well, but I’m realizing now of the ones I’ve mentioned, I’ve played more than I thought. So I have played. I played way back in the day. I played the original devil may cry 1 and 2 as you mentioned on PS2, all of the Greek God of War games, including the handheld ones that were ported to PS3 at some point. I did play the Switch version of Bayonetta 1. I played metal Gear Rising Revengeance approximately when it came out because I had just finished metal gear solid 4 and somewhat more recently I played Nier Automata. And most of those are. Were entertaining in the moments that I played them. I don’t think there was any grind I did like in preparation for God of War 2018. I played through, I think, all of the Greek God of War games back to back over a handful of weeks, and that eventually became a little stale. But obviously those are classics for good reasons.

[00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:33] Speaker A: So the story setup of Astral Chain is that in 2078, which. Okay, why are all cyberpunk games and Fallout for that matter, so hyper focused on the years 2077 and 2078?

I just don’t get it.

[00:06:47] Speaker B: It’s true.

[00:06:48] Speaker A: Interesting coincidence. Anyway, 2078, humanity is almost extinct. The survivors are all living on a built island called the Ark, which is just a giant city, and Chimeras, which are invisible to the naked eye and live on something called the Astral Plane, which is an alternate dimension made up of crystallized data. I guess it’s computer data where humans can’t live. These chimeras are attacking the world they do live in. So the chimeras can destroy things. They can abduct humans by dragging them through wormholes, and then they corrupt the humans after that.

We are part of this world’s police and use the tools at our disposal to solve the Chimera caused, you know, detective mystery cases.

Our player character was born to a woman who was corrupted by the Chimera, and in the process of shifting into this corruption, that was when she got corrupted, like was when she was pregnant. So which we presume is what gave us the ability to enter the Astral Plane, which is somewhat unusual for humans. We go on cases to investigate the Chimera attacks, try to figure out what’s going on and stop them. Overall, I’m assuming probably a save the world type story, as so many video games are.

Yeah, the gameplay is a twist on this CAG genre, so it’s within that niche. And you know, Platinum Games especially excels at cags. They make many, many of them. But in addition to sort of the combat that’s very focused on that, we have the ability to solve cases as a detective in third person.

When you’re outside of combat, you question NPCs, examine and study evidence, as well as solve puzzles to continue case investigation.

Additionally, you enter that place called the Astral Plane, which is an interdimensional space where you do some platforming, some puzzle solving, and most importantly, combat. This may be just because it’s in my recent memory, but from some screenshots and videos I remember seeing of Astral Chain when it released the Astral Plane kind of reminds me of a poorly lit cyberpunk version of Dima’s memory database from that Far harbor expansion in Fallout 4, which we played a couple seasons ago. Yeah, well, I think there’s a bit more purple and black and red involved in this one, which that was pretty well lit, I guess, by comparison. The Astral Plane levels serve as the primary combat zones and dungeons, I guess you could say.

While in the Astral Plane, you can summon a variety of familiars called legions, which are attached to and controlled by the main character with a chain, hence Astral Chain. They serve different purposes and allow for different fighting styles. There’s some degree of experience gathering and skill trees RPG style. To upgrade your legions as you go, you can also place the legions on autopilot, or you can choose to directly control their movement with the right analog stick while you’re. You move yourself with the left, which. Okay, I haven’t played this game yet, but I know you played A Tale of Two Sons at some point. A Few years ago I did. Which makes you control two brothers, you know, one in each thumbstick. Right. So this is kind of like that, but more action combat. Heavy.

[00:09:57] Speaker B: I was gonna say for brothers. It was very easy. It was just very complicated.

[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s more like puzzling and moving for me.

[00:10:03] Speaker B: That would be interesting.

[00:10:05] Speaker A: In combat, you still have some more experience than I do in this double stick thing. I mean, I’ve played some twin stick shooters, I guess, but I’m curious if you’ll adapt more quickly here because of your experience with brothers.

[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:10:17] Speaker A: Something I also distinctly remember is that you can wrap enemies up with your chain to bind them by circling yourself and the legion around. So you just like kind of tie them up.

[00:10:25] Speaker B: Oh, that’s cool.

[00:10:27] Speaker A: So I think that probably stuns them or freezes them for a moment so you can get more damage in being a character. Action game. The combat is in real time and it’s very combo heavy with dodging to stay out of danger. And it’s overall very fast paced.

Outside of that, what do you know about Astral Chain and what do you expect out of it?

[00:10:48] Speaker B: Not too much. I watched a few review videos on it. Just spoiler free ones. Just people from. It’s just funny now. Like you see it and I’m like looking. It’s like six years ago. And I was like, oh my God, technically now it’s almost seven years ago.

[00:11:01] Speaker A: Hey. I mean, we just played a game last season that was 30 years old. So I think we’re okay with six years.

[00:11:07] Speaker B: I know, but it’s just crazy how time is going, how fast time is going. I didn’t think this game came out that long ago, but I guess so. Yeah, But I don’t know too much. I heard like a lot of those reviews said the same thing. Like the action, the combat was great. It wasn’t.

It’s a bit of a difficult game, but not too difficult. I think once you get used to the combat and how it flows then becomes a little like more fun and a bit easier.

A lot of people really, again, for most of the games we play, really said the soundtrack was phenomenal, which makes sense.

[00:11:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s. That is a theme that we’ve come across by accident almost.

It’s never the number one reason to play a game, but it’s often a byproduct of it.

[00:11:50] Speaker B: No, exactly. One review that I watched of one of my favorite YouTubers, the Happy Console gamer, in his review, he kind of. He’s a big anime. Anime person.

[00:12:01] Speaker A: Yes. And this is very Much anime art style.

[00:12:03] Speaker B: He said like this whole like game overall reminds him like, it’s like just like a. Like a.

Like it could easily be in like a 90s anime show.

[00:12:11] Speaker A: Well, wonderful music. A couple of favorite animes are 90s cowboy bebop, which I don’t think this is anything like at all, but you know it.

Appreciate that kind of vibe.

[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, I’m excited to see. But yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I know you play. Yeah. That you’re twins. I don’t know if I know you can pick like your. Your twins. You can pick either the male or the female twin. I think they join you along the game. I’m not 100% sure on that, but if like the one you don’t pick, I think they still come with you.

[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yes. That was one of the things I did. You can pick between the male and female main character and yeah, I’m pretty sure they are twins. And I think the other one does become an NPC or is somehow involved in the story. Although you can’t directly control them.

[00:12:53] Speaker B: No, you can’t control them, but I think they come along with you sometimes.

[00:12:56] Speaker A: And actually, now that you mentioned 90s anime, I was a huge fan of Gundam Wing back in the day and these Legion actually kind of look like Gundams. So there you go. I’m following along with that. That story here. Yeah.

Yeah. Outside of the twins thing. Otherwise, I mostly just know from what I saw from the review I watched in 2019 and haven’t really looked at anything since. I just, you know, put it on the backlog and said I definitely want to play this someday. So I’m glad we’re getting to it here.

Otherwise, based on my. I would say I’ve played a number of them, but I have fairly limited platinum games and character action game experience. I do definitely because of that, expect that this will be a game that really, truly rewards experience and mastery of combos. And it’s likely to have a super high skill ceiling where if you get there to that point yourself or watch someone who has really mastered the gameplay, it can have a super smooth flow to it all. That looks like an artist with a paintbrush.

I think that’s the peak of what you can do is just really smooth, never getting hit, kind of just completely destroying the enemies. But.

But at the same time, like as us as first timers, like the big thing that I know from character action games is that the first playthrough of the story is like the tutorial almost in a sense. And like you know, most people probably call it a day there but the people that really enjoy it and want to continue to get better will play, you know, either. I don’t know if this has new game plus specifically but play it again and again and you know, a lot of them have like a scorecard after sect.

You get is it an S through D rank or something like that and so you get ranked after certain sections. And I don’t know if Astral Chain has it but I know Bayonetta has it for example where you know, you can button mash and get through a level and have a great time but you can also be super skilled and know exactly what to do at every moment. So I guess we’ll see where we fall on that spectrum.

[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah we will. I mean from the, as I said, the review videos that I watched, the combat looked great. And as you were saying. Yeah.

Once you sort of not master it but get better and better at it and become more free flowing like obviously in some of those videos I watch of like the igm1 or whatever people who’ve played it forbidden or the developers who are playing and they’re really good but I think it’s going to take a little bit to get used to. I do even though I played like a twin stick thing Twin State game before. I think it’ll take a bit but I think it’ll be really fun. And I like that you kind of what you police detectives and as well and you’re going out on these cases.

[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s. That was my next question. Right. It’s like what makes you want to start this game up? Astral Chain right now in particular. And I think I agree with that and that’s one of my kind of first thoughts is something about its quirky core concept of being a future cop detective that also fights with giant summons that look like robots or Gundams. You know, it’s just it, it caught my attention back then because a lot of these character action games are like against demons or robots or I mean and then we, I suppose we have a robot here but we’re in control of them now. I don’t know. I also like this idea of controlling two characters simultaneously. I want to see how well it vibes with me, I guess.

[00:16:19] Speaker B: Yeah, same.

[00:16:21] Speaker A: And I feel like, you know, I suppose I have somewhat of a pulse on new games that are releasing. Obviously there’s so, so many now but typically I’ll see like the announcement trailer and say okay, that sounds interesting. I’ll keep an eye on it.

And this one, Astral Chain wasn’t talked about all that much I feel like. But I had been curious about it since it first was announced which makes it feel like more of a cult hit and not like this smash hit that everyone knows.

I did also kind of want to work my way through the Switch available Platinum games that released before this because I enjoy seeing the evolution of gameplay and concepts from a developer in release date order. But there are too many Bayonetta games in the way.

[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:17:06] Speaker A: So I kind of just ditched that idea and got the urge now for something weird like this wonderful 101 I also have for Switch but seems like much more of a Saturday morning cartoon vibe in that one. So I’ll probably wait until my son old enough to have any interest and then play it together.

[00:17:23] Speaker B: Play that? Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:17:28] Speaker A: It looks. Looks to be fun.

[00:17:30] Speaker B: Yeah it does. It does look and I think it’s. I don’t know. I’m looking.

I’m liking that we’re doing something that like this is definitely going to be more action based for the combat after going From Final Fantasy 6 of an old school JRPG grinding up all time to now a bit more fast, fast paced combat with it. Yeah. Which will probably be quite a cool unique story solving cases and.

[00:17:59] Speaker A: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean I think even we’ve had a string of. Because like Silent Hill 2 combats was kind of slow and methodical.

Fallout 4’s combat was more gun heavy and it’s.

It could be. It could be fast paced in terms of just like trying to always heal and stuff but it still felt a little bit slower I suppose. And Final Fantasy 6 obviously turn based is you can literally walk away and nothing happens.

I guess Hades has me semi prepared with the twitch reactions but I’m. Yeah. I’m curious to see how, how it all plays out.

[00:18:30] Speaker B: But it should be good.

Oh yeah, definitely. No, I am, I am excited to play this. This was one. I do remember when it came out. Everyone was quite. Everyone gave it positive reviews when it came out and then obviously now it’s almost seven years later. It’s died down a bit. I don’t know if they’re ever making a second one to this.

[00:18:47] Speaker A: I think I, I, you know, it. We don’t know. We don’t know. But I feel like it didn’t make enough money potentially for there to get a sequel. I know the fandom probably wants that but I don’t believe there’s. And nothing’s been announced. I don’t think that’ll get a sequel they’ll most likely move on to, you know, and they did just Release that Ninja Gaiden 4, so, you know, I wouldn’t hold your breath, but people do want a at least a Switch 2 version of it so it runs a little bit more smoothly. We’re going to play this on Switch 2.

Yeah, it’ll be as smooth as it can be and hopefully we don’t see any major bugs or anything, but I think it should be fine.

[00:19:24] Speaker B: I don’t think so. Yeah, because, I mean, from the reviews I was watching, no one seemed to when it came out.

[00:19:28] Speaker A: No one seemed to mention that.

[00:19:29] Speaker B: They said it ran really well just on a on Switch when it came back out on back then. So I think hopefully we should be okay. Should be good.

[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Agreed. Well, Astral Chain Story is organized into 12 files, they call them, which we believe are sort of those detective cases.

So we can at least somewhat neatly divide our episodes with a few files at a time. The first 11 files are the main story and file 12 is the epilogue. And the kind of free play. I wouldn’t call it open world, but free play post game.

So for next time, our goal is to play and complete files one through three.

So once you finish those and as many red files, which are the side quests as you want, save and quit and hang on for next time. Join us to find out if Astral Chain is still worth playing in 2026. And before you get started, let us know on Discord what your expectations are.

We’re curious to hear your thoughts.

[00:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, we are. Thank you everybody and yeah, looking forward to having you along with us on this journey through Astral Train. I think it’s going to be quite fun. Like actually really fun and unique. This has definitely been a game for a while that both of us have wanted to play, so I’m definitely excited to hop into this and get going though. Yeah. Thanks again everybody for listening and we’ll talk to you soon.

[00:20:46] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:20:47] Speaker B: If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of any games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music, or Pocket Casts, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name. Thanks.