Delightful game! In fact, it's so full of little surprises that I'm not even going to say very much in this review. This game is a constant stream of experiences, big and small, that will make you smile and comment on how that was neat or clever. Or sometimes neat and clever. If you're even looking at reviews for this game, you're probably the right demographic to love it and should probably just get it.

I will detail one thing, though, because there is a rather massive flaw holding this game back from a perfect score, and that's the shoehorned roguelite system. Astalon is a regular metroidvania with all the elements you'd expect, except for save rooms and healing. Both are nearly non-existant and the idea is for you to die, buy metaprogression upgrades with your accrued currency and then restart, except it's the exact same castle down to the fact that minibosses retain the damage you've done to them before you died, so the roguelite aspect is entirely pointless and just leads to wasting even more time running back to where you were than other games in the genre do. This game is still a 15-hour experience to just clear, and a 25-hour experience to do everything including the bonus modes, so it's not too bad overall, but stay away if you value your time or can't handle repeating areas to progress.

Other than the roguelite flaw and the fact that boss rush kind of sucks, there really isn't much to complain about here. Charming, creative, clever and neat!

Really lovely little retro Metroidvania/Search Action game with a couple of unique gimmicks. You have three characters that you swap between who develop their own unique strengths and weaknesses as you unlock upgrades, and there's a death loop where healing is basically nonexistant, but death sends you to a shop where you can cash out currency and then respawn back at the start of the map. Adds up to a pretty satisfying experience, exploring, trying to hold on to every hit point until the bitter end, then launching back in with juiced stats.

There are a couple of annoying or disappointing elements.
The tower is very big and rambling, which is fun to explore at first, but when you're backtracking in the late game it's easy to waste minutes of time only to hit an unmarked wall you forgot about and realise you have to take a completely different route. There's a lot of tantalising story hints thrown out, and I had hoped that exploring the most difficult optional areas would offer some answers, but they all give unsatisfying rewards instead.

Overall it's very well paced and a great size. The map feels expansive, but I 100%ed the main game in under 20 hours, which is pretty perfect for me. The art style is really gorgeous and all the characters feel great once they find their rhythm. Absolutely worth picking up if you like the genre.

I picked this up from a humble bundle, and I'm pretty glad it was included because otherwise I don't think I would've ever even heard about this game. It definitely flew under the radar a bit which is a shame because I think it's really good.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Astalon, all I really knew was that it's an NES-style metroidvania. The start of the game was kinda slow, but I feel like that's a pretty frequent problem within the genre so I won't hold that against it too much. Having three characters to play with (and later 5) is pretty cool. They all have different weapons and attributes that make them feel unique. I can only think of two downsides, first is that swapping between them requires a lot of backtracking in the beginning, but that issue basically goes away entirely once you find the item that lets you switch on the fly. The other is that in my opinion Zeek doesn't really fill any role particularly well and is almost completely outclassed by Bram (who is the most hilariously blatant Simon Belmont copy I've ever seen by the way). Beyond that though the main three you start with are all great.

The game is pretty hard honestly. There are really few ways to restore health so I died a lot. I do think that's fine though because dying is not very punishing at all. There are a lot of warps to get back to where you need to be and it's also the main way to get to the upgrades store. Sometimes I just have a lot of orbs and hit the lowtiergod "I should kill myself NOW". For real though it's a pretty cool mechanic that takes away a lot of the sting of dying since you can always buy some stuff and come back stronger.

I did 100% the main game and for the most part it wasn't too bad. There were definitely points where I got so lost that I had to look up a guide though. Arguably a skill issue but whatever. The only part of it I really disliked was finding the few rooms I never entered which was a huge pain considering how big the map is (plus it's required to get the good ending). And farming orbs is absolutely mandatory for getting every shop upgrade. But if you don't care about those then you'll be fine.

Once you beat the game there are three other modes you can play - boss rush, and two extra campaigns as new characters. I didn't really mess with the last two since they seem to just be playing the whole thing again which I'm not really interested in doing right now lol. I did do boss rush though and I feel like it sucked. When you go into these fights you are nowhere near as strong as you'd be in the main game which makes it pretty miserable. For the average player I feel like it's pointless to even try it without getting Blood Chalice right away since it's the only reliable form of healing, but this also results in the fights taking ages because of how much time you need to spend turtling waiting to get some HP back. I wouldn't recommend bothering with it. Also I'm trying really hard not to let it affect my rating too much because it is the last thing I played before deciding I was finished lmao.

Anyway to get to the point, it's not a perfect game, but I had really a great time and would for sure recommend it to anybody who's into metroidvanias.

Gli esseri umani sanno essere persone tremende, come ci insegna Astalon... ma ancor più tremende sono le persone che commettono il mio stesso errore.

Ad una prima occhiata, "Astalon: Tears of the Earth" può facilmente venire scambiato per uno dei tanti indie in pixel art in circolazione, spesso "chimere" di generi videoludici e copie di altri titoli. In particolare, Astalon prende spunto dalle origini di alcune saghe storiche, tra cui Zelda, Metroid, Megaman e così via; da ciò ne consegue la "nascita" di un ignorante pregiudizio, il classico "giudicare (male) dalla copertina".
Quale errore! Quale tremendo errore!

Tears of the Earth si è rivelato essere un ottimo metroidvania con elementi da rouge-lite, andando contro a tutti quei preconcetti erronei che si erano andati a sviluppare nella mia mente. Pur rimanendo effettivamente un gioco concettualmente semplice, riesce nell'intento di far appassionare il giocatore con le sue meccaniche, divertenti e mai scontate.
Come accennato in precedenza, generalmente si tratta di un classico metroidvania 2D a scorrimento (più verticale che orizzontale), ma la novità risiede nel fatto che, per riuscire a proseguire nell'avventura, sarà necessario fare gioco di squadra e sfruttare sinergicamente ogni abilità di ciascuno dei tre eroi protagonisti: Kyuli è più agile e può fare un doppio salto a parete, Arias è uno spadaccino è può spezzare i tralicci, Algus usa la magia e può attivare interruttori a distanza. Dato che, almeno inizialmente, i tre personaggi possono venire switchati solamente nei checkpoint, il giocatore dovrà scegliere oculatamente con chi partire all'esplorazione, salvo poi sbloccare shortcut o scoprire strade alternative nascoste.
Il level design dell'intera mappa è degno delle più grandi produzioni, non solo per la coerenza in sè, ma anche per il fatto che sia stato concepito per essere perfettamente fruibile da tre personaggi differenti con abilità differenti. L'esplorazione, inoltre, non sarà mai fine a se stessa, dato che porterà sempre alla scoperta di power up utilissimi o nuove abilità, che permetteranno di esplorare ancora più a fondo.
L'unico neo in questo sistema riguarda la mappa, purtroppo poco intellegibile persino se potenziata, su cui non è possibile nemmeno prendere appunti o usare lo zoom, dimostrandosi così l'elemento più "old-style" del gioco.
Solitamente, giochi di questo tipo tendono a puntare molto sulla difficoltà crescente delle sezioni action, ma qui accade il contrario. Dopo una impattante difficoltà iniziale, Astalon diventa via via più semplice, concentrandosi maggiormente sulle sezioni platform.
Il richiamo estetico è palesemente quello dell'epoca a 16 bit, ma con delle rifiniture artistiche che rendono ogni singola stanza riconoscibile e pittoresca, ognuna con una storia da raccontare, tanto da fare invidia al buon Hidetaka Miyazaki. Carino anche il design dei personaggi, un po' chibi ma senza esagerare. A parte Kyuli. Non c'è alcun motivo affinché sia mezza nuda, but that's Japan.
Come accennato a inizio "recensione", la trama di questo gioco è semplicissima, così come il suo contesto; tuttavia, a colpire parecchio è la narrazione, che si sviluppa tramite dialoghi molto solenni e malinconici, oltre che attraverso una basica ma piacevole interazione tra i tre amici protagonisti.
Un plauso va fatto pure alla colonna sonora, che non mi pento di definire... grandiosa! Anch'essa, prevalentemente composta da tracce musicali malinconiche, senza però sdegnarsi di utilizzare brani più epici e accattivanti.

Che sorpresa Astalon! Non mi sarei mai aspettato che un gioco simile potesse rapirmi a tal punto. Peccato per le modalità extra, di post-game, non molto riuscite, altrimenti lo avrei sicuramente platinato. Giocatelo se ne avete l'opportunità, non fermatevi alla prima sciocca impressione, come stava per fare il sottoscritto.