Sporting a Killer Instinct style combo breaking system, the best underboob of all time, custom combos, some of the most beautiful graphics on Saturn, and a ton of anime references, Astra Superstars is one of my favorite games. It's very simple mechanically, but how it unfolds is not so easy to grasp. It's not too much mind you. The operation is kept simple enough so that you can kind of just mash through arcade mode with little resistance. The actual nuances are in various minutia of it's character gameplay design.

An example is how this game doesn't have special moves, only 6 unique normals. No command normals either, instead you have 2 moves you can perform as you bounce off a wall from heavy knockback, and 2 turning normals for if you're behind an opponent. Typically over or below them. See, in this game you're both in flight, but unlike how other games might do it the lower part of the screen is treated exactly like how the upper part is. You literally just jump downwards. Those turn normals seem useful in neutral, the most devious left rights ever you might imagine. But they're also important combo bridging tools. In this game everyone has very over the top squash and stretch, looney tunes esque moves. You tend to launch the opponent pretty far, which seems fine because everything is dash cancellable-- except in the corner. If the screen can't scroll in that direction, you can't dash cancel your normals that way. It seems like this is a hard line the game draws. The chain system is very freeform, so you end up getting decent combos by just doing a few dash cancels with the light auto combo into mediums, then 2 jump cancel (knock them down, follow downward, then back up!) heavies into a super.

The solution is that you don't really have to carry them there! You can launch them upwards or downwards, dash over or below them, and then use your turn normals as a solid combo bridge, as your own back will act like a surface for them to collide with. It's very very cool in motion. It's extremely DBZ.

Other examples are how the placement of your normals really matter. Even though everyone has giant normals, there's ostensible dead zones you're meant to manually compensate for. And like, you actually totally can. For what would normally be an awkward or impossible area to hit for a normal fighting game character due to being locked into just having specific moves with specific hitboxes, Astra Superstars characters can just do it because they can jump downwards. You can also cancel either the down or up jump at any point. A normal hits low, then very high, but you don't have time to wait for it to connect high? You can just spike them downward and press it or do it rising. Vice versa too. Every character has a moveset with specific multi hitting or wide arcing moves that can hit in a myriad of different ways that all matter due to very granular positioning intricacies. Very pleasant game, amazing art and music. Insane presentation, it's honestly kind of perfect!

Physically impossible to dislike. this game is extremely hype, and likely a little bit of "all style no substance" but frankly I'm aight with that. You don't have a lot of moves per character, and everyone is flying so you can jump downwards which is a little weird. Despite that the action that happens on screen is so over the top and the character designs are so exaggerated that I can't help but love this game. I don't think this games gonna be at any esports event anytime soon, but for dumb fun with friends you can't do much better. Fair warning though: this game has ludicrous amounts of flashing lights, so if you have sensitivity to that kind of stuff I'd steer clear. Hype as this game is, its not worth gettin a seizure over, ill tell you that much.