Truly one of the best Action RPGs ever made. Beautiful 2D graphics, awesome soundtrack, batshit crazy anime story with tons of dialogue (easy to skip if you don’t care) and super responsive gameplay. The game is crammed to the ceiling with content. There are so many levels, monsters, bosses, more monsters, more bosses, items, gear, hidden treasures, puzzles, likable characters, vast amounts of difficulty options, arena challenges and more. And don’t get me started on all the RPG systems that are put into this game. It can sound overwhelming when reading about all the systems before starting the game, but Astlibra manages to introduce the systems step by step over dozens of hours of gameplay. The player character can level up, distribute attribute points, do magic, add items to a magic Libra, distribute points on a giant Sphere Grid, find and craft dozens and dozens of weapons, shields, armors and accessories and unlock boards for every single weapon, armor and accessories to improve it even more. Seriously, if you like to become the baddest of badass RPG characters with endless grinding, optimization and build options, this is your game. But it is also your game if you like crazy anime stories. Or just a laid back, relaxed Hack’n’Slay with nice graphics. You know what? If you like videogames even a bit, you have to get this game. Period. It’s a masterpiece. Some of the best 20€ you can spend on Steam. Get it and spread the gospel. Don’t believe me? Try the demo. And oh, this is the PERFECT Steam Deck game as well.

Astlibra Revision is one man's labor of love, the magnum opus of hobbyist game designer Keizo Morishige. This is a polished version of his browser game Astlibra (labeled accordingly!), completed over the course of a decade and a half, which shows - there's a LOT of game here. Combat is tight, nail-bitingly precise down to a matter of frames, and near-infinitely customizable with a bevy of buffs (or debuffs, if you wish), weapons, and special abilities. There's ample room to play this game with nearly any build or strategy you like.

While mostly cobbled together from free assets (though very well-chosen ones - the soundtrack is killer), Vanillaware artist Takehiro Shiga (better known as Shigatake) worked on refined character art for Revision, paired with breathtakingly detailed boss designs by artist Haku Tatsufuchi. As a Vanillaware diehard, I was first drawn to this game because Shigatake worked on it, but the rest of the game is far too solid for that to be the only thing worth mentioning.

The story plays out in an episodic fashion, down to an anime-like opening sequence (complete with theme song!) before each chapter. You play as Popular McJRPG Guy and his personal Crow of Judgment on a sprawling journey that comes further off its hinges as the game progresses - there is heartache and fanservice in spades, predictable in spots and utterly blindsiding in others. It's best to experience it blind! The English translation, originally fraught with grammatical errors, has been significantly improved with a patch, but the old one is currently still available through a beta channel should you wish to use it.

The MSRP is a steal for the sheer size and quality of this game. Of all the Games By One Guy out there, this is as good as it gets! To all aspiring game designers - this game is proof positive that if you are truly passionate about your creations, it can be seen and felt from a mile away.

A job very well done by KEIZO and collaborators - warmly and enthusiastically recommended.

Quite possibly the most unhinged game I've ever played.

I went in expecting a simple 2D Action RPG that'd be short but sweet as it was mostly made by one guy... turns out this is a +50 hour RPG that took 14 years to complete with one of the most insane stories I've experienced in quite a while that kept going on and on and on. I got to several points where I'm like "I believe I see the end of this massive tunnel... oh no wait there's still more." Yeah I think that phrase describes Astlibra Revision perfectly, there's always more.
Where to begin... lets start with the visuals. Most of the environments and backgrounds are these edited public domain photos and materials. It gives a strange tone to the setting of the game, as I'll be starring in the background and its very obvious that these textures of this cave are just actual photos of cliffs and rocks. Some of the enemies are like this... I think. It's hard to tell with some of them, but I'm pretty sure the dev used real photos for the penguins you fight at the snowy mountain. Its a bizarre style that straddles the line between being low-budgeted and stylistic. Its funny how this made me pay attention more to the backgrounds, trying to discern what are photos and what were originally made assets. A lot of monsters and bosses are original, and to its credit there's a lot of interesting designs that show a often-treaded but no less bombastic style of medieval fantasy.
Though speaking of designs, if you aren't privy to "anime" designs or tropes then parts of this game will be hard to stomach. You fight a loooot of giant women with huge breasts which is one thing, but the story also has "classic scenes" like the hot spring visit, or the scene where a woman has to wear something very skimpy because of a big misunderstanding, or the "N-not like I like you, idiot!" and so forth. I really hate talking about this stuff, but it be remiss of me to not give a heads-up. To be fair this game took 14 years to make. I can't vouch what was changed during all that time, but standards of art change just as much as the technology we use to play games. What's seen as fine at some point is seen as "trashy" later in time, even if some of this was always the latter to begin with. It's not unlike how the infamous Duke Nukem Forever was a mess of old mechanics and set pieces that felt immediately dated when it came out since it took so long to be "finished", only that the differences is that they are, thankfully, fleeting moments in this marathon of a game. You aren't going to go on a road trip without having to drive around some potholes, but I wouldn't argue with you if you said they should've patched those holes up.
Dwelling on these misgivings wouldn't be fair as it ignores the entire plot and boy howdy what a roller coaster it is. It involves a lot of time travel with the protagonist able to prevent disasters and fixing many a tragedy by traveling into the past. That's putting the time travel mechanic as simply as I can, but they take every advantage they can with it. Nearly anytime I wonder "What would happen if they did this?" they'd actually explore that possibility in due time. Does it always make sense? I don't know. Time travel isn't real so who the hell knows. I was admittedly smiling and nodding a lot of times when some unforeseen consequence unfolds, or a new rule of this temporal manipulation rears its ugly head. I was always like "I'm hear for it!" I'm also glad that some of my fleeting thoughts on the motivations and goals of this diverse cast gets explored in many ways. The protagonist, for example, is searching for his childhood friend that he lost eight years ago. And without spoiling it I had certain thoughts about this dynamic that I'm happy to say that the author did explore, and rather thoroughly at that. Some of the craziest reveals need to be seen firsthand, it goes places.
I don't wish to delve too much into the nitty gritty of the plot, so what do you even do in this game? I listened to a podcast that gave this game a near perfect descriptor, "It's like if Vampire Survivors had actual structure and a plot". This game is all about that progression and dopamine. You can place stat points into any stat you want, but re-speccing is easy, free, and even encouraged. Every armor, shield, and weapon have a experience bar that, when filled, will reward with either a skill or a skill slot in order to use said skills. Skills do, in fact, have a massive impact on how you play, so you're encourage to use as many weapons and armor as you can. Enemies drop materials in order to buy equipment, as well as "Force" that's used on this massive skill tree. The skill tree is mostly for permanent stat ups and the rare treasure, but it also gives access to the magic spells that have a wide variety of effects. Importantly, MP is only gained by attacking enemies, and it will decrease by itself if you idle for too long which encourages an aggressive playstyle. In exchange casting a spell will grant brief invulnerability, so you can blast through a wave of enemy bullets with good timing. Further increasing aggression is a combo counter that rewards several bonuses the more hits you rack up in quick succession, so don't stand around for too long. The flexibility in how you play your character is perhaps the strongest point of this game. I've had many instances where instead of grinding for better overall stats when I hit a brick wall, I changed my stats and equipment that made the bosses much easier to deal with. One of the most memorable moments I had was with this one secret boss that I fought way sooner then I should've. Unluckily for me it was a DPS check, meaning if I didn't deal enough damage in a short enough time then it was a instant-death. It was straight up impossible to pass the DPS check at my current level. Luckily I had a skill where my damage was multiplied threefold, but as a consequence I died in one hit. I could then pair that up with a skill where you can take one hit for free per battle, and I essentially was playing Ghost n' Goblins for the whole fight. Felt amazing when my crazy plan actually worked... after many deaths.
The Vampire Survivors comparison comes from how explosive fighting can get. You can reach a point in power where you can kill anything with your 30 foot sword and your giant dragon summon, as your enemies erupt into gold and force confetti. These sessions can be a relaxing background game to play, but not the most enthralling if you're going for every achievement. I didn't get all of them, about 90% or so. It is a good sign from me when I go out of my way to get achievements in your game, but I'd be lying if I said I got that much more out of the game for getting them. This can be a very grindy game, almost never required if you want to see the end of the game but there is some great and exciting content that'll be way harder if you go in ill-prepared. I did do a lot of grinding just because I wanted to do it, so take that for what you will.
One thing that caught me by surprised are the many puzzles in this game. It's not always a straight shot to the chapter boss, you'll have to do some thinking and inventory management to progress. Sometimes the path towards progression can seem borderline cryptic, but there's usually a NPC nearby that can provide hints and guidance to what to do (sometimes you'll need to talk to the same person more then once). Oh by "inventory management", I mean that this game will rarely use a item automatically from your inventory. You have to manually open up your items and use the specific item needed. I kinda liked it actually. It made me feel smarter solving even the more basic puzzles since it was up to me to figure out what I needed to do, but maybe it could've used keys automatically at least.

Even at times I kinda wished this game knew when to end properly, I can't deny the amount of effort and passion that was put into this game. It feels like someone wanted to include everything they love into one game, and despite some iffiness here or there, it manages to put itself together far more eloquently then you'd expect. You'll be in for the long haul, but it'll be a unforgettable adventure unlike many.

...What do you mean there's going to be DLC?! This game is already 50 hours long!!

Un juego que me cuesta recomendar porque depende de cuanto te guste el "farmeo", la tolerancia a la "ranciedad anime" que desprende por momentos y gráficos que a veces parece el collage que hacías en el cole.

Si quitas eso hay un juego muy bien diseñado, con mecánicas que funcionan a la maravilla y un aspecto "bonito-feo-amateur" que tiene su encanto.

La historia tiene su interés para ver por donde va a tirar y ciertos momentos muy emotivos, aunque los personajes no destaquen en absoluto.

Funnily enough, this wasn’t the only game I randomly stumbled upon in 2023 that would become one of my favorite games of all time (Shoutout Rabi Ribi).

I have had a ridiculously hard time trying to write a review for Astlibra because whenever I try to bring up the things I like about it my mind starts getting flooded with terms such as “raw” and “kino” and “sovl”. It’s like this game is inducing my brain with data corruption. But really, when a game has an anime opening that it plays at the start of nearly every chapter, how else am I supposed to react?

It’s a bit difficult to elaborate on why I adore this experience without writing an essay or spoiling the game, but let’s just say that by the end of this 70+ hour journey, no stone will be left unturned, both in terms of gameplay and story. A constant drip feed of satisfaction from beginning to end. This is the type of experience where you take a deep breath as the credits roll and think to yourself “Goddamn, I fucking love video games” and I think that’s beautiful.

Astlibra no es ni de cerca perfecto pero aun así no impidió que me maravillara la ambición de su relato. Acompañado de un combate sencillo y una construcción de personaje satisfactoria y adictiva. Su historia es emocional y bella todo bajo la clara mano de un escritor amateur pero con una enorme pasión y amor a los jrpgs que lo inspiraron.

Experiencias como estas son de admirar, imperfectas pero al mismo tiempo igual de cautivadoras.

Keizo esta sin duda es la prueba de tu existencia.

This is one of the best indie games and games in general, I have ever played.
It is not perfect, chapter 6 was the only chapter I did not enjoy thoroughly, but everything before and after that (and boy there is a lot after that) was incredibly entertaining. The soundtrack is amazing and will surprise you here and there. The story is chock-full of fun unexpected plot twists and it plays with your expectations a lot. The characters really grew on me and I was amazed by how far the story went. I can not imagine how to write this story. This is a story driven game, but the gameplay probably was the biggest surprise to me. It just plays really freakin well and keeps introducing new moves and mechanics. I am not someone that likes to grind, but in Astlibra, I did it gladly. I managed to get the true ending and it does not disappoint. I am super hyped for the dlc that is currently in development. 10/10

I think this is basically what Falcom would have ended up making by Ys 8 if they had carried on with the side scrolling games after 3.

The game is a bit rough and ready as you’d expect for something a guy put together in his spare time, especially graphically, but the fundamental combat is so much fun it carries you through. The story ended up getting me as well - especially in the extra chapter added for Revision which had me completely gripped in a situation where they could have had me drop completely off.

I can’t recommend this enough; there’s a good sized demo available which shows both low and high level combat and it runs on absolutely anything.

Steam Deck report: faultless, except for some slightly scratchy sound occasionally. Expect 4 hours on battery.

Man, what the hell.

I was having a pretty fun time at the start, a very solid action RPG with incredible combat, great game-feel and some really cool mechanics and an ARPG grind to it that felt as fun and addictive as the Ys games or even the diablo series.

Then the storyline took a nosedive into some really gross, Icky fanservice creepdom that I'm sorry - I can't look past or handwave away. This game made me walk around a fishing village asking female npcs what colour their panties were.

gross - I put the controller down and I'm not coming back.

1 star for the stellar gameplay and the first 15 hours before it slapped me in the face with gross shit.

Due to work and family stuff this game took me a month to finish, an entire month (Which was like 100 hours play time), but it was more than worth every minute of time I spent on it and now I feel like that one Danny DeVito meme, the biggest "I get it now" moment I've experienced in video games in awhile.

The game was simply peak. Like holy shit, probably the best indie game I've ever played (Not counting like Falcom stuff and whatnot because while they're an indie company, it's a much different situation) and the fact this game was made by 1 guy and it was literally his life's work that took like 15 years to make is just so admirable and inspiring and you can feel the passion and creativity in literally every part of the game.

The plot for Astlibra starts out simple with the protagonist and nameless hero looking for his long lost childhood friend and home town, but it slowly evolves into one of the most insane and mind-bending narratives I've ever experienced, all I can say is it was certainly an adventure. Astlibra has a penchant for the kind of storytelling you'd find in a visual novel and the amount of plot twists is just crazy and the variety of philosophical themes explored is baffling, but the best thing is despite having so many different elements everything felt fully fleshed out and by the end there were no loose ends either, definitely the kind of game you want to go into as blind as possible due to just how surprising it can get.

I'll just say that Astlibra perfectly represents Thomas Sowell’s philosophy on choice. There are no solutions in life, only trade offs. You’re always giving up one thing for another.

However a lot of games feel that to make a good story they have to sacrifice gameplay, but Astlibra isn't one of those because the gameplay was also one of the most addictive gameplay loops I've experienced in quite some time and from the moment I picked it up it was difficult to put down. The combat itself might seem simple at first being a basic side scroller hack n slash/beat em up, but it only gets better and more complex as you find technique scrolls throughout the world and learn more moves and abilities because by the end the combat actually has so much depth to it and it's very challenging at times, especially the bosses which almost have a bullet hell feel to them at times like in older Ys games.

Although the most fun part of Astlibra to me is the depth in the customization which is just unfathomable between all the weapons you can find, all your spells and all the ways to upgrade and enhance your character from learning skills through mastering weapons, leveling up with experience and also using an item known as Force to acquire permanent stat boosts and abilities on a system called "Growth" which is like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. I also love the grind of having to craft your own weapons/armor with material you get from different enemies, it makes the feeling of progression more impactful because you really work for it.

Astlibra is also just a beautiful game too, the background arts, monster designs and character sprites are gorgeous and done by Vanillaware alumni artist Shigatake and some can be a bit excessively horny at times (If you've played Dragon's Crown, you already know what I'm talking about) but it's all gorgeous art and really makes Astlibra such a beautiful game to play through making all the various levels so vibrant and diverse.

And the OST is also INCREDIBLE too. So many artists collaborated for the music, but there isn't a bad song in the game and there's so much diversity too with everything from full on prog metal to old school Nobou Uematsu sounding synth tracks, some strong melodic shredding with violins that remind me of Falcom Sound Team JDK's work especially the stuff they do for the Ys series and even some electronic type music too.

Astlibra is one of those rare gems where genuinely every thing about it is just so well crafted from the mind-bending narrative to the fun, fast, fluid combat and intricate progression systems which give so much customization, to the beautiful level design and art and the masterfully composed OST. While it clearly takes inspiration and influence from many of the classics of both the J-RPG genre and the visual novel genre, there's really nothing else like the game in terms of execution and I can't recommend it enough because of that. I know that it's an experience that will stick with me for many years to come and I can only thank KEIZO for dedicating his life to giving so many such an incredibly passionate and creative game that everyone deserves to experience.

The game starts out a bit rough, but man does it go places. I wish I were in the mood to write a full review, because there's a lot worth writing about here. Maddmike and NightTray cover most of what I'd have to say in their reviews, though, so I'll just mention a few things for now.

I think the basic combat mechanics are a bit clunky. There's a bit of a stiffness to attacking, dodging, and shielding that feels slightly off. Some enemies, particularly early on, have annoying tells for their attacks. I frankly didn't understand why people liked the combat at first. Then more systems opened. More and more new skills and spells became available. My opinion of the combat steadily rose until I was having an absolute blast by the midgame. There's nothing quite like it and I really love the emphasis on using i-frames from spells to dodge attacks -- it allows for a grant offensive pace. The underlying clunkiness never really goes away, but it becomes such a small part of the combat that it almost entirely stopped bothering me.

One other gameplay note: I started on hard and the enemies felt annoyingly spongy making the game rather grindy, so I bumped it down to normal. Normal was honestly a bit too easy, though. I only had to bother learning boss patterns when I challenged some content much earlier than intended. That didn't really impede my fun, though!

The story is absolutely over the top anime nonsense and I love it. The best comparison I can think of for the amount of escalation in the plot is Gurren Lagann. It just keeps getting bigger and crazier, but manages to stay meaningful and coherent. I also found the characters grew on me a ton over the course of the game despite some tropiness.

Definitely one of the best games I've played this year, and it's already been a great gaming year for me!