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!
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!