Not least for its sheer creativity and ambition, Astral Chain is a game we’re lucky to have gotten. Given that action games are generally niche as is, it’s difficult to imagine that one which primarily predicates itself on controlling multiple characters at once was an easy pitch, especially considering its development came hot on the heels of Scalebound’s cancellation. The best media is often borne of troubled circumstances, and Astral Chain surely is one of the best, both of Platinum’s catalogue and its genre at large. Tough out its steep learning curve, and beneath initial frustrations, you’ll uncover a rough gem that stands out as being exceedingly rewarding to learn even by the lofty standards of its peers.

Key word, “steep.” The amount of tools you have at your disposal in Astral Chain’s genuinely overwhelming, decision paralysis being about as much of a hurdle for a new player as the ongoing demonic invasion for the Ark’s boys in blue. You’ve wrapped the titular chain around an enemy, incapacitating it for a brief moment. What next? You might whittle it down with one of the Sword Legion’s eco-friendly flurry attacks, but maybe it’d die faster if you expend much more energy to sneak in some headshots with the Arrow Legion. The Arm Legion has the most cost-efficient damage in the business and can even float over hazards, but what if you can’t take advantage of these benefits in time because he’s so slow? Oops, now it’s broken free – parrying its attack with the Axe Legion’s shield would end things fast, but if you can’t afford the risk, you might instead ride the Beast Legion and employ its automatic dodging in exchange for comparatively little reward. Lots of decisions to be made.

This is only taking into consideration the simplest possible situation in the game, too, without regard for the Howard twins’ own arsenal, how every combination of enemies one can think of will eventually be thrown at you by the time you reach the postgame, what’s quite handily some of the most varied combat arenas action games have to offer, or any number of other less obvious techniques you can do. For a bit of perspective, I didn’t learn that you can have more than one Legion out at once until after my first playthrough, which might make it sound like the game’s obtuse but is really just another example of how gratifying it is to feel yourself improve. There’s a particular miniboss I dreaded fighting near the start of the game, but by employing this one neat trick, you too can have a grand time against it come the story’s end. Chimeras hate him!

Action games can get away with fighting predominantly taking place in flat, featureless environments if their combat has enough meat on its bones by itself, so in a way it’s almost bold that Astral Chain’s levels are (as aforementioned) this diverse regardless. Seeing a crate in the distance gated by narrow walkways, explosive environmental hazards, disappearing and/or invisible platforms and actually having to stop for a moment to think about how to get there is a pretty refreshing experience to have in this kind of game. Platforming segments are surprisingly painless even when they occasionally crop up in boss fights, thanks to how little damage falling results in, though the way Howard slightly overshoots wherever you tell him to jump does take some adjusting to. A pinch of stealth and rarer but typically uninteresting tailing missions are less successful, but many of them are thankfully relegated to optional sidequests and they do help sell the feeling of being a cyberpunk peeler. Famed video essayist Masahiro Sakurai once spoke of how crucial slight pauses are to making otherwise mundane actions feel impactful, and it’s thanks to this kind of thing that cleaning up red matter (i.e. Astral Chain’s equivalent of picking up rubbish) is more engaging than most other games’ entire combat systems.

It might’ve been beneficial for whichever Howard you play as to actually speak, given Platinum’s pedigree for excellent protagonists – Wonder Red is the single best to grace the medium and I’ll let yet another Howard speak for me if you disagree – but Astral Chain doesn’t lack for their trademark charm in other areas. Marie is a solid litmus test for how much of a killjoy someone is, while morale-boosting minigames like handing out balloons to passersby in a dog suit and obligatory cat collecting sidequests help inject lightheartedness into what’s otherwise a pretty moody setting. It also marks another example of Platinum putting just about everybody else to shame when it comes to how music is utilised, not just for its quality and range or how it dynamically changes according to all sorts of conditions, but also because a song fit for an OVA playing every time you pop this game’s equivalent of Devil Trigger is the type of thing that should be studied in schools of some kind. Look out for the rhythm of Howard’s steps next time you’re walking around the hub area, as well.

I could just as well gush over how pretty Astral Chain often is, its needlessly in-depth character customisation, its all-thrills-no-frills postgame or what an absolutely astounding boss Noah Prime is (he genuinely might be the best Platinum’s ever crafted), but hopefully you’ve gotten the gist. The uptick in doomsaying surrounding Platinum in recent years has always struck me as vastly disproportionate, and having finally gotten round to Astral Chain has reinforced that opinion regardless of the odd framerate drop or a slightly questionable ranking system or whatever else. Like Taura himself, it gets better and better over time, and one can only hope he goes on to become as big of a name as some of his fellow P* alumni.