The first time I caught a glimpse of Astalon: Tears of the Earth was on a quick hidden gems video. I really liked the graphical style and how the characters color's would pop very simialr to NES Castlevania or Mega Man. Watched a quick review for it and then I knew that this was a title I wanted to try out.
Astalon is a metroidvania style dungeon crawler through and through, although it plays and feels more like a classic vania but just in that world structure. What stands out the most about Astalon is it's difficulty and it's level design. Both elements are at it's core of what makes this game special and unique amongst it's peers.
Astalon's difficulty could turn off most fans of the genre but it's really one of the elements I really felt refreshing. First of all when I talk about difficulty I am not referring to it's combat. It's combat is very simple Castlevania style, with a few attacks and upgrades with multiple characters switching mechanic. Certain characters and only reach certain areas or have different kinds of attacks. Some are better for traversal or maybe better at tanking hits. It's very similar to the Curse of the Moon franchise of the last few years, and if anything feels like that I'm on board. Like most metroidvania's though with enough grinding and upgrades ypu will make most encounters trivial with time, so even if there is an initial hurdle on an enemy or boss it isn't for very long. Every time you die you get a chance to upgrade your characters, health, damage and acuire new items. So even if you are constantly dieing and feeling like you are not making any progress, you actually are.
The difficulty is really all about exploration. Moving from section to section taking out monsters and trying not to die to reach new areas is where the struggle lies. Everytime you die you start back at the very begaining of the game. No checkpoints. Granted yes you can make some short cuts and open some elevators in the massive tower but reaching one side of the map to the other usually is quite the trek. On top of that Astalon has an interesting system when it comes to healing. Enemies do not drop health pick ups, nor are there item useage to recover health and you do not recover health from killing enemies. (Although there is a late game upgrade that has a random chance to drop health) Instead there are candle sticks that littered throughout the tower that drop 4-5 HP refills. Once they are used they are gone for good. The only way to replinish them is to buy them back after death from the merchant. This may sound kinda punishing for new players but I felt this really prevented repeated enemy spawn killing for health and made exploration more tense.
What I really like about the exploration in Astalon is just how much of the world is explorable from the get go. There is barely a set path that makes you feel like you have to explore this area first or this one next. There are three major bosses that have to be killed before the reaching the top of the tower and they do have to be killed in order but the rest of the map is completely optional. Exploring one hard section might feel like your not making progress in anything but then you get a really useful item or get some permenant upgrades and a ton of cash that make the off the beaten path totally worth it. The items in this game are really usefull and total game changers. Imagine not unlocking the elevator to travel up and down the tower. Toatally missable. So if the game is so open to explore is it frustrating to make any progress? Well yes and no. The game kinda works on a simple 3 key system. White keys, Blue Keys and Red Keys. Keys are in fixed locations and never change. White Key's typically lead to more critical pathways in a dungeon. Blue Key's seem to be more for rewards, hidden areas and short cuts. Red Key's are the rarer key's that unlock major critical areas or super rewards.
You will find yourself at times with like five different areas to explore and you choose one and you don't have enough keys to fully explore yet or lack a upgrade to get through an obsticle. In fact it seems a very common response to this game is people asking if it's possible to soft lock your game because you used the wrong keys in the wrong areas and the answer to that is no. That just goes to show you the importance of choice of what kind of key to use and in what spot. I can see a permenant health upgrade over here but I aslo need a blue key to keep exploring the catacombs and I might not know when I find another one. It's these kind of choices that really highlights how well crafted this games world is. Many games have secret areas or false walls in these old school platformers but only Astalon I can remember where some of these areas are required to progress and not just small easter eggs to get an item. You never ever wanna leave a single room unexplored and pay close attention to how many exits a room has. Also I REALLY appreciate that once you explore about 85-90% of the game you can buy a map to fill out the remaining rooms you haven't found. So many metroidvania's time wasted missing one or two rooms preventing 100% exploration but not here.
The only thing I didn't like about Astalon where the unlockable extra modes. They were extremely poorly designed and overly difficult. It made a nice platinum run a little more tedius and annoying. Boss Rush is a complete RNG nightmare. Just ignore those extra modes. Still I got a solid 15-20 hours completing the main game 100% and it was a very enjoyable experiance. I would definitly say that Astalon is a hidden gem and right out of the gate for 2024 a definite contender of my favorite games of the year.
Platinum #200
Astalon is a metroidvania style dungeon crawler through and through, although it plays and feels more like a classic vania but just in that world structure. What stands out the most about Astalon is it's difficulty and it's level design. Both elements are at it's core of what makes this game special and unique amongst it's peers.
Astalon's difficulty could turn off most fans of the genre but it's really one of the elements I really felt refreshing. First of all when I talk about difficulty I am not referring to it's combat. It's combat is very simple Castlevania style, with a few attacks and upgrades with multiple characters switching mechanic. Certain characters and only reach certain areas or have different kinds of attacks. Some are better for traversal or maybe better at tanking hits. It's very similar to the Curse of the Moon franchise of the last few years, and if anything feels like that I'm on board. Like most metroidvania's though with enough grinding and upgrades ypu will make most encounters trivial with time, so even if there is an initial hurdle on an enemy or boss it isn't for very long. Every time you die you get a chance to upgrade your characters, health, damage and acuire new items. So even if you are constantly dieing and feeling like you are not making any progress, you actually are.
The difficulty is really all about exploration. Moving from section to section taking out monsters and trying not to die to reach new areas is where the struggle lies. Everytime you die you start back at the very begaining of the game. No checkpoints. Granted yes you can make some short cuts and open some elevators in the massive tower but reaching one side of the map to the other usually is quite the trek. On top of that Astalon has an interesting system when it comes to healing. Enemies do not drop health pick ups, nor are there item useage to recover health and you do not recover health from killing enemies. (Although there is a late game upgrade that has a random chance to drop health) Instead there are candle sticks that littered throughout the tower that drop 4-5 HP refills. Once they are used they are gone for good. The only way to replinish them is to buy them back after death from the merchant. This may sound kinda punishing for new players but I felt this really prevented repeated enemy spawn killing for health and made exploration more tense.
What I really like about the exploration in Astalon is just how much of the world is explorable from the get go. There is barely a set path that makes you feel like you have to explore this area first or this one next. There are three major bosses that have to be killed before the reaching the top of the tower and they do have to be killed in order but the rest of the map is completely optional. Exploring one hard section might feel like your not making progress in anything but then you get a really useful item or get some permenant upgrades and a ton of cash that make the off the beaten path totally worth it. The items in this game are really usefull and total game changers. Imagine not unlocking the elevator to travel up and down the tower. Toatally missable. So if the game is so open to explore is it frustrating to make any progress? Well yes and no. The game kinda works on a simple 3 key system. White keys, Blue Keys and Red Keys. Keys are in fixed locations and never change. White Key's typically lead to more critical pathways in a dungeon. Blue Key's seem to be more for rewards, hidden areas and short cuts. Red Key's are the rarer key's that unlock major critical areas or super rewards.
You will find yourself at times with like five different areas to explore and you choose one and you don't have enough keys to fully explore yet or lack a upgrade to get through an obsticle. In fact it seems a very common response to this game is people asking if it's possible to soft lock your game because you used the wrong keys in the wrong areas and the answer to that is no. That just goes to show you the importance of choice of what kind of key to use and in what spot. I can see a permenant health upgrade over here but I aslo need a blue key to keep exploring the catacombs and I might not know when I find another one. It's these kind of choices that really highlights how well crafted this games world is. Many games have secret areas or false walls in these old school platformers but only Astalon I can remember where some of these areas are required to progress and not just small easter eggs to get an item. You never ever wanna leave a single room unexplored and pay close attention to how many exits a room has. Also I REALLY appreciate that once you explore about 85-90% of the game you can buy a map to fill out the remaining rooms you haven't found. So many metroidvania's time wasted missing one or two rooms preventing 100% exploration but not here.
The only thing I didn't like about Astalon where the unlockable extra modes. They were extremely poorly designed and overly difficult. It made a nice platinum run a little more tedius and annoying. Boss Rush is a complete RNG nightmare. Just ignore those extra modes. Still I got a solid 15-20 hours completing the main game 100% and it was a very enjoyable experiance. I would definitly say that Astalon is a hidden gem and right out of the gate for 2024 a definite contender of my favorite games of the year.
Platinum #200