Astral Chain - Switch (action game with ridiculous amounts of "crutch" options)

orangpelupa

Elite Bug Hunter
Legend
This game is ridiculous. It allows you to customize how complicated the action yourself.

The first customization starts with the "easy mode" or whatever they call it.

Even deeper customization available more and more as you play.

Heck, you can almost make the game play by itself! You just need to spam the attack button.

It auto targets, auto evades, auto combos, auto heals.

Unfortunately it doesn't have "one joycon mode" :(

I reeeeeally enjoy playing games with just one hand (e.g. Octopath traveler one hand mod).

Also glad Death Stranding will have "easy mode", FF7R with its classic mode and wait mode. Hopefully more and more games have all these customization that make the gameplay "less hectic".

Edit: after posting this I remember Nier automata that also allows auto battles with its various chips. Made by the same dev and director I think. But in nier automata, the "crutch" chips doesn't comes until way later, I think.
 
If you play on the the Standard PT, all the automated shit is thrown out. I haven't found Astral Chain to be nearly as brutal as Bayonetta 1+2, but it does offer a decent challenge as long as you choose to play on Standard PT, or the Ultimate PT that becomes available after completing chapters. The grading system in this game is also a lot different than Bayonetta. Flawless and fast victories are not the secret to getting good grades, but instead that is a large variety of bonuses that you can earn. Use all three of the your melee weapons, multiple legions, multiple sync attacks, attach from behind and so on. Basically the more of these boxes you check, the better your score will be. Its more about style points that destroying your opposition.

Platinum did a wonderful job with this game. Bayonetta 1+2 still rank higher for me personally, but thats because I love the combat so much in those games. If I were to be looking at the games in their entirety, Astral Chain is the far more complete game. There is far more variety to the gameplay in Astral Chain. I actually really like the detective work in this game, it breaks up the action in a nice way.

I have noticed some framerate drops in this game, but it seems to come up more so in exploration of some of the larger areas rather than in combat. Platinum was pretty deliberate where the action would take place, and crafted some nice areas to fight it out in where it wouldn't tank performance. The overall graphics presentation is some of the best I have seen on Switch. Its a very stylized game for sure, so the aesthetics might not be fore everyone.
 
The game certainly makes it possible to fumble your way to victory, even on Stadard mode. I really like it, but I doubt it's gonna have the legs Bayonetta 1 and 2 have. I thought the investigative portions already dragged a little the first time I had to complete them. Certainly don't wanna do that again.
I'm stuck at the last boss at the moment (at least I think it's the last boss) What an annoying fucker. I hate enemies that play the keep-away game. As a matter of fact I was so annoyed I completed an entirely different game afterwards (Blasphemous) and am 80% through Link's Awakening.
 
If you play on the the Standard PT, all the automated shit is thrown out. I haven't found Astral Chain to be nearly as brutal as Bayonetta 1+2, but it does offer a decent challenge as long as you choose to play on Standard PT, or the Ultimate PT that becomes available after completing chapters. The grading system in this game is also a lot different than Bayonetta. Flawless and fast victories are not the secret to getting good grades, but instead that is a large variety of bonuses that you can earn. Use all three of the your melee weapons, multiple legions, multiple sync attacks, attach from behind and so on. Basically the more of these boxes you check, the better your score will be. Its more about style points that destroying your opposition.

Platinum did a wonderful job with this game. Bayonetta 1+2 still rank higher for me personally, but thats because I love the combat so much in those games. If I were to be looking at the games in their entirety, Astral Chain is the far more complete game. There is far more variety to the gameplay in Astral Chain. I actually really like the detective work in this game, it breaks up the action in a nice way.

I have noticed some framerate drops in this game, but it seems to come up more so in exploration of some of the larger areas rather than in combat. Platinum was pretty deliberate where the action would take place, and crafted some nice areas to fight it out in where it wouldn't tank performance. The overall graphics presentation is some of the best I have seen on Switch. Its a very stylized game for sure, so the aesthetics might not be fore everyone.

I play in standard p with AUTO mods and it was awesome hahaha. Btw the frame dips can be eliminated with tiny CPU and GPU overclock.

I wonder whether Nintendo will allow new switch and switch lite to boost all the time instead of only while loading.
 
The game certainly makes it possible to fumble your way to victory, even on Stadard mode. I really like it, but I doubt it's gonna have the legs Bayonetta 1 and 2 have. I thought the investigative portions already dragged a little the first time I had to complete them. Certainly don't wanna do that again.
I'm stuck at the last boss at the moment (at least I think it's the last boss) What an annoying fucker. I hate enemies that play the keep-away game. As a matter of fact I was so annoyed I completed an entirely different game afterwards (Blasphemous) and am 80% through Link's Awakening.

Yeah the investigation part dragged waaaay too long with one-tone gameplay.

The weird thing is that, in the last 4 mission I think. The investigation suddenly goes way too creative with tons of different mini games. It's overwhelming
 
I thought the investigative portions already dragged a little the first time I had to complete them. Certainly don't wanna do that again.

I enjoyed them on my first play through, but I dont see myself wanting to replay them over and over in the the future. I love Bayonetta 1+2, and have replayed them multiple times already, but I think the straight forward action and shorter completion time make for a more favorable experience to replay multiple times. Bayonetta combat is just so much fun that it never really gets old. Astral Chains combat is great, but the extra fluff will likely be monotonous when replaying the game. Granted to you can skip a lot of it and continue to progress the main story, but your score for each File will be poor because of it.

Btw the frame dips can be eliminated with tiny CPU and GPU overclock.

Has your Nintendo account been banned from online games due to your Switch being hacked? I would love to be able to overclock my Switch, but dont want the Nintendo mob coming down on me.
 
I enjoyed them on my first play through, but I dont see myself wanting to replay them over and over in the the future. I love Bayonetta 1+2, and have replayed them multiple times already, but I think the straight forward action and shorter completion time make for a more favorable experience to replay multiple times. Bayonetta combat is just so much fun that it never really gets old. Astral Chains combat is great, but the extra fluff will likely be monotonous when replaying the game. Granted to you can skip a lot of it and continue to progress the main story, but your score for each File will be poor because of it.



Has your Nintendo account been banned from online games due to your Switch being hacked? I would love to be able to overclock my Switch, but dont want the Nintendo mob coming down on me.

Dunno I got banned or not, I never go online.

But according to people that do go online, they use CFW on memory card (emunand) to hack around offline, and leave the system left untouched to go online. They didn't get banned.

When I was on Vita and 3ds, I followed the best practices and I didn't get banned.

So I think it will be relatively safe (but no guarantee) to play around using emunand on Switch, and stay online on unmodified sysnand. To be extra safe, use different microsd for modified emunand. So theoretically, the sysnand will always be clean and no trace of doing anything weird on microsd too.
 
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