Astral Chain Revealed

>criticals
I wish games would go back to the old days where YOU do the critical, not some percentage. Onimusha, GH, CL.

>Claw
Sounds like this game's Perfect Thanatos.

>arm legion grab
CL's arm legion grabs too. Not a pull in move, but still a grab. The list goes on lol.

> Criticals
It is pretty great here, not sure where this complaint comes from. The RNG criticals are barely present and not really worth it. Backstab setups are fantastic, using yourself or a Hit Rush Legion to lure aggro, while for instance Arm Legion does his multi-hit from behind for 30 critical hits. Plenty of skill present here. Also in using enemy weaknesses like headshots, or tentacles opening their mouths. One boss takes instant critical damage when hit when he opens his mouth.

> Claw
It's basically a Devil Trigger. You become a Claw Legion, auto target claw-strikes with 100% Crit rate and high damage+stagger, ranged projectile and a shockwave.

Do the damage numbers look different for crits? I turned them off, but I'll turn them back on if they give useful info.

Also, I figured out last night why I was struggling with the game so much (well, to an extent, I was just playing pretty badly to begin with). I discovered the Orders menu last night... I had 88 that I hadn't redeemed! I might have been a bit "underleveled" for the last stretch of the game. I now have around 90 rare material codes, but I need the premium ones now so I don't think I have much use for them.

>criticals
I mean purely as a stat. Stuff like backstabs and that are fine because they require set ups and skill.

It's there for the people that want RNG to work in their favour I guess, doesn't really hurt the game as much that it also appeases another audience.

And yeah @Gregorinho, criticals have yellow numbers with some >>160<< visual for instance. It is very clear.

Well, I'm not exactly against them, but if I had to choose...

It's just more interesting if there are various states and set ups. I'm not a huge fans of crits in MHW either. Not the worst thing in the world by any stretch, but again, if I had to choose a system, it wouldn't be solely based on RNG.

I get that, but only if its either/or. But you don't have to choose here, it it simply has both, so I don't see any problem with it being there honestly. One hit might at one time deal +20% damage, I can live with that. We still have enemies being in various states with setups giving unique rewards through stun, ring-outs, canceling enemy attacks or, unique to this game, special Synch attacks.

For instance stopping an enemy's attack animation with Blade Mode gives a unique Synch Move that you can only get that way.

I'm in agreement with both of you guys here. Preferably crits would be saved for specific scenarios in combat (i.e. using your skill to get access to an enemy weakpoint) rather than having a chance from any attack, as that kind of ventures towards RPG territory, which I'm not really a fan of for action titles.

However, with this game, the chance for random crits seems to be so small that you can't really rely on it, it's more of an occasional bonus. If you're randomly getting crits with your basic weapons it's not going to provide that much of a benefit anyway, so it doesn't seem to alter the gameplay too much. As Raeng suggested, it probably suits both crowds with this approach.

I think that's mostly it. You can play around it in a sense, there's a potion that gives +30% crit for 1 minute and you can stack abilities on a Legion that he gets around +6% critical hit chance. Take the inate and you're probably looking at a 1/3 chance that a hit does 25% more damage, which still isn't all that fantastic. But it's a fun way for players that are bad to get some extra damage out I guess.

You're way better off as a player to stack Critical Hit Damage buffs on your legion instead of Critical Hit Chance. Reward your punishes more. I like the RPG elements here to a degree, most of the stat inflation isn't too high, items deal great base damage and your basic moveset is already great.

How far through File 12 are you Raeng? I think it's R2-13 i'm up to and it's a complete nightmare.

I beat most of the R1 and R2s, now moving on to R1-A and R2-A etc. Some are quite brutal not gonna lie!

https://twitter.com/RoytaMustDie/status/1174773730741903360
You can use Legion Fusion and its cancel ability to cancel any combo, this is just an example but it looks pretty sweet. Though I will get tired really fast of the opening intro of the song this way haha.

https://twitter.com/RoytaMustDie/status/1174774319475347456
Basically, you dismiss the Fusion the second it activates. Fusion fully charges your meter, basically giving you infinite limiter to wreck enemies with.

It is absolutely busted haha! Damn.

I didn't even realise you could deactivate the fusion without letting the bar run empty! Is it just the same command again (both sticks)?

I never get bored of watching the sync attack after a bind with Sword, it's brilliant.

You press the Dismiss Legion button!

Also started my No Upgrade Run, going pretty solid so far, will make a topic tomorrow I think with notes etc.

Important question.

Which is better for this game? Pro controller or Switch controls?

Pro, by far. I've tried using the joycons but it just doesn't have that 'oomph'. If you can though, arrange a controller that doesn't support Gyro Aiming. The game has it, and you cannot turn it off which is quite annoying.

I just learned about these 8bitdo dongles that are like $20 USD that allow you to use ps4 controllers with the switch, even the motion stuff. Haven't bought one yet but I plan to soon. I wish I knew about it before I spent 60 on a pro controller. Though the pro controller is super solid, I never would have expected that after owning a wii pro controller which just felt like a kids toy.

You have a link to these dongles? Would be interested in it. Because if there's one thing I'm really missing from the Switch it's a somewhat decent D-pad. The one on the Joycons is really bad, the one on the Pro-controller is even worse (can you imagine).

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Controller-PlayStation-Not-Machine-Specific/dp/B07TDHS81Q/ref=asc_df_B07TDHS81Q/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=366299830281&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11289134499807899953&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028777&hvtargid=pla-817362878831&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=81862150211&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=366299830281&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11289134499807899953&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028777&hvtargid=pla-817362878831

Ya know everyone hates on the joycon dpad, but I am the only one who likes it I guess. I hate that dpads are always a solid cross that feels so mushy, the ps4 being almost unusable for me in 2d games. I like that they are separate buttons, just wish they were bigger and closer together.

I don't mind the dpad on the joycons too much, but I don't like them either. The one on the SNES is still favoured by me, which is weird. You'd think they'd just grab that d-pad and slap it on here.

Been very, very deep into this game. Cannot let it go. Just finished up the last of the 71 side missions in the endgame. They are all basically 'combat scenarios' and they really go the Ninja Gaiden route later-on. We're talking full on "here's all three major boss fights at once, at the highest setting, good luck...oh and this is just wave 1 of 10".

One, R3-17 I think it is called, sees you face off against every mini, side and main boss in the game in pairs, in one grueling long brawl. It is absolutely bonkers and I love it. Always felt that games tend to not go 'ham' with these challenges enough, and this mode generally just gives you the finger. There's even a fight where you fight against every enemy in the game in a row. One slip up, and it is a full restart.

The game has some broken options (Axe360ZL absolutely demolishes foes) and the whole combat is, more and more, revolving around locking enemies down through different types of stuns and slows, making for a safe approach. It is very cooldown based in a sense. Without an active stun you're in for a world of hurt.

Example: https://twitter.com/RoytaMustDie/status/1180829039788847111

This is one of the hardest subbosses around. And he couldn't do anything because I rotated my stuns. Still, fantastic to toy with. Usually my opinion on a game fades after a bit, but my lord this game just keeps improving in my eyes. Really one of their best.

Royta/Raeng wrote:One, R3-17 I think it is called, sees you face off against every mini, side and main boss in the game in pairs, in one grueling long brawl. It is absolutely bonkers and I love it. Always felt that games tend to not go 'ham' with these challenges enough, and this mode generally just gives you the finger. There's even a fight where you fight against every enemy in the game in a row. One slip up, and it is a full restart.

There's a whole lot of gittin' gud i'm gonna have to do, isn't there?

I haven't played the game since I last posted about it, but I think i'll be joining the fray again soon.

Everything you said sounds fantastic Roy.

>Always felt that games tend to not go 'ham' with these challenges enough
TFD did this too. You had crazy combos like Prime AND Megatron at once, or Shockwave and Soundwave with ALL of his tapes. Madness.

AC sounds way more brutal though. Looking forward to it.

Yeah the later missions are pretty nuts. Just finished them all, and R3-W (mission 70) took a while. You basically fight against every enemy and boss around, ending with the first 'secret' boss twice at the same time. Mission 71 is the 'super' boss, who honestly was a pushover. Just has a ton of health and in phase 2 has absolutely bonkers attacks that require you to dodge a lot using Wolf.

@Birdman
It's a fantastic game. Cannot say anything else. There are some lows like some of the minigames, but thankfully you can skip most of them on replays unless you want an S+ rank.

Looks like the board has winded down and the trolls moved on.

Managed to beat the game No Upgrades, pretty challenging and the final boss gave me a good run for my money. You really have to smartly use items and the BladeMode. I screwed up a bit in phase 2 regarding my Fusion and panicked, but overall good encounter.

The other fight against Jena on Pt Ultimate shows just how broken Grenades are. It's nuts.

So much for Noah Prime being 'cheap'.

No grenade run when?

Without items during a NUR, you're basically looking at a very, very, very boring playstyle of using Axe's call-attack and baiting Blade Mode slices. I'll rather watch paint dry honestly.

But yeah the whole "Noah Prime is cheap" is ridiculous. Fully decked out I can melt him in around a minute if I'm lucky. You're so insanely powerful in this game when fully equipped.

How about single legion runs? This could lead to some interesting finds like it did for me in CL, though there are still some legions I need to try like this.

I'll think about it. I'm probably going to do a S+ run, maybe paired with No-Damage, on Pt Ultimate again or something similar. I want to put some high level gameplay on Youtube because it's severly lacking right now.

Just had a watch of your Jena fight Raeng. That healthbar gets absolutely melted! I completely ignored grenades and buffs on my first playthrough, but I'll definitely be using them in future.

Your Noah Prime fight was very well done too. I think I probably took longer than you did with all of my upgrades! I had nightmares about this boss during my first playthrough, but I think the post-game has taught me to become better than I was before. I feel like playing the game again but my Joy-Cons have the dreaded drift issue and need fixing.

Can you imagine how fast she'd melt when you're fully decked out? The game is absolutely bonkers at times, love it. I think the game really shines best on repeat runs through when you have all your tools etc, you can really lock bosses and enemies down completely (something you'll need for the Challenge Maps).

Respect for playing with the Joy-Cons by-the-way, I really can't.

What is that 'drift' issue?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pocket-lint.com/games/news/nintendo/148751-how-to-fix-nintendo-switch-joy-con-drift.amphtml

Nintendo is now fixing it for free, but that's because people threatened to sue them.

> Joy-Cons
They aren't ideal, but I got used to them playing Bayo2. I've been meaning to get a Pro controller but not gotten round to it, they're still pretty pricey.

> Drift
I'll link a summary below. It's like the usual stick drift you get with any controller, but more and more people are reporting that its happening early in to the controllers lifespan. Seems to be a design issue.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/22/20706144/nintendo-switch-joy-con-drift-problem-explained

Made this video to help out a Gamefaqs user get better at the game. I showcase mostly how badly you can buff yourself (see me melting the early three bosses), how overpowered Beast is (completely invincible) and how strong Axe is.

It's sad that the game doesn't seem to have much of a discussion going on surrounding it.

Just finished File 06. Tbh File 5 and 6 were the worst ones yet. Between the pointless fetch quests,the stupid stealth segments, hand-holdy main quest and too few fight it was a chore to get trough, here's hoping the next one is better on that front.
That said I still love the combat especially now that I unlocked even more skills, I just wish there was more of it. The only other main gripe is that visual clarity in battle is pretty terrible imho, all the particles, colors and camera angles makes it hard to understand what's going sometimes and some attacks are difficult to read. The "ora ora ora" attack with the Arm legion is one of the worst on the player side, it completely obscure smaller enemies and their tells.

I hate to say it, but it will get worse at one point. The upside for me was that once you beat it, it opens up. Blue Cases don't need to be redone on subsequent playthroughs, and you can memorize most 'investigations' to the point that you do them in around 1 minute, leaving only the combat. I believe it was File 8 that was the worst, with basically 5+ minigames and no enemies.

Keep at it, it really gets good around the time you get a certain new ability.

Considering how fast Switch emulation is going, I don't think it's an impossibility to see this game fully playable on PC by next year.

Of course, I'm probably gonna have to upgrade, because an 8th gen i3 and 8GB of RAM probably isn't gonna do it.

Got this for my birthday. I’m on file 9, this game is weird case of having some really great mechanics but being in a game that I...don’t really like? As in, the combat is great, but the detective stuff and constant cutscene and dialogue skipping is killing me, and so much of the combat taking place in the same environment is boring. I know this supposedly gets better on NG+ and beyond, but the first few hours of this game were borderline dreadful imo.

That being said, there’s so much cool stuff going on and a lot of things to experiment with. Part of me feels the game went a little overboard with the number of things it throws at you(skill trees, upgrades, abilities, usable items, chain shenanigans, sync attacks with perfect dodges and calls, etc etc) but when in the middle of combat it’s such a good time.

Hopefully this game ends up really clicking with me because a lot of things haven’t been doing it for me.

First off: happy birthday Infinity! :)

Now with that out of the way. Astral Chain's first run is akin to what we talked about regarding The Evil Within and how most experienced that, it's fantastic upon replays. I had half a mind to turn the game off in chapter 2 but people told me it got better. By the time I was escorting people in a dull subway I was half asleep and when I had cleanup duty in a mission filled with mini-games my heart sank even more.

It wasn't until I beat the final boss (you'll see) that the game really opened up for me. This is for a few reason:

- you finally have all the abilities of your Legions. I feel the game is a bit too stingy with upgrades and there's a solid chance that during your first run you'll never be able to fully experiment with these abilities;
- you can skip all Blue Cases, I'd still say take an hour at one point to finish them all but once you can skip them it gets really good;
- things like investigations, dialogue etc. really become nearly pointless on subsequent runs, you'll barely notice them.
- the final extra mission is a set of 72(!) combat arena missions with unique enemy and boss combinations that are just downright fantastic. Some of them really are special;

The game really is the 'kitchen sink' of Platinum's mechanics, everything is in there. But that's also the fun since everything works. You can absolutely melt things with smart setups, and there's just a ton of great little tricks.

If you've beaten the game I recommend watching my little 'tips' video, it contains a lot of fun tips and tricks you might've missed. SBK's channel has a lot of fun optimal strats as well.

Don't give up. Really. It is one of the best action games around imo.

Thanks!

>first run
It certainly seems like that kind of game. I watched your videos(not the tips one) and was excited to to really sink my teeth into the game, only to be constantly halted by stupid tasks as you said. But I had a feeling that once I was on NG+ and I knew how to get past these things quickly, it would be a lot better.

>dialogue and investigations
After chapter 5 or so I just starter skipping all dialogue and cutscenes and looked up how to do the investigations. Not something I would normally do but I was dying to get back into the action.

>72 combat arenas
Wow, that’s impressive. They pretty challenging?

>kitchen sink of platinum mechanics
Certainly seems that way, we got the perfect dodge, chain aka wonder liner, not-blade mode, etc. I’m kind of amazed that so many things in one game ends up working, but I’m still adjusting to it all. There are things I constantly forget I even have, like grenades and spin attacks.

>don’t give up
I’m about at the end so I’m curious to see how it improves after I finish the first playthrough. Hopefully I can beat it tomorrow.

The story isn't that great, which also worked against the game. It was heavily promoted as 'the game by the guy from Nier: Tomato', which led people thinking it would be a phat-ass waifu simulator with combat and story, only to get the combat.

> 72 combat arenas
The first 10-20 are mostly 'okay' with some fun and unique setups. After that it quickly becomes exclusive to the highest difficulty. Once you know how to play the game you're technically immortal, so they mostly come from just really putting up the pressure. They did a lot of really amazing things you never saw in Platinum Games before and more befit Team Ninja. We're talking a mission where you fight one of the latter bosses assisted by secret bosses, and that's just phase 1. The last 10 are absolutely insane.

> grenades
Fantastic, don't underestimate them.

> spin attacks
Probably the best move in the game thanks to Axe.

> kitchensink
Just experiment. Blade Mode is a great counter for instance, and everything has a state-change I feel. For instance if you counter with Blade Mode it stuns them, which means you can do the stun-synch. Or you can use the stun for a vault into vault-synch. Or you can use the stun to focus on another foe. Or setup timed-mines. Or or or or - you see where this is going haha.

> beat it tomorrow
Let me know how the final boss was for you.

At the final boss. Would be deep into NG+ but life is a thing. IF it is the final boss, he was kind of destroying me, which I wasn’t expecting since I found the last two chapters pretty easy. I really like the charge attacks, and I’ve been abusing blue shield a bit. Sometimes I feel I get really into the rhythm of the game and then I’m taken out of combat, I’m assuming the last mission takes care of this.

What’s your favorite legion Roy? I honestly like them all a ton so far, but axe and beast are my go-tos. Arm is probably my least used.

Oef, favourite? I think Sword because of everything it can do, it's like a swiss-army knife. That said Axe is by far the best, with Wolf being a close second.

> final boss quite tough
Wonderful isn't it?


> final mission
Once you're in NG+ the game is like a totally different beast. You can replay chapters, even warp to certain events in said chapter (i.e. skip the bike part in the prologue), there's the super missions, you can aim for S+ rank (super easy sadly), do PT Ultimate difficulty - just a huge chunk of fun. Really hard to put down after that.

Beat it and started some of the extra missions, good times. Final boss really beat me down, had to use several healing items and ended up playing it very safe yet I somehow got an S+ rank(which I got on every boss without playing well). Now I feel like the game is really going to get started.

Awesome! The final boss really is one of my favourite final fights in the game, absolute monster of a fight. Everything comes into play and I love how everything also works on him.


> S+ rank
Just spam a few abilities and laugh as you get S+ on everything.

If it wasn't already posted:



The Director speaks.

I'm still undecided about it. I may get it, not with much bravado. Are there dmg points visible? If so, are they optional? Call me anal, but such trivial details would drive me nuts. Players, or should I derive them into "Gamers", are far too fixated on numbers and stats, to my liking. Let the Gamers begin, I just swerve around products catering to them then.

I don't think you can turn them off, I usually do but didn't do it with this game so I don't think it's in. The numbers are just handy though, you can't really buff damage numbers that much (it isn't an RPG) outside of basic Hyper Mode tricks. They are mostly handy to know how strong a certain attack is compared to another etc.

Fantastic game though, might still be Platinum's best imo.

Now I haven't played this for a good while, but according to me in an earlier comment, you can turn the damage numbers off.

I do want to revisit it, though - really opens up into something brilliant once you've beaten the game (which isn't really a selling point, I know).