I did not expect what Astlibra Revision would turn out to be. When I first saw it and ignored it. When it was brought to my attention again and I’ve decided to play it. Even as I was playing it. It’s not some inventive never before seen mix of genres or anything, it’s just that it’s so constantly full of surprises. And huge. To a fault, really, but still, we’re talking about a game that looks like this lasting 60 hours and still finding ways to introduce some new stuff in the last hours of itself. But it’s also not without many issues.
Astlibra Revision is a hack and slash action RPG action adventure with a side scrolling view. It’s also, apparently, an updated release of a previously free game (hence the Revision in the title) and just thinking about how this could’ve been free makes my head spin. Not since La-Mulana or Cave Story a game like this was released for free, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, if the genre description doesn’t paint the picture for you, I’ll put it differently – imagine a modern Ys in side-scrolling 2D perspective and you’ll know what to expect from this game, at least in general. And, granted, Ys wasn’t the only series of Japanese action RPGs to have this kind of mix of mechanics, but Astlibra itself isn’t shy about reminding you of Ys in many various ways, so the comparison is only fair.
What this means is that you get a story-driven action adventure with lots and lots of monsters to combo to death, equipment and treasures to find, levels to grind, upgrades to be had and fun movement abilities to be experienced. The way the RPG mechanics are done in Astlibra is actually quite fun and borrowing from many other titles. For example, there are many skills that you get from “mastering” equipment by using it which have to be separately enabled or disabled using magic stones, which is very reminiscent of the Final Fantasy IX system. There’s a separate board of passive upgrades, which also contains skills and sometimes items to unlock, that is not entirely unlike the skill grids from FFX, XII or XIII. The amount of equipment is staggeringly huge and they all have separate classes that handle differently with a weight system in place to modify the speed of their usage. There’s a combo system that, just like in some Ys titles, modifies some of the parameters the longer you keep it going…
Jeez, there’s so much, really, that listing all of the ideas for item collecting, crafting (it’s more like cooking recipes here and not tedious), lore elements, permanent abilities and all of that stuff will turn this into a wiki page. But most important is that – all of these mechanics are actually very easy to understand and use and you can always ignore most of it and just focus on what you enjoy most. Or be like me and try to 100% the game which takes a long time… But a fun long time! And provides an additional bonus, just like in Ys, where you can (again, if you want) just grind to hell and back and have less trouble during harder encounters. Or, if you don’t want to, postpone all of the collecting and grinding til later and focus on smartly using all of the combat mechanics while being at a more reasonable level.
But yeah – you’ll have plenty of abilities to get stuff later, because this game is super packed with story chapters that simply don’t end. I don’t want to spoil much (or preferably anything), but I’ll say that there are very few permanently missable things in the game due to how it’s structured, so if you want to mostly follow the main story and ignore all of the optional stuff and do it later, you can do it. Because the story will just keep going… If I were to just write it down, chronologically, you’ll find it not particularly novel or that special. But I have to admit – the way it’s gradually revealed makes it extremely fun and interesting and even when I was expecting what would be revealed long before the game did that, those revelations still came at a good time. And you can always be sure that almost immediately after the game will throw a new unexpected thing at you and keep things interesting.
If only the writing didn’t suck butt… Ignoring the weird translation issues and odd phrasing at times, 30% of the writing is very solid and delivers the main story in a great way. Unfortunately, the rest of the game dialogues and narration lines are written as if by an extremely horny 13 year old boy still living in the late 80s. I mean, seriously, I’ve not seen such a dense pack of horribly outdated shonen tropes in a game since… actually ever. Everyone is constantly horny about the main character, every male is a pervert and men in drag is the most hilarious joke mankind ever devised, according to this game. It might sound like I’m exaggerating, but that’s really what the majority of the game dialogues is like, it’s obnoxious. And I fear that this might be the main reason a lot of people will bounce off the title, not wanting to deal with this crap. A lot of the last part of the game is, thankfully, better, but it never goes away and remains dumb til the very end.
A lot of people might just be like me and be able filter out all of that dumb crap just of the sake of how fun the game really is to play. To explore the locations, to run around, to engage in combat, to figure out the puzzles… Although, the last is another weaker point of the game – some puzzles are really cool in concept, but done very poorly. One of the early ones, for example, fully ignores the whole concept of crafting that you’ve been constantly using and requires instead to remember a joke cutscene that happened at least an hour ago (and if you were 100%-ing the chapter then several hours ago). Another feels easy to figure out the puzzle itself, but hard to realize the supposedly easy part of it because it’s counter-intuitive. And one is just easier to brute force than figure out. A shame, but I must admit that these are not bad puzzles and the solutions are fun and inventive, it’s just that the game doesn’t nudge the players the right way or at all to the solution when it should.
If you love playing Ys titles, you’ve probably ran off and bought this game already before even finishing reading my opinion. It’s a really fun and inventive take on that mix of genres and while a bit more primitive (and also more “oh my hand hurts from all the mashing”) in some aspects, it’s far more complex in others in ways that are interesting. If you’re just mildly curious about these kinds of Japanese action RPG titles or never tried them before – Astlibra Revision is a fun example of the genre that’s worth checking out. As long as you can stomach some poor writing, of course. Especially since the main story and the game world are really fun.