ASTLIBRA Revision brings the generic combat mechanism with a strong focus on its big world in a deeply involved RPG.
ASTLIBRA Revision is a side-scroller RPG by KEIZO, and while it is an indie game created on a smaller budget, as can be seen with the somewhat stunted visual style and combat, there was an enormous amount of love poured into it. The game’s development story is also fascinating for those interested in checking it out a little, as it was made over more than a decade by, seemingly, one person.
ASTLIBRA Revision is a metroidvania-style RPG at its core, and it has so much built around that core that it’s a little overwhelming at first. This game is far deeper and more involved than many other games. Maybe not quite to a Dwarf Fortress level, but certainly far more engaged than most metroidvanias, although if you are looking for something stylistically similar, you’d probably have to look towards the older, clunkier Castlevania games, such as those on the Game Boy Advance, and not at newer iterations like Metroid Dread.
You are the silent protagonist who has forgotten who he is, in grand gaming tradition, and you need to make your way through the world after spending years of your life trapped in the middle of nowhere. You’re also accompanied by Karon, a character who appears to be a human in a crow’s body, but you learn more about them as you continue the story. They also form an integral part of the gameplay.
So, the gameplay in ASTLIBRA Revision is what you would expect from most 2D metroidvanias. You find various pieces of equipment, such as weapons, armor, shields, etc, and you slowly learn your way through the world by uncovering new abilities and forms of magic. These help you with combat and traversal, as ASTLIBRA Revision also strongly focuses on exploring the world.
The base-level combat is very simplistic. You essentially just swing a weapon and jump out of the way of enemies whenever you can. The enemies also do not telegraph their attacks particularly well, so don’t expect a soulslike focus on readable foes. ASTLIBRA Revision is more about the overall journey and being in a big world that you’ll likely inhabit for over forty hours, rather than focusing on the minute-to-minute gameplay. Although, strangely enough, you do get somewhat stuck into the gameplay, even though it isn’t anything special. It’s very easy to lose hours at a time in this game.
Okay, so the standard combat isn’t anything special, but what does it have? Well, ASTLIBRA Revision is a game with far too many special skills and upgrades to find. You level up, as you do in practically all RPGs, but that leveling-up system is not tied to regular upgrades. You get other upgrades that focus on improving health, damage, etc, and they are very cheap and allow you to constantly boost your character every few minutes in tiny increments, which is very satisfying. These upgrades are attained simply through fighting. Every enemy drops resources that allow you to upgrade. This offers a great sense of constant character growth.
Then, you get the magic skills. While fighting, you build up a special meter that allows you to unleash the magic that Karon can wield. This meter fills up extremely quickly, and so in a fight, you will constantly unleash powerful attacks, and you gain more and more of these attacks as you progress through the game. ASTLIBRA Revision is focused on constant character progression, but it’s also based on character ability variability that can be altered on the fly.
You see, another of your skill types is those that can be toggled on and off. You have a certain number of free slots, which can be upgraded to equip more at once, and a massive array of abilities that you can alter depending on the situation. So, if you’re in an enemy-infested area, maybe throw some extra points into combat abilities, but if you’re exploring, then you’ll probably want that dash and double-jump ability. Now, on one hand, it would probably be nice to just have all these abilities without having to toggle them on and off all the time, but that will also likely lead to your character being immensely overpowered.
ASTLIBRA Revision doesn’t want you to be overpowered. It wants you to be strategic with where you assign your temporary points. And this can be frustrating when switching from a combat orientation to an exploration orientation, especially seeing as exploring often leads to a new combat area. So, you’ll have to be going in and out of menus all the time. This isn’t great, but you also grow accustomed to it.
Another thing that isn’t all that great is the shop system. If you want to buy certain things, you can’t. Money isn’t enough. You need to have both the money and the ingredients necessary to create the thing. This is there to slow progression, because otherwise you could buy higher-level armor and weapons early if you just grind a little, and that is probably exactly what the developers did not want, but it is still a bit of an irritation.
Furthermore, the world and story in ASTLIBRA Revision is somewhat generic overall, but the unusual and highly involved gameplay lends it enough staying power to make you interested in seeing more. It’s a lengthy, epic adventure spanning dozens of hours across a large world with lots to see and many characters to talk to and quests to engage in, and while those hours are not necessarily spent in a wholly unique world, it is at least bang for your buck.
ASTLIBRA Revision does not revolutionize anything, but it does offer a world and gameplay that will keep you occupied for a lengthy amount of time. Just don’t expect the best dialogue or narrative pacing, such as how the game’s introductory section feels miserably long, even though it’s only about twenty minutes. But it’s twenty minutes of not great dialogue and slow storytelling. Pick ASTLIBRA Revision up if you want something to sink some time into without having a particularly fresh time for the duration of your stay.
