Awaken - Astral Blade" tries really ambitious, but it just falls flat. It's like the game is trying to do too much and ends up doing nothing well. First off, the story lost my interest almost immediately. You're supposed to care Tania and and her relationship with her father, and the history of this world, but the characters are dull, and nothing exciting ever really happens. It feels like a story you've heard a million times before. Then there's the lore – that's all the backstory and world history. Instead of showing you cool stuff, the game just dumps tons of text on you. It's like reading a textbook when all you want to do is play. It's too much, I actually gave up on reading the lore documents less than half-way in. The fighting is a mess. It feels stiff and clunky, like you're fighting the controls more than the enemies. Your attacks don't feel powerful, and enemies sometimes hit you when they shouldn't. This makes every fight, especially the bosses, a real chore. Boss...

Pros: - World is beautiful, detailed, and aesthetically pleasing - Movement is varied and satisfying - Puzzles are logical and require a decent amount of thought without being too difficult - Combat combos are interesting Cons: - Combat is super unforgiving, even in normal mode - Tania is super squishy - There's latency in switching weapons, triggers don't always register - Parry and Dodge timings are inconsistent with enemies that do tick damage - There are attacks that cannot be dodged or blocked - Enemies get more "difficult" just by gaining more health and doing more damage Overall, exploration is fun, combat is okay. Fix up the parry and dodge windows and rely less on stat padding enemies to make them more difficult and this would be a super solid game. As it stands, bosses and mob combo rooms are tedious and annoying.

Enjoyed every minute of this game. Never had an issue. Status should be changed to verified.

Review is after 100% achievements and second hardest difficulty. Decent Metroidvania game with good combat and progression. Most of the bosses took couple of attempts, but late game difficulty decreases and I've oneshotted last two bosses. The plot is not interesting and voice acting is not good (imho the game would be better without it) and the most annoying thing for me was that voice acting did not match text. I did not find any major bugs in my playthrough. The only one I encountered is camera not resetting if you try to execute enemy and fall off platform, restarting the game solved it.

I'm having too much fun

AWAKEN- Astral Blade is an okay game. The basic enemies are very reoccurring as you explore a map and find items to upgrade your weapons and increase your health. I found combat to be engaging despite being very simplistic. Attack and then push the pad in different directions for different combos. The game has a parry mechanic which helped with the third boss but in general I never bothered using it. You can spend your money on new abilities but I completed the game without unlocking half of them and didn't think the skill tree was that useful. I easily maxed out the sythe weapon over the skill tree everytime. Bosses in the game are fine. They can deal a lot of damage with only a few attacks which surprised me quite a bit on normal mode. Even after several maximum health increases I'd be surprised at how often I needed to heal. If I ever couldn't beat a boss I'd reluctantly grind for a bit until I could beat them. I really only needed to grind a little on the third to last bo...

A second awesome metroidvania game from this studio. I played their previous game, Afterimage, for 70 hours and loved it. I don't have anything negative to say about this game. I skip through the story, and stick to map exploration. There's ALWAYS something to find if you look. If a boss is too hard, explore more of the map, level up, and then you'll stomp them with hearts to spare. It takes me at least 5 tries to learn the boss patterns, and I find the bosses far less "cheap" than something like darksouls. I hate the difficulty of souls-like games, and thankfully this game only shares the "refillable health hearts", which works well. I love the combo system and controls in this game. It's tricky/impossible to always get right, but when you do, it's satisfying. Platforming is also fun and is challenging in spots. (If you're stuck, look at tips for how to get extra distance -- it took me a LONG Time to figure out on my own!) Music is subtle, peaceful, and sometimes hau...

Overall the game was pretty decent for a metrovania. The only real issue i had with the game was going back and forth so much on maps to go to areas you didnt have access to until you had certain abilities or items. combat was a little one dimension but felt good. And the boss music wasnt bad. Overall it was decent, 100%'d it in 34 hours. 7/10 <3

a nice game overall. 7/10

Didn't really get to into the story but the game play and exploration aspects were enjoyable. And if they made a second one I'd buy it.