Astral Chain, a platinum masterpiece

And understanding Jena's goal

Key art for Astral Chain, featuring the male and female protagonists with the Sword Legion in the middle

Astral Chain is a character action game by Platinum Games, and is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Both the combat and story are unforgettable in their own rights, with an amazing (though sadly lacking when it comes to a complete official release) soundtrack to back it all.

There’s quite a lot to unpack here, so I’ll start with the gameplay. Like Platinum’s previous character action games Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, this game's combat is all about style. You are given a lot of different options for how to attack, but the way this game stands out is the many options players have through modularity. To show what I mean, let’s compare this to Metal Gear Rising (MGR). In MGR, Raiden has a somewhat specific moveset, primarily composed of combos where you press y some number of times followed by x, then another y. In addition, Raiden has some supplementary attacks (back-forward attacks, running attacks, aerial attacks, spin attacks) and access to three extra secondary weapons that change his strong attacks. All-in-all, Raiden has around 88 built-in combos in total (although the player really only has access to 22 of these at any given time, since you cannot change sub-weapons in the middle of a combo nor while moving). However, a key limiter here is the “built-in” aspect and the limited ability to change sub-weapons in the middle of a fight.

In Astral Chain, there’s a sense of modularity when it comes to the “built-in” combo system. Rather than having a main set of combos plus supplementary attacks, Astral Chain turns almost EVERYTHING into a main, though on average shorter, combo. In total, you have combos for basic light attacks, charge attacks, delay attacks, back-forward attacks, spin attacks, and aerial attacks. But rather than just having four options for your sub weapon, Astral Chain gives you three main weapons and five effective subweapons (called Legions) that all have their own unique combos for all of the aforementioned attack types with each combination of main weapon and legion, totaling to 90 different standard combos at your disposal. In addition, each legion has two unique skills, a bind attack, team attack, counter attack, and perfect summon attack, bringing the total to a whopping 125 different attacks.

However, this does come at a bit of a cost at the lack of being able to weave in between different combos. In most character action games, there is a heavy emphasis on being able to cancel out of one combo to transition into another, allowing you to get some really big combo counts and earn really high letter ratings depending on how stylish your combo is. Although this is a core appeal of the genre for some, Astral Chain doesn’t place nearly as much emphasis on your total combo, heck it doesn’t even keep track of your current combo in the middle of a fight. Rather, it places more emphasis on your ability to use variety rather than just using one subset of combos over and over. Remember when I mentioned that MGR effectively limits your fighting ability to only 22 combos by making it hard to switch sub weapons mid-fight? Astral Chain doesn’t do that, but rather actively encourages changing weapons mid fight to give you complete access to your full kit at any given time.

In addition, this also helps give the bosses more time to shine during your fights. As one man described Devil May Cry 5 (and the character action genre as a whole), “combat is not necessarily about surviving your enemies, but fucking owning them”. What this boils down to is dodging your enemies attacks while building up your own combo to kill them in the quickest and most stylish way possible. But in some cases, this can mean that the bosses don’t really have an opportunity to stand out, dying before they get to show you their full moveset. This can be especially sad when fighting any humanoid bosses, as character action games encourage the player to toss their enemies in the air and juggle them, preventing the boss from actually getting to do anything. By focusing less on combos and more on attack variety, Astral Chain is able to let its bosses shine no matter how good you are at the game, turning the fights into a bit of a dance as you’re forced to engage with the enemy rather than simply beating the shit out of them. This may be a dealbreaker for some, but I see it as a more than welcome mix up in the genre that greatly helps keep this game as memorable as it is.

All things considered, the combat is definitely this games strongest point, and I haven’t even mentioned the most stand out feature. Devil May Cry has the Devil Trigger, Bayonetta has Witch Time, Metal Gear Rising has Zandatsu, and Astral Chain has The Legions. I’ll discuss the lore aspects of the Legions later, but in terms of gameplay, this means that you get to play as two characters at the same time. Each of the five legions has their own set of attacks, and you can maneuver them around the area in order to sandwich your enemies, and then use your moveset to activate sync attacks, where you and your legion attack at the same time in a way that is always satisfying to activate. Much like how MGR’s Zandatsu is so satisfying to use because of the simple yet rewarding way it's implemented, sync attacks are the highlight of combat and are (also similar to Zandatsu) used in certain boss fights to create some amazing cinematic moments. Each Legion also stands out from one another, offering unique abilities, attacks, character design, and even utility. All-in-all, this is a system that manages to subvert the standard of character action games focus on combos for something truly unique that may not appeal to everyone, but that I still found to be both incredibly fun and memorable.

However combat is not the only gameplay present here. Although combat is certainly the highlight, there are also sections of exploration and puzzles that stand out in their own right. Most puzzles center around using each legion's unique skills within the environment, such as cutting weak points in a structure, shooting a far away button, lifting a heavy object, running really fast, or creating a shield to protect you from poison gas. These sections aren’t particularly complicated but they tend to be fun, short breaks from the otherwise constant onslaught of enemies. In particular is a very notable section near the end that requires use of almost all of your legions in quick succession, demonstrating just how far you’ve come as a player while still keeping the stakes raised fairly high and the overall gameplay fast paced.

The exploration sections tend to be longer but offer some welcome world-building while balancing out the pace of an otherwise fast moving plot. These sections can be both quiet and tense, whether you're doing small tasks for the people around the city to help with their day-to-day needs, or evacuating them to keep them safe from the upcoming kaiju battle. These sections offer a similarly nice break to the combat as the puzzles while still offering optional fights against both mob enemies and hidden bosses for anyone who wants them. In addition, they also fill in the world you’re inhabiting, and help to show what the world is like.

Using this world-building-through-gameplay as a clever way to transition to the story, lets dip our toes into the lore of Astral Chain without getting into spoilers. One day, humanity was suddenly attacked by an extra-dimensional force of invisible enemies called Chimeras. The extra dimension in question is called the Astral Plane, which has begun corrupting the world and causing people to “red-shift”, turning them into crystalline zombie things that, alongside the Chimeras, try to pull people into the Astral Plane for unknown reasons. As a result of this sudden attack, all of humanity has been forced to retreat to a single man-made island called The Ark whose infrastructure is barely able to sustain itself. Every resource is precious, and we can't afford to waste anything. As you explore the world of Astral Chain, the small interactions you have with everyday people showcases how desperate many are just to survive, just to have the smallest happiness they can. From buying medicine to save a sick child, to finding someone’s missing cat, many of the problems faced by the regular people in Astral Chain are problems that we face in the real world, yet there’s an ever greater sense of dread because you know that this is the last bastion of humanity, and that we need to protect every small tiny precious thing we can. In a world so empty of light, the tiniest sparks become all the more precious.

With the gameplay and world-building out of the way, let’s focus on the plot. Without spoiling anything beyond the first chapter, you play as one of two twins, one male and one female. Using the concept art for the game, it could be concluded that choosing the male twin is the “canon” choice (even though it really doesn’t matter), so I’ll refer to the main character as The Protagonist with male pronouns and their twin, Akira with female pronouns. The twins are both members of Task Force Neuron, a special group of police dedicated to fighting all threats posed by the Astral Plane. To this extent, they have access to specially made Legions, Chimeras that have been captured and modified to be used by humans as living weapons. This allows you to be able to actually see the Chimeras and clean up any redshifted particles left by the Astral Plane. The Protagonist is given the Blade Legion while Akira is given the Arrow Legion. That’s all I will tell you for without delving into spoilers, so here’s your warning:

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

I originally planned to go over the whole story in this article, but realized that that would take way too long, so I’m going to instead focus on the actions of the villains, Jena Anderson and Yoseph Calvert. Before the beginning of the game, Jena was working under Yoseph to help create the Legion technology, but realized that he had nefarious ulterior motives. Yoseph didn’t just want to use the chimeras as living weapons, he wanted to fuse humanity with them, to create an unstoppable force under his control. When Jena found out about his true ambitions, she was abandoned in the Astral Plane and left for dead. Fortunately though, Jena managed to learn of the true nature of the Astral Plane and used that knowledge to survive and create her own plan to facilitate humanity’s survival.

What Jena learned is that the Astral Plane is like a giant computer, specifically one used by the gods to store reality inside of when they think things have gotten out of hand in the real world. Humanity got out of hand, and so the gods have begun storing the Earth inside the Astral Plane by turning everything into red crystals, including the human soul and consciousness. Yoseph’s main plan was therefore to create his own Astral Plane called Noah that he could be the god of. This also means that all of the Chimeras we fight over the course of the game, and the legions we are using to fight them, are made out of crystallized human souls. With this knowledge, Jena finds a way to partially redshift herself without completely losing control, basically giving her a cool sword arm and some neat chimera powers, including letting her finally leave the Astral Plane.

Her plan for saving humanity, or rather its  “Salvation” (as she calls it), involves the creation of the homunculi (basically purple and white kaiju, but like half of godzilla’s size) and killing Yoseph. Over the course of the game, the characters primarily act to thwart Jena’s plans and kill her homunculi. This culminates in a grand battle in the central square, where Jena broadcasts a promise to save humanity from the people that would use their fear to “offer a false peace” to the general public. Task Force Neuron is sent to intervene in fighting two homunculi but this is only a ruse for Jena to catch Yoseph by himself and finally put a stop to his plans. On the rooftop of Neuron’s building, Jena and Yoseph have a short debate where they both conclude that only they can save humanity before the protagonist steps in to defeat Jena. One set of boss fights later as Jena gets bigger and bigger and more and more angelic looking (because this is a video game), the protagonist is left on the brink of death. However, right before they die, the core of The Legion acts on its own and fuses with them, taking over their body and undergoing a transformation of their own into a new creature, one that is both human and chimera (kinda like Jena’s transformation, but more beast like rather than angelic), which is also exactly what Yoseph wanted. Having lost control of their body, the protagonist must struggle to stop themselves from attacking Akira, before Jena stands up to distract this strange fusion of man and crystal-monster (and is subsequently killed by it). In her final moments, she tells the protagonist that this is what she was trying to prevent, and pleads with the protagonist to recognize the danger of Yoseph’s plan.

At the climax of the game (some more shenanigans later), Yoseph’s true plan has been revealed to Neuron, and it’s up to you and Akira to stop him. Having found out that humans and legions can fuse if the human is brought nearly to death, Yoseph makes a bunch of clones to stab each other to create a bunch of fused creatures, and then has all those fused creatures stab each other in order to coalesce into this weird orb-thingy called Noah, which Yoseph sacrifices himself to in order to give it a physical body. Some more shenanigans later (including fighting a giant three headed, way-too-many-eyed, six armed purple kaiju) the protagonist ends up inside Noah… kind of? Basically, Noah is a living Astral Plane (that’s different from the regular Astral Plane) which Yoseph is in control of. And just like the Astral Plane, Noah is attempting to absorb all of reality into itself. While inside Noah, the protagonist attempts (and initially fails) to destroy its core, after which Yoseph appears and basically tells them “I’ve already won, just accept it kid” before being stabbed in the back by Akira. In his final moments, Yoseph says “I am… Noah is… Endless”. A couple of sad noble sacrifices and final boss fight later, and Noah is eventually taken down by the twins.

Now, there is a LOT I’m skipping over in this summary, including all of the actual character and growth of the protagonist and Akira, but I wanted to focus on the villains because I find them very interesting. Yoseph is very much a combination of the semi-classic “super intelligent egomaniac” and “twist villain”, the latter of which can leave a sour taste in people’s mouths. To some, the phrase “twist villain” invokes imagery of Hans from Frozen and the other animated twist villains where the twist comes from out of nowhere and ends up not making a lot of sense in the actual overall plot. However, I think Yoseph manages to work both because of proper foreshadowing and enough time shown of his villainous side. Between Jena’s hints of “you can’t trust Yoseph” and a properly fledged-out third act that builds up to the final climax, Yoseph makes for an intimidating presence of someone who genuinely masks his ambition as a heroic act, despite it clearly not being so. And yet, his final words intrigue me. Whether some part of him truly believed that Noah could save humanity or a belief that his creation will live beyond him, he seems to accept that he is not a god, switching “I am endless” to “Noah is endless”. It could also be seen that he is equating himself with Noah, as he is absorbed by Noah in his final moments, but the line itself remains somewhat ambiguous.

On the other side is Jena, a character who claims that she has a way to help humanity survive but, what exactly is it? This is a kind of significant question for the community that I haven’t seen any solid answers on despite how crucial it is for her character. The primary conflict between Yoseph and Jenna is a tug between extremes. Yoseph’s solution is essentially “fight fire with fire… before becoming fire yourself” while, in their debate, Jena says “we have a future as we are”. Humanity doesn’t need to change, she can save them with something else. Looking at the homunculi, it seems like they are her solution. We see them killing and eating not just chimeras, but the Astral Plane itself, making them almost a perfect counter weapon to the threat of the Chimeras. Yet, she uses them to wreak havoc in the city, and the homunculi themselves still attack people on sight (except for her), so how exactly are they a solution?

Although this is never explicitly stated, I do have a theory to propose. The homunculi are clearly designed as a counter to the chimeras and Astral Plane, yet they never display the ability to travel between the Astral Plane or the real world. If it's true they can’t, then I think a potential solution does arise in the form of creating a bunch of homunculi in the Astral Plane and then just leaving them there. Chimeras stand no chance of beating them, and they would eventually eat the entire Astral Plane itself, meaning it could pose no more threat. With the Astral Plane gone, the chimeras would eventually go extinct, and the homunculi would all be trapped with no way to reach the real world and hurt humanity. Although only hypothetical, it is a plan that could work, but Jena ends up using them to attack the city instead. In the central square it kind of makes sense, since they give her an opening to kill Yoseph and put a stop to his plans, but it doesn’t explain why she let a homunculus loose in Zone 09 (except maybe as a distraction to get her hands on a specific drug we see in that chapter, but that’s not a great explanation).

Overall, Jena is presented as a character who genuinely wants to do good, but goes about it in such a destructive way that she ends up doing more harm, with the main good thing she does being when she exposes Yoseph’s plans to the main characters, giving them the opportunity to stop Yoseph in her stead. All things considered, it feels like these villains are designed to communicate something to the audience (as every villain in media does). Yoseph is fairly clear, he acts as a warning of authority figures (both as a leader of the police and as a very rich guy ordering other people to do science for him) who present solutions to problems, but only in a way that fuels their own ambition and ego. Jena is a bit more on the gray side and I think there are definitely other interpretations of what her character could represent, but I think that she represents someone who tries to do good, but ends up blinded by her hatred towards a specific individual (Yoseph). Despite her claims of salvation and wanting to help people, the lengths she goes to in order to kill Yoseph end up causing not one but two separate acts of terrorism.

In response to both of these villains, I think the game does offer a more nuanced message that other games might. For Yoseph, the obvious solution is to put a stop to him and his plans, yet the game also acknowledges that the technology he directed other people to make is still useful. The main characters are all still using legions to fight chimeras when the game ends, and the institute he built is still (or at least is implied to be) in use as a treatment facility and legion development center. His ultimate goal and his final weapon, Noah, are bad and need to be stopped, but that doesn’t necessitate throwing away everything his name is attached to. It’s like a separation of art and artist but for technology. As for Jena, she’s painted in a similarly nuanced light. The characters fight against her acts of terrorism to save the civilians, but she’s still sort of listened to in her warnings against Yoseph. After all, terrorism doesn’t just happen on its own and, like any crime, it's important to ask ourselves why someone does what they do, as that question can lead to solving a larger issue that we didn’t know of before. If the protagonist hadn’t transformed, and if no one listened to Jena’s warning, then Yoseph could have very well succeeded. How you can apply these messages to the real world is definitely a lot more complicated than how it works in Astral Chain, but I think these ideas are still valuable to hold onto and think about regardless.

END OF SPOILERS

Astral Chain is, at its core, a very fun game with an incredibly interesting world and a plot that properly takes the time to explore it all. And despite my spoiler section focusing on the bad guy(s) and their plan(s), the protagonists have a very compelling story of their own revolving around grief, powerlessness, and uncertainty about themselves. I would gladly recommend this game to anyone who likes video games, especially games with fast-paced combat and a truly unique world setting/plot. The gameplay and plot are very well paced, offering both spectacle and quiet world/character building moments. The world is very well thought through and leaves enough unsaid to allow you to want to explore it yourself. I think the best praise I can give Astral Chain is that it surprised me. I went into the game completely blind, having only heard about it because the twins and Kyle have spirit cameos in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and as I played through it I was consistently impressed by just how well it executed its concepts. The dialogue, the character and world design, the combat, the exploration, all of it just blew me away with how good it all was, and I couldn’t wait to see where the plot would go next. It’s rare for me to finish a game and then afterwards have such a strong itch to just go back and replay almost all of it because it really is just that great.