Astral 最近的评测

I've enjoyed the early access at various points, and the developer is very active in patching as well as updating. I'm waiting for full release at this point to really dig into the game, and will update this when that occurs.

Overall I liked the game. Via combat, upgrades, most bosses, general map exploration, progression, and other elements it feels superior to the original. Basically all of the early game zones were somewhere between good to delightful. I strongly disliked some of the later zones and slide platform puzzles. There were some gimmick bosses I disliked too, but that's an issue in most Metroidvanias. Currency gain also probably should have been increased a bit. The game also needed a sprint or run mechanic, the one they provide is different for the sake of being different while feeling worse overall.

More with slight spoilers below.

I especially hated immortal enemies being present in a poison zone with environmental objects which will chain damage and kill you. You're supposed to be immune to the environmental spikes at this point, it's the whole point of one of the upgrades. You even are immune to most, but some just randomly damage you for seemingly no reason; they're not even colored differently. This then requires long walk backs via boring slide puzzles to get back to where you were because the devs did not see fit to add good shortcuts later on.

I also dislike the charged high jump. It feels like it was only there because they wanted the player to be able to ceiling slide dash, and to do something different than a double jump. The sort-of-double jump later on somehow felt even clunkier - you're supposed to use it to chain dashes and double jumps, but at times it felt like it just didn't reset as it should have despite being close enough to the ground.

Overall I just did not feel good about the parkour in this Metroidvania, but that may be because of how much I dislike the slide system. The grasp parkour is okay, I didn't mind that as much, but the sliding got real tiresome.

Looking forward to more from this dev if they continue. If not, this was a nice game to end off on.

Fun for the price point. I feel like some of the later objects needed a little less HP, but it was still quite enjoyable.

Overall I like the game. Mechanically and through gameplay it's superior to the Stranding 1. I like the upgrades that are provided, and for the most part I feel they're well distributed. The story and characters are a bit of a hot mess though. More below with spoilers.

The story is overall worse than the first one, and the primary reason for this, for me, is because of the characters involved. Sam's importance was pretty much neutered compared to the first one because his ability to repatriate has been spread around to other characters, and his blood isn't needed to kill or disable BTs. They've found a way to manufacture this so he doesn't need to donate his blood anymore. He's also kind of pushed to the background while all the other characters bond, leaving him on the outside as a third, fourth, or fifth wheel most of the time. It feels super weird. Then at the end they try to bring him front and center again. Just ... what?

Then they've introduced new characters who all have badass powers simply to look cool despite the fact the rest of the people in this universe are pretty grounded because ... reasons. A dude who can navigate under tar and use it as basically a teleporter for a giant vehicle, someone who summons time-healing rain, someone who can dive in tar and is basically Superwoman when fighting for some reason when using it while also being able to age things with tar that comes from her body, and someone who can just blatantly reach inside another person and do psychic surgery, to name a few. What was the reason for this exactly? In the last game you had some people who could teleport, but it was limited and had its own drawbacks. Then you had Sam, who, as mentioned, isn't as interesting in the second now power-wise. If anything being able to repatriate is basically shown to be a negative, the writing doing everything it can to make it look as undesirable a condition as possible. Then you had Higgs who could manipulate BTs, who's back and can do more things than ever because reasons. Why did some of these new characters need to exist? Most could've been removed, and the story would've honestly been cleaner. They really just boiled down to, "Hey we're here to show how much cooler than Sam we are! Please like us!" - except I didn't. I felt nothing for them. I liked pretty much all the preppers and shelter owners more than the new main story characters since they actually had interesting short stories attached to them, some longer than others.

All of this is a minor concern compared to Dollman though, the walking exposition and backseating machine. Like, my goodness, the character absolutely will not shut up. Stamina low? 'Hey Sam, maybe you should drink some water!' Near some enemies? 'Be careful, Sam, there are enemies!' Cutscene plays? 'Hey Sam, here's some psychological insight into that cutscene!' BTs in the area? 'Sam, I sense the dead nearby!' What in the world? Why? There are many other indicators for all of those things happening. We don't need someone literally telling us it as well. Do you consider your players to all be idiots? If THIS character was removed I wouldn't have even mentioned the other characters in this review, or at the most it would've been a sentence or two. Dollman's just that much of an annoyance that he got me thinking about the characters as a whole. To top it off his personal story is awful as well. Quite easily the worst secondary character in the game, with the only redeeming quality being that the VA did a nice job on his lines, but ... yeah. Truly awful character. If they removed all the backseating and limited him to his story role he would've been far better, though his personal story still paints him as either a colossal moron or a monster - the optional one you get if you talk to him enough that is, his main story role is fine.

The main story itself otherwise is pretty dang bad. Just a whole bunch of nonsense happening for the sake of drama needing to occur, with multiple characters acting in absurdly dumb ways to make sure the script plays out the way it needs to play out. Comically bad villains that are comically evil because ... reasons.

Finally, the amount of likes needed for 5 stars at shelters felt more annoying compared to the first overall. I'd prefer more 5-stars where you get a series of sub-orders that give you a large boost with actual weight to them. I can understand that this isn't possible for all of them, but for the others... why stretch it out so much needing like 10k+ likes? That's just padding the time, not real actual content like the sub-orders and aid. The aid requests with short stories like the one for the Hydrologist and her kids is interesting too as an example, and only reward a small amount of like, but at least it is some story. At the absolute very least they needed either less likes for F7 and F8, or more missions to do for them - what a slog.

Despite how much I've written above I do still like the game enough to give it a positive rating. Hopefully they improve on #3 if it ever gets made.

Fun game, charming art, pleasant music.

Fun game. Could use some improvements with the build and object placement system, as that can feel a little clunky at time, but otherwise a nice experience. Pleasant music, nice story, gameplay loop and upgrades were nice.

Pros:
+ Nice visuals
+ Clean and fun upgrade system
+ Base building is mostly great (I would like some different connection points, and actual module snapping inside habitats, but it's fine as is)
+ Story is good
+ Well done voice acting

Cons:
- One of the achievements requires you eat nothing with meat for the entire game. It is incredibly easy to miss this achievement given that an easy food product you can make which the game throws at you has meat. An extremely awful move by the developer to include this, which basically means not getting all achievements, or likely replaying the game. There's no way to know this in advance unless you read the achievement list before playing. If this game were on a */10 rating system I would take 1 or 2 points off for this alone. I hate this kind of crap.
- Weight of some specific materials should probably be a little lower

Overall a great game, but seriously what bad manners from the dev to include an achievement like that. Just trolling their player base for the sake of it. Like a bad mint after a meal ruining the taste in your mouth after finishing a nice meal. If you make more games in the future, which I hope you do as this was nice otherwise, please don't do this again.

Fun game to play. I've played Warhammer 2 and 3 exclusively co-op, never done a single player campaign. It can be buggy at times (use the community bug fix mod), and the DLC can be expensive, but it is still an incredibly fun game that I don't believe warrants 'mixed reviews'.

If you're on the fence about the game pricing wise, and its DLC, they've pretty regularly had 75% or more off sales for things in the past. Just wait for a sale.

As far as the bugs, most are negligible with the community bug fix mod. It's not great that a mod is required for this, but it's available, Theoretically I'm even playing a buggier version of the game since I doubt they actually put a lot of QA into the co-op experience, and even then it's still barely noticeable when it happens. An example of this was me playing Aislinn and my friend playing Ostankya, and at a certain point later in the campaign (we believe after I confederated someone) he just flat out lost the ability to trade settlements in diplomacy. The button just entirely disappeared and never came back. Silly, but not a deal breaker.

If I had to give a numerical rating to this game, rather than just a binary yes or no, I'd say easily a 7/10 overall, 9/10 if it was less buggy, 4/10 for its pricing scheme.

Short but fun. No downsides, other than perhaps wanting more, but it's perfect for the price point.

Great game, quite fun.
Pros:
+ Gameplay loop is straight and to the point
+ Nice upgrade system where everything feels well balanced price and power wise (I might have asked for one more pickup upgrade, but it's not 'needed')
+ Pleasant music
+ Cute graphics
+ A short story, but well told
+ VA did well

No negatives, just a very nice game.