From a first glance, you wouldn’t be faulted for mistaking ‘ASTLIBRA Revision’ to be from the era of old-school MMOs and 2D adventure titles from the late 90s. The pre-rendered environment textures, the semi-flat spritework, and swell beats are all work dating back 15 years for developer KEIZO, who has since launched Astlibra on PC back in late ’22 to overwhelming positive acclaim, including one additional year for the Revised Revision which has now launched on the Nintendo Switch, published by WhisperGames. You can add me to the hat of extreme positivity as Astlibra is simply a great 2D action role-playing game.
From the fun story to the wicked boss fights, you’ve just gotta check out ASTLIBRA Revision.
Tragedy Strikes True
The world of Astlibra starts us off with memories of you, the player, and a childhood friend being separated by forces unknown. It doesn’t take long for you to be taken in by a talking crow that goes by the name Karon, who raises you til the right age of adulthood—where both of you set off and find themselves dealing with gods and fate. Naturally, as a role-playing game Astlibra is a dialogue-heavy adventure, but I enjoyed the conversations between the cast and, as someone with the emotional capacity of a watermelon, came somewhat close to bawling my eyes out at times.
These events are played out in 2D fashion, of course. Astlibra is a world consisting of patchwork sprites that put together the world that you run about. It’s not all-too pretty but its consistent and, because of the stylisation of the artwork that is akin to games like ‘MapleStory’ and ‘Lineage’, I find it pleasing to the eye. The boss sprites are super cool and usually grand (strummed to the beats of awesome 2000s tunes), and the world design does a good job of making sure you don’t feel like you’re confined in a box. Though I do have issues with the patchy world textures sometimes making platforms harder to see, especially when traversing through dark areas.
This also stems to enemy spritework design, which sometimes makes dodging and blocking harder than it has to be. See, just about everything that moves in this game has a tweening style of movement that can be sometimes hard to predict as they slither or waltz towards you. I’ve found the best way to deal with this is having weapons with longer range and keeping your distance as you slash away to your next objective. But there’s so many ways to engage enemies in Astlibra, and difficulty can really make things feel tight at times.
Combat in Astlibra is great, combining a mix of fast-paced 2D movement with magic abilities and various skills that you’ll need to use and abuse to run past terrains filled to the brim with enemies up and down the stage. As you progress through the game, you’ll collect materials which you can use to unlock new weapons, armour, and accessories (and there’s lots of ’em) which helps you decide your playstyle. Though I personally suggest picking weapons with long range capabilities like the spear and keeping the block button handy.
That part is important, as the number of enemies grows you’ll need to keep on your toes so you aren’t immediately murdered by screen effects. Mind, the game isn’t difficult so long as you make sure to keep stocked on healing items and dodge whenever possible (and learning how to counter later on). But also, Karon’s magical abilities tie in heavily to how well you can crowd control. As you hit anything with a hitbox, you’ll be able to summon creatures via your ST bar which are essential to whittling down everything and anything. It’s a lot of fun once you’ve figured out the best build and even better once you go toe-to-toe to some of the game’s harder monsters.
There’s also growth points, level up stats, and a Libra system to work with. The first two are self-explanatory, beat up baddies and upgrade your stats (you can respec later on). The Libra system is a bit odd at first, using the game’s metaphorical golden judgment scale design you’ll place anything in your inventory to make the scale’s balance change. Depending on how heavy one side is, the buffs of those items will apply and ideally you want to have items that balance out the scale so both sides of items are in effect. Either way, you can mess around with it a bit and even make setups once you’ve found better items to work with.
Worst case scenario, you can always bring the difficulty down anytime. Astlibra offers multiple difficulty levels at first, but at one point early on it will bar you from increasing the difficulty past normal so keep that in mind.
It’s History
Along with your book-loving mate you’ll run into stage objectives that aren’t as intuitive as you’re used to. By that I mean, not everything has an action button tied to it—many times to trigger a door opening you’ll need to find the proper item and then use it from your inventory to complete the sequence. This, of course, trickles down to quest design sometimes requiring you to read a passage or play with the environment a bit to progress. I always prefer this approach and I think the game does a great job of providing enough details without strangling you in confusion like an old point ‘n click might have.
With big boss fights, fun combat systems, and a charming story featuring justice and righteousness, ASTLIBRA Revision is a great 2D action RPG and well worth the time investment. ∎
ASTLIBRA Revision is currently available on Steam for PCs and Nintendo Switch, the latter of which recently released on the 16th of November. A demo is available on Steam if you’re still on the fence for some reason.
ASTLIBRA Revision
Played on
Windows 11 PC
PROS
- Great combat with plenty of equipment, skills, and a combo system to work with.
- Fun and enjoyable story.
- Objective design isn't handholdey.
- Awesome music.
CONS
- Platforming isn't the best due to patchy spritework.
- Enemy choreography is inconsistent and stage swipes can be annoying.
