Astral Chain ain't underrated like I said it might be, the ending is very weird in many ways and I wasn't a fan of the boss fight towards the end. Story seemed exciting and promising half way through but then it becomes a full on anime mess in the worst way. Still love the combat system but it doesn't shine in harder boss fights which really disrupt your flow.
Others have said on Era and I can't agree more that the game has a little bit of an identity crisis. The files (chapters) have stuff you can easily miss or can't even do first time round to encourage replaying, but the first half of most of the files is much slower paced gameplay. A lot of stuff like just walking around and talking to loads of people, doing weird minigames or classic shaming quests like finding objects for someone, which are mostly fine* the first time through but really put me off the thought of replaying. Thankfully though it seems your best score for each red case is saved so you don't have to do optional stuff again in your replay, which makes it not so bad. Still though it sometimes wants to be a full on action game and sometimes wants more RPG elements and it clashes a bit, which means it doesn't fully excel in either area.
* I say mostly fine because in some files the first half is just super boring/ annoying. File 8 is the worst offender, with having lots of red cases (required for good overall file rating) being awful mini games. There's a few minigames where you have to use gyro to balance boxes which is truly awful, for example.
Anyway, that's most of my gripes with the game. I was hoping I'd super love the game and half way through I thought I might but in the end I agree with the 87/100 metascore.
Others have said on Era and I can't agree more that the game has a little bit of an identity crisis. The files (chapters) have stuff you can easily miss or can't even do first time round to encourage replaying, but the first half of most of the files is much slower paced gameplay. A lot of stuff like just walking around and talking to loads of people, doing weird minigames or classic shaming quests like finding objects for someone, which are mostly fine* the first time through but really put me off the thought of replaying. Thankfully though it seems your best score for each red case is saved so you don't have to do optional stuff again in your replay, which makes it not so bad. Still though it sometimes wants to be a full on action game and sometimes wants more RPG elements and it clashes a bit, which means it doesn't fully excel in either area.
* I say mostly fine because in some files the first half is just super boring/ annoying. File 8 is the worst offender, with having lots of red cases (required for good overall file rating) being awful mini games. There's a few minigames where you have to use gyro to balance boxes which is truly awful, for example.
Anyway, that's most of my gripes with the game. I was hoping I'd super love the game and half way through I thought I might but in the end I agree with the 87/100 metascore.