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ASTLIBRA Revision (Reviewed)

Developer: KEIZO

Publisher: WhisperGames

Released: Oct 13th, 2022

Price: $22 USD

ASTLIBRA Revision is a unique experience, bringing you back to the golden age of video games. You'll confront time and fate itself in the 2D Metroidvania RPG of a lifetime. Explore meticulously crafted worlds, fight brutal boss battles, and upgrade your skills to take down enemies lurking around every corner.

This game packs over 60 hours of gameplay and story for just $22.

Common complaints by people who look at the game from a distance

The visuals are one of the things most people look at with disgust

Do not let the visuals distract you or push you away with its amateurish art. Put your preferences aside and look into this game with an open mind or you'll be passing up an amazing opportunity to experience a game like never before.

Yes, the game looks like some sort of miniclip fantasy art collage, in a confusing clash of mismatched art from different sources overlapping each other with some poor looking images and bad terrain, but that's it. It's not about visuals.

So let’s address this issue first.

Astlibra’s art in the beginning was lacking severely. After the game made a massive and strong impression with its free early demo release with over 5 hours of gameplay available, artist Shigatake joined to contribute art and help improve the look of the game, hence the ‘revision’ part. The presence of his and some other contributors' sprite-work makes the disjointed visuals look obvious.

This is one of the best games I’ve played this year, and you know what? The graphics and art have grown on me. I like it, the style, the simplicities, the flair that it gives off when running into long and powerful combos.

Don't do what a lot of people have done, looks can be deceiving.

Concerning issue

The framerate drop can be annoying to some people.

Combo's will often stutter the game's FPS, which isn't high to begin with, but outside of these two issues, there are no other problems with the integrity.

If you're looking for a game that runs on 125 perfectly with no stutters, then this game will be your biggest enemy. It's only in really tight mobs and long combos.

Boss battles on higher difficulty are absolutely insane

The issue with Bosses is HP scaling, which is a result of the difficulty setting.

Monsters will gain a lot more damage to you, while also having a lot more health. Easy mode has most bosses and the very first boss you encounter at level 7-9 (unless you power farm) with about 9k health which takes forever that early in the game, but it's fine cause you take basically no damage, however, the harder boss fights have over 20k while being able to one shot you if you haven't been power-leveling or doing proper hit and run tactics with a shields defense.

If you like a challenge you will get a challenge if you choose the higher difficulty, if you want story and moderate difficulty, choose anything below hard setting.

There is so much in this game for min-maxing

Skill system is vast and plentiful

The proficiency system gives you a lot of reason to want to keep mowing down enemy after enemy. There are so many ways to play through this game, in your own ways with over 30 spirits (proficiency skills) to choose from and boost any of your offenses or defenses. Some can even be summoned to help you battle.

Grow system give you plenty of incentive to continue killing monsters

The growth mechanic is kind of similar to Final Fantasy XII with its Zodiac system. Granting you new skills and bonuses in your overall character stats at the cost of grains from your enemies. If you can't afford let's say 5 green, you can use 15 of another color to grow without having to search for those specific types of monster drops, this doesn't mean you don't have to farm, there's a lot of grinding and fighting of monsters to make a significant increase to your stats.

Libra scale system offers a ton of variety

The libra scale is a powerful relic you obtain in your travels through time and space. Balancing it perfectly with the desired effects as you unlock its power grants you enormous bonuses to your combat defenses and offenses. It really pushes you to find the perfect combo to better match your playstyle.

Karon system & equipment mastery

The Karon system is tied together with your equipment. If you do not constantly improve your weapons and armors and max them out, you will be significantly weaker than if you had done so. It's pretty easy to get a hang of, but can be slightly overwhelming with the sheer amount of weapons, armor and accessories available to you in this game.

Don't like your current build?

Then reset free of charge any time

Mess up your build?

Your weapon is way too heavy to swing quickly?

Taking too much damage?

It doesn't matter what your issue is, you can resolve a lot of them by adjusting your stats and switching around your weapons and armor to be more agile, defensive or focused more on long ranged combat. There is no limit for you.

My opinions and a bit more back story

I can't explain in words how amazing this game actually is

I went in expecting the game to be mediocre due to the overly complex designs for the characters and terrain. But putting that aside, I gave it a honest try.

It felt like I was a kid again, as silly as that sounds, playing Maplestory, running around mindlessly mowing down hordes of monsters for the sake of wanting to level up and farm materials for quests / weapon crafting to become stronger.

One hour turned into two, two turned into five, five turned into 30. I lost track of time, because of how much fun I was having doing something that so trivial.

While the story is pretty predictable, as in if you know something the characters do not you have to force them to do what you know you shouldn't, if that makes sense. The story is absolutely fantastic regardless, but the desire to actually go out and farm materials from monsters and minerals is just as good.

I spent 2 hours in the demo area alone just unlocking everything and having fun before the game was released and another 4+ hours in each unlocked area.

This game was created over the course of 15 years by a single person

The game was developed by a solo Japanese developer for over 15 years.

KEIZO had a daily job and only worked on the game after he got back home. You know it's not easy to develop a video game on your own, especially over 15 years of development. However, with the help of prolific artist Shigatake (Dragon’s Crown artist) and Haku Tatsufuchi (Magic: The Gathering artist), and Publisher WhisperGames, the game has gotten the "Revision" upgrade, which you see here today, and it brought so much more to the table to enjoy.

Would you recommend this game?

Absolutely 100%

As mentioned previously, words can not describe how visually and physically addicting this gameplay is. If you've been waiting for the next best thing to arrive, you've missed it, so come back and take a look at a masterpiece.

The music, the visuals, the addictive combat, there is so much passion put into this project that you can't help but want to continue playing right up to the end.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt