Platinum Games’ latest title, Astral Chain, has been out for a few days now. How is it doing with critics, you ask? The Nintendo Switch exclusive is garnering positive reviews so far.
Astral Chain has some talent connected to it. Takahisa Taura – the game designer behind Nier: Automata – and Hideki Kamiya, the creator of the Bayonetta series, are involved in the project. It’s fair to say that expectations were pretty high going into its release.
The action game has you play as a rookie officer in the elite police force known as Neuron. It’s up to you and your colleagues to solve cases and save humanity. No pressure!
IGN’s Steven Petite called Astral Chain “every bit as awesome as it looks in motion, which is to say it’s downright incredible,” adding that it’s “one of the best action games of this generation.”
Eurogamer’s Martin Robinson writes that the game is “sprawling, varied and constantly stylish” and that it “ranks with Platinum’s best.”
Chris Plante writes for Polygon that Astral Chain “is the best new Nintendo franchise since Splatoon.”
Not everyone was as glowing. Josh Torres of RPG Site argues that the game “is in an identity crisis deadlock with itself and the result is a game that has a bunch of stunning design systems marred by a few significant downfalls.”
Torres says that “Astral Chain has strong visions of a lot of things it wants to excel in and sometimes gets caught up juggling too many to notice which ones are falling through the cracks.”
The overall consensus, though, is positive. Astral Chain is currently averaging an 87 out of 100 at review aggregator OpenCritic, which makes it one of the highest-rated games of 2019.
