Tania Goes On A Metroidvania Adventure: An AWAKEN – Astral Blade Review

By Teepu

Players: 1
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC (Steam)

Over the past few years, the gaming space has been flooded with Metroidvania games. Almost any twist on the genre you can think of exists at this point. In a market so full of games, how does AWAKEN – Astral Blade fare? Let's find out!

I will tell you right up front, it is only slightly above average. Do not let that discourage you though, it does a lot of things right. The first thing I noticed is how smooth the controls are. It never really feels like my deaths are not my fault, and that is one of the most important things to consider in a game like this. Every time I had a complaint, the game addressed it. I wished there were another way to deal with attacks besides dodging, then I discovered I can unlock a parry mechanic. I wished there were a way to switch weapons more smoothly on the fly, as it felt clunky to me. Soon after unlocking the first weapon, you discover a way to do combo-enders that auto switch to another weapon. The way the developer thought to address issues via character progression was clever and very on-brand for the genre.

AWAKEN – Astral Blade has plenty of combat and traversal. The combat starts off dull and uninteresting, but as you get further into the game you unlock more weapons and ways to approach situations, allowing for a respectable amount of autonomy. There is a skill tree for you to unlock more ways to control your character as well, along with various upgrades, equipment, and outfits. The normal enemies do get a bit repetitive, despite having a solid amount of variety between the various areas. I am not sure that can be avoided considering the size of each area, meaning you will face the same enemies quite a bit. The bosses, on the other hand, are varied, unique and challenging. My main issue is that the challenge does not seem to follow a logical progression. Most of the minibosses are straightforward and easy, but the major bosses range from infuriating to satisfying. The first major boss is a great test of the skills you have gained thus far, but then the second boss suddenly throws you against three enemies at once during a two-phase insanity-fest. You then get to the third major boss who feels like a better representation of the player skill up to that point. It is entirely possible I fought the bosses out of order, contributing to this issue myself, but the game seems linear for the main story. On the bright side, if you are easily frustrated, there is a player help feature that will allow you to lower the difficulty and even boost your character’s stats if you fail too many times. It is not required, but the option is there and very much welcome for people who enjoy the game but not the sometimes-frustrating challenge.

Alright, so combat feels good, despite some odd difficulty spikes, how about the traversal? The controls are great, which mostly revolve around running, sprinting, and jumping. You also get some other abilities like dashing and double jumping. Tania herself feels tight to control and makes platforming a cinch. Most of the platforming is also designed well and feels appropriately challenging. Sometimes though, I feel like the environment works against you in odd ways. The main offender I dealt with the whole game were these giant swinging axes. The goal is for you to dash through them to avoid damage, but the hitboxes felt off for them and multiple times I felt I had dashed through them I would still get hit, so I would just have to quickly run through them during the brief invincibility window. It really messed up some otherwise smooth and fulfilling sections, which is unfortunate. Like the combat, the platforming does have an assist option for players who are having trouble, allowing you to teleport through the section. I feel like a better solution could have been presented rather than skipping the entire section but offering less able players an option is welcome all the same.

All of that is great and all, but if the game is an eyesore, then it is all moot. Thankfully, the art style and animations look quite nice. It has a sort of Muramasa look that has a painting/anime feel to it. My one gripe is that due to the dense colors and vibrancy, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish enemies from the background. I have never died because of it, but I have certainly been hit at times I could have easily avoided had I been able to clearly see an enemy was on the screen. It is not like the enemy was meant to be hidden either, they just blend in with the background. I am not sure what the solution would have been, putting a thick outline on enemies or something of the like, but it can get irritating. Thankfully, the moments where visibility matters the most, boss battles, this is not an issue. The audio, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. Half the music is solid, while the other half is bland, repetitive, and forgettable. The sound effects and ambience are mostly good, but the voice acting is grating. It sounds like people reading off a script, half asleep, who are being paid a couple bucks and do not care about the result. I did not listen to the voices in Chinese due to me not understanding tones and emotional acting in that language, but the English is quite horrendous when it comes to delivery. On a side note, the game does not utilize surround sound at all, as it only outputs stereo. This is not a deal breaker by any means, but playing a modern game on a PS5 with my 5.1 sound system, I always notice when a game does not put for the effort to utilize all speakers. (As this means that with headphones, virtual surround sound is also meaningless.) Again, not a big deal for a 2D game, but when I play a game like Metroid Dread, which has brilliant sound design and wonderful use of positional audio despite being 2D, it shows me that it can be done if the effort is there.

The narrative is somewhat interesting, with the main character Tania being a sort of one-of-many being. As you explore, you learn more about the world, the conflicts, and the past. You will find codex pages to read and there will be dialogue between characters as well. There is a solid attempt for the text translation to be readable, but often it sounds stiff and awkward. I do not fault it too much in this regard though, again, it is a small team, and they did the best they could. The overall message is clearly received in the text. The larger issue here is that the game forces auto-progression through dialogue. I cannot imagine why this is the case, everybody reads at different paces and considering only some stuff is voiced, you cannot even use that as an excuse for the pacing of the dialogue. I wanted to be invested in the story, but only being able to read half the dialogue had me jaded, and eventually I just skipped everything including reading codex pages as I lost interest. This is very unfortunate as there is some potentially quality content here. Near the end of my playthrough, they released a patch that ‘fixed’ this issue. Their solution was to cut the progression speed in half, approximately. This meant I could actually read the text in the latter part of the game, but it was too little too late for me. Why they could not simply allow the player to progress the text instead of forcing it is beyond me. The patch shows the developer’s obvious lack of understanding of the issue if their solution was simply to slow down the speed of text.

Despite the multitude of complaints I have, I did enjoy my time with AWAKEN – Astral Blade. It will not win any awards, and if you are behind in the genre there are better games to play, but you certainly will not go wrong if you decide to give this one a go. It runs smoothly, plays well, and has enough content and variety to keep you engaged to the end of the 8 hour or so adventure. On the bright side, it is not expensive at $24.99, so if you love the genre and would like to check out a new indie Metroidvania from an extremely small team, give them your support. In the meantime, I am going to go back to try and find all the collectibles, cheers!

Check Out AWAKEN - Astral Blade on PlayStation 5:
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10009167/

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Story: B+
Gameplay: B+
Graphics: A-
Music/Sound: C-
Value: B+

Overall: B-

Pros:
+ You constantly receive new things to keep you motivated to move forward.
+ The art is pretty.
+ Traversal is satisfying.

Cons:
- Terrible voice acting and forced dialogue progression are a detriment to the narrative.
- Main level progression is a bit too linear.
- Unbalanced challenge progression.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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So much potential...