ASTLIBRA Revision Reviews

Finished the main game + DLC with 100% achievements. Amazing story, great gameplay, great sountracks. Would recommend to any Ys fan (Falcom) as it follows the same formula.

Its truly a masterpiece game that ticks basically every anime itch you can have. Its the game you wish you could've played as a teenager getting into anime and jrpg's. Theres some criticism about some of its sexualized humor but its not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. At most it would be peak 2010 anime "humor" but thats it really. Pros: - Addictive combat and progression - a crazy story and great narrative that makes you want to progress - deep customization and plenty of skills, weapons, and armor that also visually shows up when equipped - rich post game content thats NOT just filler to mindlessly grind without an objective Cons: - Cant change difficulty mid-playthrough - Some parts of the game require you to use an item to progress without telling you which and the hint might not be enough. - Some eyebrow raising dialogue. Not bad and actually kinda funny but definitely a eyebrow raiser

Spoiler-free What initially hooked me on Astlibra and struck me the most about it is its unconventional plot. Just when you think you know where the plot is heading, a SNCF 242.A.1 plot-twist locomotive crashes at you leaving you confused. I'd praise the plot much more if it didn't happen so. damn. much. But maybe that's part of the charm. I never really experienced a story anything like Astlibra, and that's something. The story is very emotional, the world has an air of mystery to it that you uncover bit by bit. By the end of each chapter I had been feeling a childlike urge to keep playing so I could further experience the story. Honestly, I haven't felt like that in a long time playing video games. I do have some gripes with the storytelling though. Plot twists and fake-outs are overused as plot devices to the point it becomes silly. By the end of the game everything feels stretched out and the lack of thought starts to show. It is a dopamine train though. I won't delve into specifics as I believe you have to experience everything yourself without any prior knowledge to appreciate it. Be prepared for a very wild ride but don't expect anything too deep or thought-provoking. If you end up worn out or disappointed, that is also to be expected imo. A fairly mild criticism/warning I have is that there are several pretty weird sexual jokes here and there that are just pure cringe more than anything. Ignore them and you'll be fine. The atmosphere is fantastic. Damn dude the setting for each chapter is nailed so perfectly. The art style, while outdated, is very endearing and it really grew on me. The OST is a certified banger, while being mainly composed of royalty free tracks, which is very impressive! The combat is nice. I've seen it being described as having 'Vampire Survivor energies' once and I agree. It has an addicting element to it, the visuals paired with the sound design and everything happening on screen makes neurons go bzz. The progression is that of a classic JRPG power fantasy and will have you flailing galaxies by the end of the game. Very satisfying. All in all, a game I'd recommend JRPG fans to exprience. very good keizo, very good.

I am just getting started, BUT, I am loving every bit of this gem. This is a unique experience for me relative to my catalog of games and I couldnt be more pleased that I took the plunge into ASTLIBRA. I bought it the DAY BEFORE it went on sale (0_o) However, it is indeed worth every penny for the solo dev. SO, if youre on the fence - BUY IT and LOVE IT. Like myself and a great base of other players have come to do.

I spent 114 hours playing through the main game and the rogue lite DLC on the highest difficulty level at the time of this review, and while the game has some problems I mostly enjoyed my time in it. The game is an action rpg with some light metroidvania elements. It has multiple interacting systems that are combined to determine how much damage the protagonist is able to dish out, and how much they are capable of surviving. It appears like to me that damage is simply calculated as (attack - defense), which means that when you are too weak enemies can be quite spongy, and will explode you in a hit or two, but as you get stronger the tables are slowly turned, until you basically can not be hurt, while everything around you explodes after a single hit. Bosses vary a lot in quality, from trivial to challenging, to a few that basically require some luck in order to survive, but in general they trend towards being quite spongy for the level the character is at the time. This means that the game can get quite grindy, but it has some pretty smooth combat that remains interesting throughout the game, and as enemies initially hurt quite a lot the game rewards the player for getting good at dodging their attacks. The game has a story where the protagonist uses time travel to fix problems with the past; it starts slow, but it picks up as it goes, and I found myself looking forward to what would happen next. The game is far from perfect; I found some of the systems to be under developed (after a certain point adaptability and luck become worthless, for example) and some enemies are kind of unfair (in that the game heavily pushes you to use melee weapons, and some enemies have attacks that do a lot of damage, and are hard to avoid if you are too close to them. While many enemies are not exactly difficult, and can be sniped down from off screen by using magic they can take a very long time to defeat. Towards the end of the first campaign there are some puzzles (In Elyseum) that are quite frustrating, and can prevent you from progressing until you solve them. If you can live with the issues and the game sounds like something you might enjoy I recommend you get it; for me it gave me a lot of enjoyment for the money I spent.

This game is amazing. Thank you for this masterpiece. I am struggling to mention what I love about the game besides the story and characters without spoiling anything. The game is worth playing in easy or normal mode just for the story. But if you want some challenge I recommend Hard (can be lowered during the game) It made me think and change my load out and figure enemy patterns. I did not need to grind for a boss fight. I did need to go back and use my resources to get stronger. Lucky you if you have not bought it yet cause you can enjoy it :)

I seriously like the game even I'm really bad at the game play (it took me more than 2 hours to beat the 2nd boss stage lol, even with the casual difficulty). The story telling here is awesome, common plot but very well written, interesting plot twist, nice music. Just buy the game, worth it.

This game is amazing. The combat is fun, grinding is rewarding, the art is unique, the music is awesome, the number of ways you have to strengthen you character is impressive, and the story is insane in that it just keeps going. This game made me feel like only elden ring has before. Every time I thought I was at the end, it kept going, adding more layers and little by little progressing towards an even more satisfying ending. Time travel is almost impossible to do without running into consistency and logic problems, but I think this game does it well enough. The only negative is at the start of the game. I didn't get into the game at first because of the combat. At the start of the game it's very button-mashy and just feels like you have out-power the enemy, but it quickly moves beyond that when you start learning skills and battle techniques. Karon abilities also add an extra layer to game play, of which there are many, learned through mastering the huge number of different weapons, armour, and shields. A very original game that reminded me why I used to love JRPGs so much. Highly recommended. I think it deserves a lot more attention than it seems to have gotten.

I often find that with very positively reviewed games, people overhype and oversell them. I had heard nothing but great things about Astlibra both in its Steam reviews and elsewhere on the internet. If anything, this game is severely underhyped. It deserves every last bit of praise I've seen it get and then some. Astlibra Revision is genuinely one of the best games I've played in the last few years. The gameplay is fantastic, the OST is 10/10, the characters are wonderful, the enemy designs are great, and the story is an amazing ride packed with twists the whole way through. I'd even say the game is worth playing for the story alone even if all those other aspects were terrible, but it's genuinely the full package. It's very reminiscent of Vanillaware games and feels like a singleplayer RPG version of Dragon's Crown. I do have a few small criticisms of it. There are some puzzles in the game that you need to do to progress and they can be very obtuse or require you to talk to NPCs several times with no real indication of what to do next, and I did end up getting stuck a little while in a few spots due to that. Bearing in mind that I played it on the "Hard" difficulty, towards the very end of the game the gameplay kind of devolves into spamming extremely powerful magic and the harder bosses spamming projectiles and huge waves of attacks at you. There is also an equipment upgrade system that gets added very late in the game that will make you horrendously OP and almost unable to die if you invest any significant amount of effort into it, although I imagine if you play on the difficulties above the one I picked it would be much more necessary to use it to keep yourself alive. None of that significantly impacted my enjoyment of the game. I love Astlibra, and in my opinion the game is worth 2-3x the price they're asking for it. I'm very excited to see what KEIZO makes in the future.

The best JRPG ever made hands down, amazing story full of twists, extremely satisfying combat, very rewarding grind of items and skills, insane soundtrack and bosses. KEIZO you're a genius and sadly nothing will ever top this unless you make something even greater. 10/10 easily recommend playing to anyone, finish the main game and then the DLC for the full experience