Astalon: Tears of the Earth (2021)

Astalon is a premise that seems pretty simple and well-trodden at first (swap between three or more character on the fly, pixel art Metroidvania) but is rich with atmosphere, exploration, various challenges and a central cast that's worth hanging out with.

In a war-torn post-apocalyptic world, a knight, a mage, and an archer seek to save their village from poisoned water that traces back to a mysterious tower. In order to survive the many deaths necessary to climb the tower, the mage in question (Algus) has made a pact with the Titan of Death (Epimetheus) to exchange his soul to resurrect as many times as it takes. A heavy pall covers this exciting quest as the cast fights to the bittersweet end.

The main meat of the game consists of 2D platforming and action-RPG mechanics. At the beginning, three characters may switch between each other at specific points and utilize their skills as needed. The knight (Arias) can slice special vines, the archer (Kyuli) can hit faraway targets, and Algus can activate special switches with his magic. As the player explores more of the tower, additional abilities such as dashes, ghost banishing, and widened arrow impact helps define these characters further. That said, the player can also collect orbs as a form of experience that they may later exchange with Epimetheus upon death to upgrade stats, unlock abilities, and unlock other goodies. The player can either balance out their cast or strategically turn one of the characters into a juggernaut - it's a flexible system and the player won't lock themselves out with their build.

The room-by-room exploration is truly the standout portion - gorgeously ghoulish and haunting backgrounds await every corner, and intriguing secrets hide with just enough helpful guidance from the map to encourage exploration instead of being needlessly cryptic. Near the beginning there'll be some backtracking as the player links elevators with going to important locations but with a specific item (you'll know the one) partway through exploration becomes very smooth and very rewarding.

The art style is fairly simple with its pixel art - some attempts are made at making anime-style portraits and cutscenes but the real meat is the rich use of color in some environments that still manages to feel forlorn and somber, absolutely ghastly (verging on body horror) environments and bosses throughout, and the music responds by combining high energy 8-bit stylings with truly melancholy tracks. The game effortlessly walks the line between serious and fun in a way that never feels too overbearing on either side.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a Metroidvania sized just right, giving addictive amounts of exploration over 10-12 hours that never overstays its welcome and only improves as the player makes their way through the game. While there are a handful of modes to encourage replayability the first time is truly a magical experience that must be picked up.

this one's tricky. in a lot of ways it's one of the best metroidvanias in recent memory. and also: it very quickly vacated recent memory and I can see why.

setting and premise are great: three warriors enter an evil "serpent castle" that is poisoning the water supply for their village; the enemies are "gorgons," with lots of ancient greek symbology, giant statues of snake monsters looming in the backgrounds, dens of cyclopean scythe-throwers; one of the main characters has made a pact with a death-demon so he can't die til his quest is complete but afterward the demon will claim his soul, and said demon serves as diegetic justification for respawning and as your shop visited before returning to life. that's all great stuff established right out the gate. none of it goes anywhere. I mean, ok, the dude's pact with death ties into the plot/is the crux of the good ending, but there's no, like, lore here. not every game needs lore! this game would benefit from some. I know nothing about this village I'm trying to save, no information about why this tower is poisoning the water (maybe that's in new game +), who the great swordsman one character is modeling himself after is, how any of the three protagonists even know each other, who these gorgons are or what they want. for all its specificity, this is all very generic fantasy stuff in practice. swordfighter, archer, and mage storm a castle to fight monsters and save a village.

why did they make the specifics so interesting if they're not gonna do anything with it?

another hitch is that the game's difficulty curve is backwards. starts fairly difficult, is absolutely piss-easy by the end. this can be an issue with any metroidvania, as the players who focus on the main quest have a harder time than the ones who try to 100% the map, cuz that second group finds all the stat upgrades/secret abilities/bonus currency and maxes out. some games balance this by making the secret areas particularly hard, or making new and harder enemies appear when you get bonus stuff, or have bonus stuff unlock harder final bosses; astalon ain't do none of that, and, in fact, does a lot to exacerbate the issue.

I'm not sure it is possible to "focus on the main quest" in astalon. like many that came before it, this metroidvania only lets you fight the final boss when you've beaten the game's main bosses (represented by a 3-headed statue whose many eyes glow different colors with each boss you beat, very super metroid); but unlike, say, hollow knight, the locations of these bosses are not hinted at. so the only way to find them is to explore the places you haven't been til you stumble on one. there's no beelining for the main quest because you don't know where the main quest is. which means you're gonna find that secret ability or weapon upgrade or pile of money as a matter of course. also every time you die you visit the shop, so pretty much every respawn you come back stronger and the game gets a tiny bit easier. (I do like death wish power up, though, which you can buy in the limbo shop: it makes enemies hit harder in exchange for dropping more money, which goes some way to curbing the rampant power-leveling. but by the end it wasn't enough. once the benefits of the extra money outpaced the drawbacks of extra damage, the game was a cakewalk.)

ok back to things I liked: the first half of the game, before you get the power-up that lets you switch characters on the fly, I genuinely enjoyed having to find a campsite to character switch. committing to one character for a section, making mental notes of the switched only the mage can flip or the vines only the swordsman can cut, and mapping a route to the nearest camp... it was nice. also the fact that dying makes you start from the very beginning of the castle, so you are nowhere near where you died: it made it way more common that I'd just heck off and explore someplace else. hell, even the corpse-run mechanic (where you can get some bonuses by breaking an orb in the room you last died in) is an optional unlock, as is the marker that shows where the orb is on your map. until you select that, you are off to wherever you feel like every time. (this does exacerbate the "stumbling on shit that makes the game easier while wondering where the next boss is" issue, though.)

so! this was very enjoyable to play, very satisfying, and also featherweight. for a 20-hour game with a bunch of killer hooks, it's just not very substantial. I felt similar to deedlit in wonder labyrinth, which was a deeply satisfying game with a unique hook that also didn't linger. but I at least felt it had substance, in that I could go look up a bunch of lodoss war shit and learn who these characters are and why this plot is relevant. I didn't do it - obviously - but it meant something to know it was there, to know these characters have a history and that the people writing them know it and care about it and I could go learn it if I was curious. astalon... additional context doesn't exist, and I know that.

I wish it did. I wanna know about this black knight raising gorgon cult.

I got this in a random bundle and decided to give it a go just to say I played it. And you know what, for something that's got under 800 reviews on Steam (at the time of writing this) I really enjoyed it. My first playthrough took me right at about 8 hours, and I didn't do nearly everything. I think I had about 60% map completion, and looking at a completed map I'm pretty sure I missed like 3 or 4 huge areas. Let me go through what I liked and disliked.

PROS This is just a fun little game. Very inspired by 8 and 16 bit games like Mega Man, if you're a fan of things like Shovel Knight, I think you'll like this.

Great variety of items and powerups. Some get a little pricey near the end, but I'm sure a NG+ will help out with that.

Speaking of NG+, I played about 20 minutes worth of one and it's actually kind of cool. It's a lot like a Resident Evil NG+ where items are scattered different places, certain entrances are blocked off, and you're required to go a pretty majorly different way to progress. I think I'll actually finish this NG+ off in the near future. MAKE A COPY OF YOUR ORIGINAL GAME BEFORE YOU DO THIS. I CAN'T GO BACK AND 100% MY ORIGINAL SINCE IT OVERWROTE IT

CONS

Like the title mentions, this game is frustrating. The only way to gain health is either through a very expensive power up (which I'm not gonna lie, I don't think worked in my game) or one time use glass lamps scattered through the map. And when I say one time, I mean one time. Even when you die and the tower resets, those are still broken and you can't use them to heal again. The only way to go back to full health is to die.

Getting around is the biggest pain in the ass. The only fast travel is through this elevator which you have to unlock the points for. Not unheard of, but in a game with probably 200+ rooms, I found 8 of these elevators. The runback to where you died gets a little ridiculous.

Other than that, I think the rest is best left up to exploring and discovering yourself! I'd give this a hard 7/10 and recommend it if you've got the patience.

This is game #5 in my "hated it at first, love it now series". I really didn't like one of Astalon's core mechanics - when you die, you end up back at the start of the map. I'm not a rogue-lite fan, and it felt like a waste of time and padding. But really, the game is designed so well and seamlessly, it quickly becomes a non-issue.

The game extremely rewards and encourages exploration. The more you play, the more you start zooming through the map. The levels are perfectly connected, constantly looping back together and creating shortcuts. It just takes a second to get momentum.

It is hard to pinpoint why the game is so fun, but it's an absolute blast in a unique way. The art style is gorgeous, with gothic sculptures and varying biomes with interesting enemies. The character upgrades are top notch, and constantly improve and streamline the experience. Things that begin to feel tedious suddenly get modified, and this pacing remains throughout. The story is also interesting and unique.

Astalon is now one of my favorite metroidvanias. It feels like a true adventure from masterful game designers, and I can't wait for their follow-up project.

PROS

• Excellent level design packs each screen with secrets and shortcuts to discover
• Smooth, responsive controls
• Challenging without being irritating
• Attractive pixel art aesthetic, including some striking designs
• Restrictive starting mechanics makes unlocking new power ups quite satisfying
• "Shop for upgrades after you die" system stolen straight out of rogue-lites works well in a Metroidvania context
• Surprisingly serious tone and setting have just enough depth to immerse you in your quest

CONS

• Managing multiple characters adds little, if anything, to the core Metroidvania experience
• Overly referential optional content cheapens the atmosphere
• The "Rest" option at save points being disabled 90% of the time feels arbitrary, and even when I could rest I had to watch the same cutscene about cooking and eating slime steak like 5 times

Astalon is a fantastic metroidvania. GOTY contender for me, for sure. It brings the style and feel of many classic NES games while at the same time having excellent, comfortable controls, and while it is challenging, it's not overly punishing or wasteful of players time.

This has one of the most fun maps to explore of any game in this subgenre. There are secrets in almost every room and you're constantly finding shortcuts to make your trips back and forth through the tower quicker. It's so satisfying to find all of these.

It's a great blend on combat, exploration and getting stronger each time you die.

Except for a few precursor games, Metroidvanias as we know and love them really started with Metroid on the NES. Metroid was designed internally at Nintendo to marry the platforming of Super Mario Bros. with the non-linear exploration of The Legend of Zelda. This was in part because Mario and other platformers were more successful financially than Zelda (40 Million + vs 6 Million +).  Ironically, Metroid only went on to sell 2.7 Million copies, but its artistic success and lasting influence are another story entirely. While never quite adhering to the letter of the budding genre, there were many games on the NES that could be seen as early examples of what would much later be described as Metroidvania, a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, used initially to differentiate the Castlevania games that played like Super Metroid from the level-based ones, but rapidly became the name for the entire genre. Legacy of the Wizard, Faxanadu, Knightmare II: Maze of Galious, Rygar, Clash at Demonhead or even Castlevania II: Simon's Quest are strong examples of these early titles and are fondly remembered by many.

These games are certainly worth playing and were extremely ambitious and creative for their time, but it's hard to recommend them today with the same unbridled enthusiasm one would recommend Super Metroid (1994) or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). That being said, these games all had a certain flavor and personality that made them such beloved titles, but in the recent revival (or explosion and possibly even over-saturation ) of the Metroidvania genre, it's often the Super Metroid side of things that is expanded upon or copied with games like Axiom Verge, Xeodrifter or Guacamelee! A more recent trend seems to be transcribing the Dark Souls universe to 2D plaftormers, Salt and Sanctuary and Blasphemous to name a couple of examples.

While I most certainly can't speak for the talented developers at LABS Works, it seems to me that what Astalon set out to do is realize the hidden potential of those early attempts at ability-gated 2D platform games, with the hindsight of modern eyes and technology. Astalon: Tears of the Earth could probably be released on NES today, with a little wizardry, without sacrificing much from the experience, but its greatness comes from a deep knowledge and understanding of the genre, as well as a deep knowledge and love for these retro titles that it takes abundant elements from.   In Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, for instance, you could chose to play a level as one of four characters that you would unlock. Each one of them would have different abilities, but of course because of the limitations of the NES System and development at the time, that idea was never fully explored. This is where Astalon comes in, you start off your adventure with a party of three: The Wizard, Algus, the Rogue Kyuli, and the Knight Arias. As you can imagine, they all have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to combat and traversal, and LABS Works knows exactly how to balance the world design and upgrades to make sure this idea is taken full advantage of.

This is just one of many examples, for Astalon borrows and expands on various NES greats, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man or even Zelda. This is a game made by people who dearly love those influences, but who can also see their limits, flaws, or antiquated, sometimes unfriendly design. It's not just NES games that get an upgrade here, Symphony of the Night is infamous for giving you a power fantasy where you can upgrade your character to such an extent that the difficulty becomes trivial. While I love that game to pieces, I admit that I generally prefer a balanced experience where the difficulty keeps me on my feet throughout my play-through. Astalon does give you the ability to become overpowered in combat, if you so choose, but it still requires you to carefully traverse its perilous world and I still found myself dying quite often even late in the game when I got too careless; an elegant and clever solution.

Many Metroidvanias falter in one of its most essential aspects, the ability upgrades. There are fewer feelings as incredible as unlocking an ability you've been hoping for since the beginning of a game, like finally getting a dash or a double jump, but an even greater feeling is getting unexpected ones that make you jubilant because of how they transform the way you have approached the game thus far. I can count the games that achieve this on one hand. Not only does Astalon have such abilities in store, it hands them out at a masterfully careful pace, and I still found myself surprised and delighted by ones I found when most of the map had already been uncovered.

There are many wonderful aspects that I could describe in detail here, but I don't want to take away from the experience of playing it blind, and I strongly recommend not looking up anything and just losing yourself in the game, it will reward this approach strongly.

I hope I haven't given the impression that this is a game strictly for retro enthusiasts with a fondness for the NES. While Astalon: Tears of the Earth is in one hand a love letter to that era, it is also very much a modern game in its approach to game design and you most certainly do not need nostalgia or video game history knowledge to appreciate what it has to offer.

This is a superb Metroidvania with few equals and I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the genre.