Most Innovative Games of 2019
Honorable Mention: Astral Chain
Senior Editor Hayes Madsen: PlatinumGames has been creating phenomenal action games for over a decade, with beloved titles like Bayonetta, Vanquish, Madworld, and more. While Astral Chain certainly continues its legacy of stylish action, it does so much more by redefining how you think about character action.
In Astral Chain you’re essentially controlling two characters at once, your human main character and an ethereal beast known as a Blade, connected to you by the Astral Chain. Your character can perform combos by switching between three weapons, and there’s a dodge system similar to Bayonetta that rewards split-second timing.
Things really shake up with your Blade, though, as you can summon it at any time. The Blade will attack on its own but you control its placement with the right stick and can use powerful skills on command, or switch between different blades for the situation.
It’s an incredible combat system that loads you up with different options and combos to use, but like other PlatinumGames it still rewards skill and ingenuity. There’s a push-and-pull that develops between using your character and your blade; timing attacks right, switching out Blades for new enemies, wrapping the Astral Chain around enemies to bind them.
As you progress through the story Astral Chain layers on new options, only making its fantastic combat system even better. No one makes action games like Platinum and somehow, even after all these years, they found a brilliant way to completely reinvigorate the character action genre.
