Attention Gamers, ‘Astral Chain’ is Down By Law

THE PLATINUM STANDARD To play a PlatinumGames title is to become a co-director of action scenes that would be at home in anime or martial arts movies. Unfortunately, outside of for-hire work in titles like Nier: Automata, Platinum has yet to reliably see the mastery of their craft translate into financial success. This is because in terms of accessibility, character action can have a bit of a skill gap. Not every player has the inclination to rehearse every enemy encounter into a flawless beatdown. The Switch-exclusive Astral Chain is Platinum’s attempt at bridging that skill gap. To this end, Astral Chain’s core mechanic centers on partner-based combat. “I said you’re off the case! Turn in your badge, your gun, and your ghost-type Pokemon!”   CHAIN REACTION As the newest member of a sci-fi police task force charged with protecting the last bastion of humanity from extra-dimensional invaders called Chimera, players are bonded with enslaved Chimeras called Legions. Part AI-controlled but still capable of accepting player commands, Legions are — in theory — Platinum’s way of assisting the player through the gameplay. ‘Synergetic action’ is the Legion system’s promise of controlling the battlefield with their character and their unwilling partner. Players will end up using every single input on the controller, which initially sounds daunting. In recognition of this, Astral Chain features may have the most forgiving iteration of a PlatinumGames combat grading system to dat…