Astor: Blade of the Monolith
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Critic Reviews for Astor: Blade of the Monolith
Astor: Blade of the Monolith offers an enjoyable action RPG experience with charming visuals and character design. However, with weak combat and a lack of things to see and do in the overworld, it's an experience that will soon be forgotten.
Astor: Blade of the Monolith reflects one of the coolest aspects of video games as a medium with a deep history of iteration. You can take a familiar set of concepts, add new context, and come up with something that stands on its own rather than feeling like a ripoff. Astor does this with an impressive sense of knowledge and understanding of not only Zelda-style exploration, but character action-style combat. The latter is much more niche and specialized, therefore harder to pull off. It’s not quite a bullseye, but gets respectfully close and has me curious about further updates, as well as what this studio does next.
Once you've unlocked a good selection of weapons, finishers, and special attacks, Astor: Blade of the Monolith becomes a pretty enjoyable affair.
While it doesn't rewrite the history books of gaming, Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a solid first outing for C2 Game Studio. The combination of a great combat loop with fantastic visuals is a winner, and although the story is a bit devoid of substance, is still an entertaining tale. This is certainly a game the devs can build upon, with potential shining through.
I came into Astor: Blade of the Monolith with all the hope and promise simply because it was NOT a souls game. I still love it for that, but as much as I enjoyed the bright and colorful vistas, the vivid and detailed graphics and the cute characters; I just can’t get past the clunky feeling of the combat. Late game weapons and abilities make things feel better but never perfect. Despite the combat and the forgettable story, I did have some fun in Astor: Blade of the Monolith at the end of the day; the cuteness of the characters won the day.
Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a great introduction to the Soulslike mechanics that dominate ARPGs right now. I can see it appealing to younger or novice gamers. It’s family-friendly, colorful, and pretty satisfying to play. More hardcore action fans will probably find it too familiar and not quite as polished as their favorites. Overall, Astor: Blade of the Monolith brings together a collection of tried-and-true mechanics in a pretty satisfying way.
Astor: Blade of the Monolith is an action game with a nice combat system, but unfortunately it tends to repeat game situations a little too often during the approximately 15 hours needed to reach the end credits.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a decent, old-school action RPG that is enjoyable but could have been more innovative.
Review in Italian | Read full review
