Astral Wield

Enticing world and visual style can’t save this game from broken combat, unreasonably punishing design, and mechanics it isn’t built to support. The story follows a group of animals who have grown tired of human interference and decide to fight back. The idea for this rebellion originates from the king of the animal kingdom. However, not all animals support the war, most notably Felix, a cat and the story’s main hero. Sent by a mage, Felix is tasked with preventing the conflict and saving both the animal and human realms from destruction. Felix is well-prepared for his mission. His basic claw attack offers decent range, allowing him to strike enemies without getting too close. It also hits all targets in its path, making it useful for handling multiple foes at once. In addition, there's a dodge move, which is usable every few seconds, and quickly becomes essential because it’s faster than walking. There's also a block mechanic, but it’s pointless. It only works when timed perfectly with an enemy attack, yet most enemies either strike too quickly or lack visual cues, making it nearly impossible to use reliably. Missing the timing results in taking damage, so it’s generally better to focus on attacking and dodging instead. The game world isn’t fully open but leans toward a semi-linear structure. You typically progress forward, though backtracking is often possible, meaning you rarely miss anything permanently. The game’s world is made out of interconnected screens, and exits are marked with arrows on the ground. These areas can usually be revisited freely, unless an obstacle or challenge, such as enemies, puzzles, or item requirements, blocks your path. One important aspect is that enemies are more like temporary obstacles. They don’t respawn after you change screens or reload your save, and they don’t drop loot or experience points. Character progression is minimal, limited to purchasing increases in health and mana from a merchant. Exploration plays a major role because the objective is to find items needed to advance. While there’s a map you need to buy from a machine with gold coins, navigation is manageable without it thanks to relatively small screens and a button that displays arrows pointing toward your main objective. Loot is marked with a glow, making it easy to spot upon entering a room. Glowing markers also highlight readable materials, but some important items, like notes on the ground, lack this glow. Doors aren’t marked either, but they’re generally easy to recognize. You can walk through any unlocked door simply by touching it, though some are locked or require specific conditions to open. Valuable loot is usually found in chests or destructible objects. While the latter are marked with a cross, chests are not highlighted. There are standard chests, key-locked chests, and rare legendary chests, which require you to destroy three small totems hidden nearby. These chests sometimes contain special amulets, which are the only thing that "upgrade" your character. Some armor can also be found, but this has to be equipped to take effect. Other than these interactions and conversations with characters, most objects in the environment are non-interactive. At first glance, the game seems like a solid action-adventure title. However, it heavily incorporates Souls-like elements, which complicate things. For instance, healing is done via potions, but since enemies don’t respawn, you can’t restock potions by saving at cat boxes (which also act as save points). Saving doesn’t restore health either, so you reload with the same amount you had when you saved. To replenish potions, you must either find them or craft them using two expensive ingredients sold by a merchant. This leads to two problems: first, you don’t earn money from combat, so unless you thoroughly explore, you’ll be short on funds. Second, the game’s translation is incomplete. Most of it is in English, but item names in the inventory and shop aren’t. Fortunately, icons help identify items, and using one gives an English description. Health becomes a serious issue during ambushes. These throw you into isolated arenas, taking your money and sometimes health. If you’re low on health, say, at one heart, you’ll die instantly and be forced to reload. This can cost hours of progress if you haven’t saved recently. During these encounters, you can choose to flee, or stay and deal with it, often facing a tough battle, a puzzle, or both. Victory comes with generous rewards. Combat is another pain point. While weaker enemies can be defeated by button mashing or using cheap tactics (like hiding behind rocks), tougher foes glow red and deal critical damage, which is just another word for instant death. It’s so bad that this triggers even when you’re in the middle of a dodge, but the game decides that the enemy started the attack before you, so you get pulled back and killed. Since you can’t dodge through enemies and there's no invincibility window between hits, getting cornered leads to certain death. Most battles devolve into hit-and-run tactics: strike once, retreat, repeat. Although you hit with a slight knockback, it’s not enough so enemies will keep forcing you to move. There are plenty of optional activities during exploration. You can complete favors for NPCs, dig up buried treasure, gather lore from special stones, rescue corrupted birds, and more. These side tasks usually reward you with sting balls, which can be exchanged for health, mana, or new skills. Unfortunately, new skills feel underwhelming, as they require mana and don’t enhance your basic attack. Even worse, there’s no way to upgrade the primary claw attack, meaning you'll be mashing the same button throughout the game against increasingly tanky enemies. Regular enemies lack health bars, making fights boring after a while. Bosses do have visible health, but they’re not much better because the hit-and-run is still the dominant strategy, with occasional variation at half-health. Boss design emphasizes punishing difficulty. Take the rat crime boss, for example, which shows everything wrong with the combat. He turns red to become invincible, deals more than one heart of damage per hit, and forces you to maintain full health constantly. To make things worse, the entire arena is littered with instant-death traps that disappear and change positions constantly. A trap kills even when it’s invisible, but the boss has no problem walking right through them like they’re air. What’s worse, you need to hit a boss five times to remove a small part of his health bar. You can imagine how many tries it takes to beat him, only to die each time to a random trap that shows up right when you dodge. In conclusion, while the game clearly puts a lot of effort into its visual style and world-building, it falls short due to design choices that push it in a direction it isn't equipped to handle. Sadly, the combat is one of the worst I've experienced and is completely broken. Also, there are bugs that crash the game during cutscenes you can't skip. If you're really unlucky, this will happen right after a boss fight you'll have to repeat. While it's true you can buy two outfits with rare gold coins - one that doubles your walking speed, deals 3x damage, and makes enemy encounters a lot less annoying, and a second that deals 5x damage but doubles the damage you take - you will give up much sooner. What's worse, they don't help much because every single boss is a damage sponge that takes forever to beat and can kill you with a single hit. If you can somehow tolerate all that, you might get some fun out of it. But for everyone else, this is not recommended.

Jogo muito bonito, esprites bem criativos, com narrativa envolvente e cativante, bônus pelo fator re-play e pelos segredos, oque faz que o game tenha uma profundidade muito maior do que aparenta.

Esse jogo é incrivel. A história é completa, tem dialogos, segredos, batalha épicas, skin (a coisa mais importante) e muita referênciaaaaa. Eu recomendo que jogue sem medo, porque é muito boom. Bem no estilo de RPG, pega os itens, craft eles, poção, MP, escudo e missões. Sim o jogo tem missão secundária além da principal. Eu amei o jogo, joguei bem, o jogo é bem completo, eu me diverti muito jogando. E quero agradecer o desenvolvedor do jogo pela oportunidade de ter jogado essa obra de arte e desejo sucesso imenso!!!

Astral Wield é um daqueles indies que dá um quentinho no coração e levam a gente pra uma época em que as coisas eram mais simples. Ele é lotado de referências a outros jogos e à cultura pop, além de ter uma história bem interessante. Os controles são simples, mas bastante responsivos. Os chefes são fáceis no início mas vão ficando cada vez mais desafiadores conforme vamos avançando na campanha. O dev é bastante solícito e já chegou a implementar algumas sugestões que melhoraram bastante. Então se tiver alguma, deixa aqui que tenho certeza que o cara vai ver!

Muito bom, os mapas são bonitos, a história é boa, não tenho do que reclamar, vale cada centavo.

O jogo tem uma história simples, mas bem elaborada, com uma trama muito envolvente, um mundo bem construído e personagens legais. Já na gameplay, ela é simples e intuitiva. No começo, é fácil, mas logo se mostra desafiadora e merece uma atenção especial — caso contrário, você vai passar sufoco. O jogo também conta com alguns puzzles e segredos, que exigem certa atenção do jogador para serem resolvidos e encontrados. Na questão dos gráficos, a pixel art é linda, o que proporciona cenários bonitos e cutscenes muito surpreendentes. Ele também contém várias referências a outros jogos, heróis e até a figuras brasileiras. O jogo ainda tem um fator replay, o que incentiva você a jogar mais de uma vez e, consequentemente, faz valer ainda mais o dinheiro investido, pois você sempre pode revisitar o jogo quando tiver vontade. Resumindo é um ótimo jogo para se jogar no final de semana, para se distrair e se divertir. Obviamente, ele tem seus problemas, mas nada que estrague a experiência ou mereça ser destacado — ainda mais considerando que é o primeiro jogo indie do desenvolvedor. Dito isso jogão, 10/10!

Jogo muito bem feito, historia divertida e gameplay fluida

Jogo muito bom, uma mecânica muito gostosa de jogar, história envolvente que te prende feito carrapato, poderia facil ficar por horas, só que tenho vida fora do pc kkkk