After a period of relative obscurity - this is the studio's first outing since Nier Automata, a 30-month gap that feels like a vast chasm in the busy CV of this most prolific of teams - Astral Chain shows that PlatinumGames is back. And how. A sprawling, maximalist adventure that binds together police procedural, overstated pugilism and so many different genres in-between, it's the most fun I've had with one of Platinum's titles since Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Heck, it might even be Platinum's best game yet.
Maybe that's because Astral Chain is at once the most Platinum game to date and also the studio's biggest departure yet; it's where the outlandish combat of Bayonetta is lavishly embellished before it rubs up against puzzle-solving, dungeon traversal and environmental interrogation. There's nothing quite like it, in either the studio's back catalogue or elsewhere, though you can draw a clear line between Astral Chain and Nier: Automata, another variety box that was shares the same director, Takahisa Taura. For my money, Astral Chain is a much more refined, focussed experience.
Some might miss the philosophical, melancholic underpinning of Nier: Automata, though it's clear that Taura picked up Nier writer Yoko Taro's penchant for mixing things up. "Modern games, they're really well made," Taro said a while back. "They've got so much love and time put into making them expansive and great, but once you've played most of them for 30 minutes you get an idea what they're like right to the end, and that's a bit boring." Astral Chain, like Nier: Automata before it, revels in mixing things up. It's an RPG, an action game, an open world game - of sorts - a hidden pixel game and more than a few more things besides.
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