Summary
Overall, Astral Takers is an average game. It doesn’t do anything special but it’s not bad. It succeeds at what it is trying to do but it just doesn’t have the oomph to stand out as a great addition to your gaming library. At a sale price this might be something you will want to add to your library or if you are looking for a retro styled RPG where you want to experience a simple story Astral Takers will be more aligned with those expectations.
Developer – VANGAURD
Publisher – KEMCO
Platforms – Xbox One , Xbox Series S|X, PS4/5, Nintendo Switch PC (Reviewed)
Review copy given by Publisher
Astral Takers, developed by VANGUARD, is the latest entry in an extremely long list of RPGMaker style video games that have been uploaded to Steam and other platforms. The 10-15 hour game is a very linear but decent effort at making a retro styled RPG that utilizes very simple mechanics and simple story telling to provide a quick high fantasy adventure.
Your party is comprised of the typical core group. Our hero is Revyse, a newly trained summoner who has yet to truly realize his powers but is a capable fighter utilizing melee weapons and his summoned spirits. Next up is our healer Aurora, she has amnesia and is teaming up with our hero to try and figure out her past. Finally, rounding out our main three crew, we have Fio who is a skilled mage type character. She is really good friends with Revyse and wields powerful magical abilities to help defeat our enemies.
The team also has a 4th member that is filled by Revyse’s summoned allies. Nearly at the start of the game, he gets access to our first summon Geon who is a capable melee attacker. Over time and completion of specific story plot points, these summons expand to round out the full roster of 8 playable characters. At any time you have 4 members in your active party that you can swap with each other at anytime and they all gain experience every battle. I love systems like this because you can safely swap out your members without fear of them being too weak to be helpful.
Each character and summon can be equipped with different weapons, armor, and accessories which can increase stats and provide immunity or damage reduction. Each town that you visit during the adventure has shops where you can spend your gold to purchase healing items and equipment to keep your party in tip top shape. Towns themselves are very simple and typically have a small story event when you arrive and the citizens have a need that often directly aligns with your own goals anyways so of course you will help them. This could be anything from protecting them from the Empire or slaying a monster that puts the town in danger.
The overall game is very linear. Exploring dungeons often has 1 main route of progression which a handful of side hallways that lead to a few chests of gear. Everywhere you go there are healing pads that fully heal your HP and MP that you can take advantage of at anytime to help grind of required. In my experience, there was much of any grinding required. By the time you walk from one point to the next step in the quest you will be fully capable of taking down the boss and moving forward. In between the towns and dungeons, there is an overworld map that is very directly leading you to the next dungeon or town. If you are looking to explore and find a bunch of hidden secrets or things to find throughout the world you’ll be missing out. That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for this type of game, but it’s good to know what you are getting into when starting Astral Takers.
Technically, the game ran well. I played on Steam with my keyboard and was able to control everything with just that. No mouse is required at all and all the menus can be navigated with the keys. Graphics sprites of the characters are solid, they move slightly as text exchanges happen and they look like the general character they are meant to portray. Enemy sprites are also well drawn. Music is probably the highlight of the game, a lot of the music sounds great and helps provide energy to the game play.
Combat is very straight forward. Each character has a number of abilities that costs a specific amount of MP to use and can damage either 1 enemy, a group of enemies, or all enemies. Characters also have access a mixture of buffs and debuffs and some have access to healing spells. You can also auto battle your way through the majority of fights so there is very little strategy involved, but sometimes a boss can require you to at least cast a healing spell manually here and there to keep the party safe.
Overall, Astral Takers is an average game. It doesn’t do anything special but it’s not bad. It succeeds at what it is trying to do but it just doesn’t have the oomph to stand out as a great addition to your gaming library. At a sale price this might be something you will want to add to your library or if you are looking for a retro styled RPG where you want to experience a simple story Astral Takers will be more aligned with those expectations.
