AWAKEN – Astral Blade review

This AWAKEN Astral Blade review is played and tested on PC (Steam), currently for $/€ 19,99. The game is also available on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 for $/€ 24,99.

The metroidvania genre has become quite saturated over recent years, making it increasingly difficult to stand out. Through Sony’s PlayStation China Hero Project initiative, which aims to spotlight Chinese developers, we get a new challenger from developer DarkPigeon Games. AWAKEN – Astral Blade arrives with ambition, but does it manage to distinguish itself?

Lost in Translation

The game’s narrative is its weakest element. You play as Tania, a bionic girl, but even after seeing both endings, the story remains largely incomprehensible to me and I wouldn’t have a clue what a bionic actually is. While lore dumps in collectible logs might explain more, the disjointed dialogue and poor (English) script make it difficult to invest in the narrative.

The game offers multiple language options and three voice-over choices. The English dub is sparse and inconsistent, with some clear non-native voice actors and text that doesn’t always match the audio. Playing with Chinese voices and English subtitles might be preferable, though the inconsistent text auto-progression can make reading dialogue frustrating too. There is no way to pause it and sometimes you barely have enough time to get half way through a text box!

A world to behold

Behind those text boxes you’ll find a highlight of the game though, as the environments feature beautifully crafted biomes that seamlessly connect across two substantial maps. Each screen offers unique layouts with detailed backgrounds that bring the world to life.

This excellent design holds true for some of the characters too, in particular the bosses have some neat designs. Strangely, Tania herself is kind of lacking in this department. She could have used some extra frames of animation, as some of her movements feel stiff. She also has a very obvious asymmetrical design, but the model is flipped depending on the direction she is facing. Especially for a main character in a game from 2024, this is very jarring.

Big hitters to deal with

The game has a hefty focus on combat and sadly the enemy variety is rather low. You will face new types of mutants throughout your adventure, but quite a few will be reskinned versions of familiar pummel targets. Bosses fare better however and there are quite a lot of them! They are no push overs either. Most have patterns that, once familiar, will make them fairly easy to deal with. Still, every new encounter with a big baddy is pretty exciting!

Attacks are fairly well telegraphed, but the reach of an incoming attack isn’t always clear. This can make some fights a little frustrating. Though rare, there were a few bosses which can stun lock your from full health to a game over. Which is infuriating to say the least, even late game. But bosses tend to hit pretty hard in general, so especially at the start of the game, you’ll need to really rely on your defensive maneuvers to survive.

Tania herself is no pushover herself and eventually gets a nice variety of attacks. Most moves need to be unlocked with karpas energy that’s laying around all over the place and also dropped from defeated enemies. This is the games currency and is required for shopping, upgrading weapons and enhancing skills, both passive and active. This includes those defensive maneuvers, which will be crucial! There is a dash, which can provide some i-frames. And a parry that can eventually lead to punishing counter attacks. Especially the parry I found pretty tricky to pull off, but when you do it is very satisfying. With more investment into these, they both provide big offensive benefits too, really encouraging players to consider balanced play.

Tools of the trade

For attacking, Tania relies on a basic combo which can end in a finisher, or ‘power surge’. Depending on where in the combo, the finisher is different. As you gain the other two weapons, you can extend the combo by switching to another weapon after the finisher and rack up crazy damage and various procs from the weapons with sufficient upgrading.

The attacks look flashy and are satisfying. And while Tania feels weak at the start of the game, near the end you’ll feel like a god and even new bosses will just melt before you on the first try. Which does make the difficulty curve of the game feel a bit backwards. I kind of like a good power fantasy to be honest and if you don’t, well it’s easy to skip all the optional goodies and there are the higher difficulties to content with too. One interesting thing this game does that helps keep you engaged with the combat, is offer the opportunity to significantly increase the energy enemies drop by timing a power surge, the moment they die.

The combat does have some serous flaws though, as it’s not very flexible. There are only three weapons in total to play around with and as a result you’ll be repeating the same few moves a lot, the ones that you like best. Some attack animation can also be quite lengthy and there is no way to cancel out of them. It’s frustrating when you see the boss is about to swipe and you have just hit go to happily swirl into the attack path!

Luckily, if things go sour, death is no big deal. You are send back to a nearby save point and suffer no penalty at all. In fact, if you die more often, there is an option for a buff to help out, I think. I never had this seen in action to be honest. The difficulty can also be lowered during the game if needed too, though this takes a while to unlock.

Unconventional pacing

It actually takes a few hours to even get to the hub of the game. It’s easy to get the impression the game is actually a more linear affair. Rest assured, it will eventually open up into an actual metrovania! There is fast travel that allows you to freely move between (potentially even towards) the numerous save points. This means that all area’s can be returned to later, but this feature is also unlocked pretty far into the journey.

But when you do get the ability, it will be worth it to explore older areas as one thing this game does really well is make the world fun to explore. Most area’s hold at least one or two goodies to discover. Think of energy stashes, health increases, collectable to exchange for prices or new items to equip or expansions required to equip these. Those items offer slight alterations, think of a similar system as the charms and notches in Hollow Knight.

The exploration options and abilities for it are a little disappointing. A double and high jump, wall climbing, air dashes and various items to get rid of particular obstacles. It all feels very standard and more creativity in this regard would have been nice. The game does offer a good way to, eventually, hunt down secrets you have missed, which I appreciate.

A final note, and I do hope this will be addressed in a future patch to make this paragraph irrelevant. There are technical aspects of the game that feel unpolished. Like invisible walls or ceilings and the camera occasionally not having a clue what it should do. The old quick fades between scenes or the poor audio balancing where some sound effects are just gone, especially during cutscenes. When an elevator crashing down making no sound at all, it totally takes you out of the action. I didn’t encounter anything game breaking however.

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