Awaken: Astral Blade [Review]
Awaken: Astral Blade is a forgettable experience.
Awaken: Astral Blade. Credit: ESDigital Games / Dark Pigeon Games
Awaken: Astral Blade is a 2D sidescrolling Metroidvania from publisher ESDigital Games and developer Dark Pigeon Games, made through Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Shanghai games incubation program, the China Hero Project. The game focuses on exploration and close-quarters combat, taking the player through lush environments and pitting them against tough bosses.
You play as Tania, a bionic woman with nanotechnology-related abilities, sent on a search and rescue mission on the Horace Islands by her “father,” Dr. Herveus. There, a phenomenon called Karpas energy is mutating local wildlife. She learns about the lost civilization that used to inhabit the area, as well as about her own identity. The game’s story is forgettable, not a highlight of the experience. I found myself skipping through the poorly written dialogue after the first hour because I wasn’t made to care about the characters or the world’s lingo-heavy lore.
Awaken: Astral Blade. Credit: ESDigital Games / Dark Pigeon Games
The game's traversal is straightforward, with jumps, double jumps, and dashes. The movement makes the character feel agile yet a little bit weightless.
Combat is likewise uncomplicated, consisting of basic strikes, a couple of combos that finish with a second, more powerful attack triggered by a second button, and a single aerial combo. After you obtain a second weapon, combos become slightly deeper by taking into account the direction you hold during the final strike, but it doesn’t add much. Upgrades on your talent tree grant you the ability to slow time if you dash through an enemy with precise timing and open up the ability to parry and counterstrike. Charging up a meter lets you perform a special attack with many hits.
Awaken: Astral Blade. Credit: ESDigital Games / Dark Pigeon Games
Enemy variety is lacking, and fighting regular foes is repetitive and never challenging. The bosses, however, are another story. Boss battles require you to learn boss behavior and have patience. Bosses hit hard, and they’ll punish you for leaving yourself open by getting greedy. At times, this ends up being harsh enough to feel unfair. For example, an early boss has a shield state, where for every hit you land, it’ll send out a tracking fire projectile. Feeling I had enough time, I’d launch my special, only to have the boss put up the shield. My combo would have enough hits for the boss to fire enough projectiles to kill me instantly. This is frustrating rather than fun.
I didn’t find the level design particularly interesting for a Metroidvania. Despite looping back around sometimes, the world is fairly linear. Secrets tend to be hidden just by being obscured by a wall in the foreground that you simply walk through, leading those discoveries to never feel very rewarding. The game has too many platforming challenges featuring bottomless pits, which is atypical for a Metroidvania, and I didn’t enjoy it. It would elicit a groan from me whenever I encountered one.
Awaken: Astral Blade. Credit: ESDigital Games / Dark Pigeon Games
Awaken: Astral Blade’s environment art features mostly 2D illustrations, deeply layered for depth, with some 3D used to add certain environmental features. Despite the high level of detail, the designs feel generic. Characters and enemies are all illustrated in 2D and animated using puppet-like limb movement and mesh deformation. I’ve seen the technique used with wonderful results, but the results feel stiff and lifeless here.
In the end, Awaken: Astral Blade is a competently made but flawed and mediocre game. In a market that’s filled to the brim with excellent Metroidvanias, this one wasn’t really worth the time.
Awaken: Astral Blade is available now for PC (Steam / Epic) and PlayStation 5.
Overall Score: 5/10
Played on: PS5
