Astor: Blade of the Monolith is C2 Game Studio’s first PC & Console game. It is a lot more ambitious than their previous mobile and Smart TV titles and benefits for some snazzy art direction. I came into the game charmed by its presentation of a world populated by mask people. Sadly, it didn’t stick the landing.
The main story centres around Astor, the silent protagonist, a member of the peaceful sentient beings known as the Diokek. Their stability has recently been threatened by another group called the Hiltsik. Astor then has to travel across the world and attempt to defeat the Hiltsik and try and uncover the origins of the maskless ones in order to return to normality.
This involves hack and slashing across each of the levels, solving puzzles and doing light platforming. There are a number of side quests littered throughout and at the end of each of the levels there is a big boss battle.
It is the standard fighting fare, there is a light and heavy attack, a launcher, a block/parry, and an upgradeable combo system. There are four weapons to use (eventually) with a starter sword, followed by a pair of gauntlets, a spear and a hammer.
A lot of encounters are frenetic with Astor having to parry multiple attacks (that result in satisfying slow down moments) and crowd control all manner of different enemies. It starts as dealing with standard bipedal Hiltsik, but soon there are spider monsters and robotic sentinels.
As mentioned, Astor: Blade of the Monolith looks great. It goes for a non-conventional colour palette for the natural world it portrays, there are lots of reds and purples, and the animations on each of the characters is very well done.
The problem is that as I kept playing, the recurring question that popped into my head was ‘why is this like this?’
There are long climbing sections where there is no stamina meter, no breathtaking vista to experience, no stakes. Why?
There are four weapons that have very little difference in terms of usage, and only one enemy really needs a specific weapon. So why are there more weapons?
There is an ability to see an alternate reality that leads to secret areas, but every time Astor is near one a big onscreen prompt lets the player know what to do. Why are they called secrets?
There is an upgrade path, side quests, and challenges that provide extra upgrade points, but by the time I had the hammer, I had enough points to upgrade each weapon many times over. With that unfocused progress path, why bother?
There are these huge open spaces that made me feel like I was supposed to explore, but then there were all these, seemingly, arbitrary invisible walls that cut off the desire to even try and poke around. Why?
There never really seems to be an answer for that beyond ‘It is what games like this do.’ That flattens the experience a great deal when all the things seem to be bolted on with little care for what they actually mean other than to tick a box to confirm they exist.
Astor is far from a disaster; I think that it could work as an entry level game for 3D action games. However, there is so much cruft in this game that adds nothing to the core experience, and in some ways detracts from it.
Conclusion
Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a game that has some great art direction, but needed some more time spent figuring out what its core tenets were beyond the well realised world.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
