Astor: Blade of the Monolith

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a third person action-adventure game by a Colombian developer, C2 Game Studio. The game is colorful and straightforward simple fun -- as I expected/hoped it would be. The only truly negative aspect that hampered my enjoyment was how 100% completion involves a collectible hunt, with very little aid provided by the game.

Enjoyable and visually-pleasing little adventure

The titular Astor is one of the Diokek: sentient beings made of wood and stone. He's exploring some ancient temple ruins with his friend when he happens to acquire the likewise titular Blade of the Monolith. Astor turns out to be the hero mentioned in a prophecy, destined to save the world of Gliese the game takes place in.

The only voice-acting is provided by a narrator who every now and then chimes in as you make progress. Characters themselves make random noises while you click through the dialogue. The writing is pretty silly at times but I wasn't expecting much anyway in that regard. The game's music is surprisingly good, though, just a bit too quiet by default. I would suggest turning it up.

Before I did that, I had been wondering why there occasionally was a sound like ragdoll physics glitching with geometry -- something you hear in games like Bethesda's Fallout games. It turned out to be a double bass drum: one of the combat tracks is an instrumental power metal track. That is not too surprising, considering how the developers are from metal-loving South America. The track fits well with the otherwise more traditional, orchestral soundtrack, oddly enough.

The first proper level of the game is a fairly open desert and I got worried about how much I would need to hold down the sprint button, for there was no toggle and Astor's short peg legs don't walk him very fast. If I had just beelined the main story first, I would've gotten a mount soon enough. Later levels are more linear, though the mount is still welcome when going back and forth to find upgrade shards.

With a bit of unnecessary friction

The game has some trouble communicating where you can go and I suppose properly even setting a clear border in the first place. The desert level is probably the worst offender: some edges are simply invisible walls that stop you all of a sudden. Bodies of water do make a clear border because Astor -- like way too many protagonists -- is allergic to water. The water death animation also takes too long.

The collectible hunt would have been less stressful if all the levels could be revisited later for a mop-up. Some are only available as chapter replays and I saw comments suggesting that the completionist achievements might not unlock that way. Thus it's better to not finish a level until everything has been picked up. There are way more shards than are needed to purchase every ability upgrade, too -- collecting them all is just for completion's sake. That makes the ordeal quite menial. A map of some kind would have been really helpful, too -- thanks, wolker4 on Youtube, for making a video covering all the collectibles.

There are four weapons for Astor to eventually use but I'd say the blade will remain the best of them. It has the most effective, easiest-to-aim riposte and combo finisher move with how it goes into slow motion while you angle the two slabs that appear to slam together. The blade also has a move that makes Astor jump into the air, throw the blade to the ground where it fires a large projectile into each cardinal direction. It's not as effective as the slabs one because the projectiles tend to miss but the move is still very cool. I have no idea what exactly executed it -- it just kept happening as I was smashing attack buttons.

I was initially confused what triggered the riposte as well because it didn't always go off from what to me had seemed like a correctly timed parry. Then I finally figured out it was tied to the blue bar on the HUD. Astor's block/parry starts scuffed, being directional, but with an upgrade it becomes a full circle, making combat against multiple opponents quite a bit easier. I really could've played the game on the hardest difficulty but not doing so allowed me to make mistakes and get through fights on first attempts.