Thank you Whisper Games for providing us with a review code!

I always love checking out what solo indie developers can offer in the huge ocean known as the video gaming industry. A game fifteen whole years in the making by “known” sole Japanese developer KEIZO, he finally releases what many may call his magnum opus, ASTLIBRA Revision. I never heard of the guy prior to this review, but after reading up on the history of the game and developer, the very high praise going around in the smaller gaming circles, and being a fan of action-role playing games in general, I wanted to check this out.

The main plot of Astlibra follows our nameless protagonist who is searching for a girl he vaguely remembers from his dreams. He comes across a talking crow named Karon who wasn’t originally a crow. They team up in order to find this girl, and this journey will take them across the past, present, and even future. The basic premise is very simple but starts to introduce more complex themes such as fate, destiny, and morality. While I do feel that the overall plot is constructed in a satisfactory method, I didn’t find myself captivated by it. That mostly has to do with my biases as I’m not typically interested in time travel plots. It didn’t help that many of the humorous moments I didn’t find funny. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments later in the game I found surprising as there are plenty of twists, turns, and trope subversions to keep things interesting. The whole style is presented like an adventure anime (with an opening title after every chapter) so those who enjoy that stuff will prefer the story. While a player can skip every cutscene from the start, as a reviewer, I don't have such a luxury.

The graphics of Astlibra are pleasing to look at, although they do show some age given the long development time. The character models were largely provided by illustrator Shigatake, mostly known for his work with developer Vanillaware. The animations are fine for what they are, characters in action animate like a marionette, and I’m sure the developer was even aware of this as there is a boss halfway through called Marionette. The correct term would be tweening, and while tweening can get a bad reputation due to promoting laziness, I don’t believe the tweening used in Astlibra was used in such a manner and is more than enough for a solo developer.

While the story isn’t the focus of this RPG (even though there is a lot of it), the action is the main appeal. Taking inspiration from classic ARPGs from the Third and Fourth Generation era of gaming (NES/SNES, PC-88/98 TurboGrafix, etc), Astlibra is a 2D sidescroller. It looks similar in presentation to a “Metroidvania”, but don't be mistaken. Astlibra is not one. The story is separated into chapters where you have a main hubworld that branches off into other sections. In these sections, you’ll fight enemies with your main weapon being various swords, halberds, and axes. Your instruments of war mostly control the same across all of them, there are certain attributes to keep in mind. Two-handed ones have a longer reach and a couple of unique moves but lack the ability to use a shield in tandem, meaning you take damage from blocking. A lot of these weapons are separated by weight and length either letting you swing faster or slower depending on these factors. Across the chapters, you’ll unlock additional moves to expand your moveset adding more variety and depth to the experience.

One of the standout features of combat is the magic system, also known as Skill. Throughout the game, you’ll gain the ability to use special moves tied to the ST (stamina?) bar. While most RPGs tend to use a mana system for these moves, how you utilize them in Astlibra is with action. Filling up the ST bar requires you to attack enemies with your main weapon, in which if you have enough ST, you can press a button with a combination of directions (like a fighting game, but not strict in the timing at all) unleashes a powerful attack. In the Skill menu, you can equip up to 6 skills of varying elements that can grant buffs, do large single-target damage, or screen-clearing area-of-effect abilities. All of these abilities grant you i-frames to bypass damage. The entire style rewards an aggressive playstyle staying close to your enemies while wailing on them and using special moves to keep the flow going. Combined with the snappy and responsive controls, the combat is fun and rewarding even if it is rather simple. While keyboard is perfectly serviceable, Astlibra was designed with a controller in mind.

Like most RPGs, leveling up consists of killing enemies, but increases to your stats are done through multiple venues. The most important one is through the Grow menu where you use focus elements gained from killing enemies. This menu grants you the bulk of your stats and abilities so it’s essential to keep on top of it as this increases basically all of them. Unfortunately, this menu being crucial means that leveling up specific stats such as health and adaptability is a waste of resources that are compensated from equipment and Grow. Fortunately, you can respec your stats from leveling up for free in most locations so if you happen to invest into the wrong stat, you can take those points and allocate them into something actually worth it such as in attack, magic, defense, and agility. Astlibra wants you to focus on balancing your stats with some focus on the one you like by having highly diminishing returns if you attempt to put everything into one stat. While I wouldn’t call levels useless in the slightest, because Grow and equipment influence your stats significantly more than leveling up, it feels more like the former only exists out of obligation of the genre.

Equipment isn’t useless the moment you get some with better stats as almost every weapon, shield, and armor has a mastery system tied to it that incentivizes collecting them and using them in battle as many of them will grant you many passive abilities that are tied to Karon. Some of these are simple such as granting you increased damage against certain enemy types, and others are more beneficial such as double jumping. You are even rewarded a special weapon if you collect and master all the equipment available. Because of this system, there is a lot of grinding involved which can be a plus for some and a minus for others. And there are some moments where Karon is absent, so this means all those abilities for that section you have no access to.

Astlibra has a lot of variety in the music selection. I don’t have much to say about it, but for intense moments, the music appropriately matches, sometimes with (Japanese) vocals to match. Lighthearted moments have a more playful tone. A large amount of the soundtrack is royalty-free, and it goes to show that even if you don't have the musical talent for it, there are more than enough resources available. Although, this does mean that the tone of the selection can be "inconsistent" at times. While there isn’t any voice acting for dialogue, there are some voices for some actions such as using your special moves. The sound effects in battle are distinct and sharp, allowing many players to react on sound, as at points it can be hard to tell when an enemy is attacking you while you’re flooding the screen with slashes and summons. Overall, solid sound in general.

Now, Astlibra isn’t without flaws. The translation isn’t the best as, throughout the script, you’ll notice formatting and grammatical errors. It isn’t enough to take the enjoyment out of the experience and I do give some slight leeway for this for indie projects, but it is noticeable to a point. I also didn’t like that late-game combat relied more on glass cannon builds/setups and abusing I-frames because plenty of enemies in the late game can kill you in one or two shots, and a lot of their moves are designed in the way that you’re meant to I-frame through them. And if enemies can end your life swiftly, then there is little reason to not maximize your damage output as you’re gonna get one-shotted either way if you get hit. So you may as well attempt to melt their health bar before they do the same to you.

When it comes to moral warnings and concerns, there is quite a bit to go over, and I’ll be getting into some small spoilers at hand. Violence mostly consists of killing fantasy creatures. Sometimes when you strike them, blood appears. Some parts of the story have you kill humans as enemies too. While most of the violence in combat isn’t graphic, there are some moments throughout the story where our protagonist comes across mutilated dead bodies. While it isn’t directly shown, some chapters discuss topics such as human sacrifices.

The world of Astlibra takes inspiration from many religions. The main religion and mythology it takes from is from Greek, as the afterlife of their world is called Elysium. It doesn’t namedrop any specific one and there are some more minor references such as a cross being one of your equipment items and Hell being an actual place referenced in some item text; it can’t be pinpointed to one specific following. There are plenty of gods and goddesses seen throughout. While the script does use god with a capital G at times, it never refers to Him specifically. Given the context of the setting, it does make sense from the characters’ points of view.

Language mostly consists of words such as “b*st*rd”, “*ss”, “d*mn”, and “sh*t”, with the latter ramping up as the game goes along. Sexual content is probably the most noticeable, chapter 4 in particular one of the more standout moments. There are quite a few characters that show off cleavage and leg, and many enemies and bosses are very immodestly dressed, if not borderline naked. You’ll even come across the goddess of the world, Astraea, which due to certain circumstances has markings on her body that look like lingerie. She even outright asks the protagonist if he finds her body sexually arousing. She does have some rather amusing things to say whether you answer yes or no—calling it blasphemy, yet doesn’t mind if you answer the former or even compariing the relationship as a parent and their offspring for the latter. Getting back into chapter 4, since a lot of the chapter has to do with you in a “love inn”, there are plenty of fanservice moments such as our main protagonist having to crossdress in order to infiltrate a building that only allows women, one of his female allies getting ready to strip naked after misinterpreting a request, yuri baiting between two NPC females, and a moment where an ally of the protagonist threatens to wake him up “by putting her smelly feet on his face.” While that in itself wouldn’t be so noteworthy if it was a one-time occurrence, similar situations do happen later in which he is also “threatened” to be awoken “by having her used underwear stuffed in his mouth.” I’ve been around the block enough to know when “comedy” is just a method of inserting the creator’s fetishes into their work.

ASTLIBRA Revision is clearly a labor of love that has an extraordinary amount of effort put into it. There are multiple difficulty settings that are either for people who want to enjoy the story or want something very challenging. This is a long journey too as seeing the credits roll for the first time will take anywhere between 30 and 50 hours, and the post-credit content an additional 10 to 20 hours with numerous new mechanics introduced in said portion. Splitting your time between leveling up your equipment, optional bosses, arena battles, and the extra story, Astlibra has more content than many games double its price does. It’s a great game that I myself moderately enjoy, mostly having issues with plot elements combined with the runtime. Morally, the issues at hand make Astlibra tailored towards older teenagers and adults with all that questionable Japanese flavor that may taste different depending on the region you grew up in and childhood upbringing. If you’ve enjoyed series such as Ys (Ys III in particular) and older ARPGs in the style of Zelda II, Astlibra will be one unforgettable experience.