ASTLIBRA Revision

I discovered Astlibra Revision completely by random during a sale. The overwhelmingly positive reviews drew me in, and I am so glad I took the chance. This is easily one of the best games I have played in a while. The gameplay and combat is incredibly fun and the story kept me hooked from start to finish. The only downside for me was the specific style of Japanese humor and "perviness" in certain chapters. There are definitely some awkward moments that felt jarring compared to how great the rest of the game is.

Astlibra is a game that was mostly made by one person over the span of 15 years. And it absolutely shows in all aspects, both good and bad, with the positives far far far outweighing the negatives. Both the gameplay and especially the storytelling contain so many absolutely insane ideas that would normally never make it past the approval stage in a larger development team. Thus making this title be a one of a kind experience that cannot be found anywhere else. For me, this game is the perfect example of the beauty of independent projects that do not have their hands tied by financial viability, marketing strategies, popular trends and so on. Instead, fueled only by pure simple passion. This of course results in constrained production values and many ideas being quite rough around the edges. (Although even those are not always bad with their own "raw" kind of charm.) But to me the upside, the completely unrestrained freedom of the author able to fulfill their creative vision and their dream, far outweighs those issues, especially when they can deliver results such as this game. I'd love to get into actual details regarding what I loved and what I disliked about the whole experience, but there is just too much to Astlibra that I wouldn't know where to begin or how would I make it coherent. Ultimately, it is just an extremely solid side scrolling action RPG, with several unique gameplay mechanics and an absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane story and world, made by one person with a dream over almost 2 decades of their life. Overall making for a very memorable experience. Where JRPGs are often said to begin with rescuing a cat and ending with killing a god, in Astlibra, that's barely even 20 % of the story (there are like 5 different points where ending credits play ffs). For the remaining 80 %, the author somehow manages to keep one-upping themselves in just how over the top the narrative becomes and how high the stakes get raised. Successfully.

It's one of those games where you can feel the developer's passion through it. You get swept up by the story pretty promptly and then get tossed around by it all the way to the end. Great game, would recommend. Helps that the gameplay and music are very solid by their own right.