Astor: Blade Of The Monolith Review — Packing A Familiar Punch

Soulslike combat-inspired ARPGs are becoming much more common nowadays, and with the amount of creativity pouring into them with each release, you can’t be excited enough. Each new title brings a similar formula with a unique spin to the table, and Astor: Blade of the Monolith is one such example. It starts off simple with tested fundamentals and gradually introduces new mechanics that give the game its identity.

Story And Setting

You start off as the silent protagonist, Astor, a young lad of the Diokek race, who travels with his friend, Zan, to restore the Makers, who are essentially your people’s deities. After an attack from the Hiltsilks, the Diokek are forced into hiding and await the return of a savior who’ll end the violence and bring back the Makers.

In a hidden tomb, Astor discovers a unique power that lets him use Runic magic, and Zan even proclaims him as “The Chosen.” As you and your friend travel the land, you come across fellow members of the Diokek who assist you in your journey, and the plot steadily but surely grows from there on.

The story itself is nothing groundbreaking and takes a backseat most of the time.

The story itself is nothing groundbreaking and takes a backseat most of the time. It primarily serves as a tool to drive your progression, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not intrusive or annoying in any way, and most of the dialogue is easily skippable, so you can invest as much or as little time into it as you want.

Fortunately, the environment, music, and setting play a significant role in creating a hopeful post-apocalyptic theme. The world is packed with awe-inspiring landmarks and natural disasters that visualize the scale, while the music, in contrast, is calm and soothing to the point where you feel like you can take on those challenges. These tiny details are the perfect instruments for immersion and are something to be admired.

Gameplay

As an ARPG, Astor: Blade of the Monolith’s main selling point lies in its gameplay, featuring addictive, fast-paced combat, rich traversal, and intuitive puzzles for you to solve. With its semi-open world, the game encourages you to explore the surroundings and rewards you with loot to upgrade items and enemies to test your skills.

You start with a sword and can attack enemies with a Light or Heavy attack, which you can chain together to generate combos. As you do so, your damage multiplier increases, and your attacks become stronger as the combo goes on. On the defensive side, you have a Shield Block and Dodge button to escape oncoming attacks.

As an ARPG, Astor: Blade of the Monolith’s main selling point lies in its gameplay, featuring addictive, fast-paced combat, rich traversal, and intuitive puzzles for you to solve.

Blocking immediately before an enemy’s hit counts as a parry, temporarily stunning the enemy and everyone within a certain radius. This allows you to unleash your built-up rage and extend your combos by a dozen hits, so if you have quick reflexes and discipline, the game rewards you accordingly

The only way to replenish HP is by killing tough foes or destroying green crystals scattered across the map. There’s also a small reserve that you can fill up and use mid-combat in case you’re in a critical position. Combined with the fluid parry system, these mechanics ensure a seamless combat experience where you’re always interacting and on the attack.

Encounter, Eliminate, And Explore Further

As you progress, you’ll come across Power Enhancement Orbs acting as checkpoints, where you can save your progress and even buy skills to use in combat. Skills include items like Resurrection Crystals or abilities, which are further subdivided into purely combat-amplifying Weapon-based and Talent-based skills. You can unlock these skills via Red Orbs by defeating enemies and Monolithic Shards scattered throughout the map.

Perhaps the most unique feature added to Astor: Blade of the Monolith is the Spirit Realm, which works both for combat and exploration. You can transition into the Spirit Realm anytime, and when you do so, it’ll reveal hidden platforms and areas that you can dive deeper into. Furthermore, entering the Spirit Realm during combat increases your damage while halving your HP and constantly depleting your stamina.

In my opinion, the Spirit Realm mechanic adds a whole new layer of complexity that significantly improves the game’s traversal and fights. Its importance and usage stay consistent throughout your playthrough, so it’s cleverly used in several areas and segments. 

The Technical Problems With Soulslike ARPGs Are Still Present Here

One minor issue I take is with Blade of the Monolith’s camera and lock-on system, which is extremely janky at times. In small arenas, the camera becomes extremely unreliable and starts phasing into walls while you’re desperately trying to lock onto or run away from something. Camera issues aren’t anything new in ARPGs, but Astor’s lock-on issues make the former much more apparent.

One minor issue I take is with Blade of the Monolith’s camera and lock-on system, which is extremely janky at times.

Since you’re usually surrounded by hordes of enemies, you must focus on your movement and regularly reposition yourself, but you’ll often block right after doing so because the enemy attacks are so erratic and quick. This is where the problem comes in—you need to manually face the enemy each time to block their attack, even when locking on, as your shield only blocks from one direction.

Unlike other ARPGs that automatically align your character towards the enemy when locked in, it usually felt impossible to escape attacks as you couldn’t recover after dodging. The game’s lock-on mechanics are also fairly slow, so quickly swapping between enemies was also a pain. Fortunately, this issue dies down significantly when you buy the omnidirectional Shield Bubble, but the deaths before then might feel unfair.

Overall, though, Astor’s gameplay is fundamentally smooth, fun, and cohesive. The aforementioned issues become less prominent the more you play, while new mechanics like a personal spider steed are regularly added. Skills keep the combat fresh, and their requirements incentivize searching every corner of the world. It’s a simple formula that works, and this game does it justice.

Visuals And Performance

Astor: Blade of the Monolith aims for an appealing art style rather than realism, and fortunately, the way everything’s crafted makes it stand out as a beautiful ARPG overloaded with cuteness and vibrance. Each biome is diverse, distinct, and full of bright colors that fully captivate you the moment you step into it.

Similar to No Rest For The Wicked, a similar ARPG released this year, the game looks visually timeless and comes with its own personality. It’s a minimalistic approach that only requires a few creative touches to be stunning and C2 Game Studios successfully delivers that style with finesse and harmony.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith aims for an appealing art style rather than realism, and fortunately, the way everything’s crafted makes it stand out as a beautiful ARPG overloaded with cuteness and vibrance.

On the performance side, Astor’s straightforward art direction isn’t overly taxing on hardware and delivers consistently high FPS throughout the experience. Running the game on a GTX 1660Ti Mobile and a Core i7-10750H, I was regularly getting 60+ FPS without any major stutters.

There were a few times when the loading screen glitched out with weird on-screen artifacts, but it didn’t hinder the experience in any way. If you’re looking to get this game on low- or mid-end hardware, rest easy knowing that you won’t have any trouble running it.

Verdict

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a solid entry into the ARPG genre with simple yet effective mechanics and combat that make it a recognizable and worthwhile experience. There’s definitely a sense of challenge here that requires you to hone your skills, but you can tone it down if you favor accessibility and triviality.

While the cliche problems of 3D Soulslike games are still visible here, their impact becomes less annoying the more you play and progress. As a whole, I feel like Astor is a game everyone can enjoy, especially if you’re a fan of adventure and swift action.

This has been my review of Astor: Blade of the Monolith. While you’re here, consider checking out some of our other reviews published recently:

• Rise of the Ronin Review
• Nioh 2 Review
• XDefiant Review
• Hades 2 Early Access Review
• Mullet Madjack Review