Astor: Blade of the Monolith

Astor: Blade of the Monolith reflects one of the coolest aspects of video games as a medium with a deep history of iteration. You can take a familiar set of concepts, add new context, and come up with something that stands on its own rather than feeling like a ripoff. Astor does this with an impressive sense of knowledge and understanding of not only Zelda-style exploration, but character action-style combat. The latter is much more niche and specialized, therefore harder to pull off. It’s not quite a bullseye, but gets respectfully close and has me curious about further updates, as well as what this studio does next.

Given the small team that it was made by, they have done a nice job delivering an entertaining experience. It just falls short by trying to be too many things in its gameplay and not having enough depth in its story to deliver the best experience possible.

Overall, Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a fun hack-n-slash action game, at least for a little while. The story and the world aren't strong enough to keep your attention, but the battles are fun in the beginning. Soon enough, you'll feel you've seen all the game offers before you've completed the main story.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith has a certain charm and fun element to it, but the game's simplistic combat and repetitive foes take away from the overall excitement.

The debut work from this Latin American development team is extremely pleasant in its simplicity, with an enjoyable story, effective gameplay, and impactful art style. Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a good start for C2 Game Studio on consoles and a promising foundation for more ambitious goals.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is an excellent game with some fantastic environments, satisfying combat and some classic boss fights. The game almost has it perfect but I want more out of it, more puzzles, more NPCs, more variation and more to sink into.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a good gateway to the genre, delivering everything expected in a title with these characteristics. However, much of what could be innovative and strong is not explored, and some design decisions in the Nintendo Switch version could compromise the incredible experience.

"Just a promise of an adventure."

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a great introduction to the Soulslike mechanics that dominate ARPGs right now. I can see it appealing to younger or novice gamers. It’s family-friendly, colorful, and pretty satisfying to play. More hardcore action fans will probably find it too familiar and not quite as polished as their favorites. Overall, Astor: Blade of the Monolith brings together a collection of tried-and-true mechanics in a pretty satisfying way.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith isn't too different from its counterparts. It suffers from minor and rarely major glitches but is a fun, simple experience at its core.