Astalon: Tears of the Earth is an 8-bit NES art style Metroidvania with light rougelite elements. In it, you'll play as three characters with different playstyles, and be able to switch between them at save points, and later, once you obtain a specific item, change to each one at will. You have Arias the Warrior, who attacks at short range, but has the fastest attack speed. Aglus the Mage, who attacks with a short range fireball attack that can pass through objects that stop the other two from attacking as easily, and frankly is easily the best character in the game. And for the third, you have Kyuli, who is the Rogue, with a long range bow and arrows and the ability to wall jump. There are also two optional characters who can join your party that you can find in the game, but as long as you explore the tower fully, they are hard to miss.
Throughout the story, you will be climbing The Tower, a large building filled with different areas like catacombs, tombs, and even a cathedral. The three main characters have entered this tower to try to find out what is poisoning their local village's water supply. The story isn't really anything you haven't seen before, stop the bad guy, save the village but I enjoyed it, and the different character interactions you can see at the various savepoints/campfires were fun. You find the tower is controlled by a group of beings called Gorgons, giant stone heads, that hide their true forms within, along with a mysterious Black Knight whom they seem to control as well.
But like most Metriodvanias, the focus is on the gameplay, not so much the story. When you hear a game has a retro 8-bit NES art style you might think it might be "NES hard" if you understand that term. But in actuality, Astalon is quite a fairly easy game, except for a single achievement which may give some trouble. It has a retro art style but more modern gameplay I feel. You'll be making your way through the tower to reach the top to defeat the Black Knight, and stop the poison. I mentioned it had light rougelite elements, but in gameplay terms, I didn't find they really changed the gameplay of a Metriodvania all that much. When you die you go back to the start of the tower, because Aglus' soul is bound to Epimetheus, a God or Titan of Death, who resets the party when they die, as if it never happened. I say this doesn't really change the gameplay much because, like most Metrodvanias, you are constantly opening up shortcuts, whether they be elevators, teleporters, moving blocks and other hazards out of the way, and these all stay when you die. So in essence, dying is really no different than any other Metroidvania that just puts you back at your last savepoint. When you die, Epimetheus will take Aglus to an upgrade screen, where you can upgrade each individual character's attack, defense, attack speed and three other abilities to strengthen them, as well as party wide stats like health, which are shared between all characters. Along with other things like lengthening your invincibility frames on getting hit and the chance to double the amount of experience orbs an enemy will drop on death, as only a couple examples You'll also be finding new items throughout the tower that give each characters new skills, like giving Arias a dash, and letting Kyuli wall jump infinitely instead of just a single time each jump. You'll use these new abilities to travel further into the tower.
While you make your way throughout the tower, you will find locked doors and the keys to open those doors, along with things like vines blocking your way that only Arias' sword can cut through or buttons on walls that only Aglus' fireballs can trigger. In the beginning of the game, this will force you to change your characters at a savepoint so they can enter these sections and travel further, sometimes to open up the way for the others. This will only last two areas though, as in the third you'll find an item that lets you change to each character with the Y button on the fly, so you no longer have to go back to the savepoints to change. There are tons of hidden rooms as well, which are usually denoted by a cracked or broken wall you can travel through. I felt I got pretty good at spotting them as I played, but if you feel you might not be, don't worry, as you'll be able to find a ring that will glow on screen if you enter an area that has a hidden exit in it. You will also find a ring that pinpoints on the map if a room has an item in it. Near the end of the game, you'll also be able to buy a full map from Epimetheus, which will show you rooms you may have missed. So nothing is really missable.
Graphically the game looks very nice, cleary trying for a NES art style. The sprites look great, though I am definitely already a huge fan of of pixel art, and not everyone is. The bosses look especially great, with tons of detail and nice animation. The music is nice, but not incredibly memorable, it serves its purpose.
As you play the game, you'll find the majority of achievements are very simple, beat all the bosses, fully explore the tower, and find all the items. Upgrade all the characters and collecting orbs and killing monsters. As I said, the game is pretty easy. After the second boss I quickly became overpowered, and easily killed all the remaining bosses, some in literal seconds. The only achievement that may be hard for some is the Boss Rush mode. Unfortunately, a couple of the achievements can be glitchy, the 5000 kills one especially. I also had to fully upgrade a character three times before their achievement popped. Luckily the game has 6 total save slots, and you can copy a savefile before doing something if you feel the need. But for the gamewide achievements like kills and orbs collected, these are counted across all savefiles in the secret menu called statistics, and those aren't tied to any specific save. I had the 5000 kills achievement glitch on me my first time, and I had to delete the Xbox savefile to start over. I would advise not trying to grind for the kills, just play the game naturally, as you will need to do three separate playthroughs, the main, and then two smaller ones with unlockable characters you get about beating the game for the first time, ala a lot of the Castlevania Metroidvania games. But it's hard to judge how glitchy these achievements are, as the game has such a low player count, and only 3–4 comments have talked about an achievement glitching for them.
The low player count is the main reason I wanted to write this review, my first on TA. I was really surprised by this game, and I think more people should play it. There were under 400 people at the time of this review, and that's a shame.
So if you want to play a really great Metroidvana, check Astalon: Tears of the Earth out!
4.5