Yeah, I'd never heard of Astal either.
It kinda fell into that memory hole of early
Saturn releases, back when CD media was just
getting its legs under it and there were as
many wide misses as genuine hits.
But, as Jeanie from PA assured me, this one
falls into that "genuine hits" category.
That is, if you don't mind the weird, bug-eyed
wannabe-proto-Sting visual style, or the fact
that the vocal performance leaves Japanese
interjections in the gameplay action but dubs
all the other audio into English, using a
voice actress who makes our weird little hero
with the egregious haircut there sound EXACTLY
like U-1 from Gitaroo-Man (and, by extension,
Musashi from said Samurai Legend).
And that's a thing that usually stops me cold
in my tracks.
I blame Jeanie.
So after going through the world's creation
myth in the opening video (a kindness not
commonly offered to we gamers), we understand
that bad haircut there is trying to save his
sister.
Unfortunately, the path to said sister is
laden with platforming and evil things that
happen to be formed from crystals: crystal
goblins, crystal birds, crystal pig-bear-lookin'
things... and all you have are your bare,
grotesquely-oversized hands.
These are perfect for either picking up and
throwing mobs (potentially knocking out other
foes coming up on your six), or doing an axe-handle
from the air.
Either way, the emphasis is less on speed
and more on "how to do the most damage with
a single attack."
Or, of course, you could just uproot a big
freakin' tree and drop it on 'em.
After the halfway point of the first stage,
you're assisted further by a bird, who can
deliver a diving attack, fetch weird eggplant-looking
foodstuffs for restorative purposes, or provide
context-sensitive support like clearing out
a swarm of bats or taking care of a certain
boss' backup winged eyeballs.
These abilities expend energy from the bar
down at the bottom of the screen, which charges
by one segment every time you defeat an enemy
with that weird greenish glowing aura about
it.
There's a fairly steep learning curve when
approaching the game, as the difficulty and
timing can be tough to get down, and there
are plenty of strange wrinkles to the gameplay,
like this sea-creature-ride of peril.
The most frustrating part is the physics,
where the momentum of dashing jump can be
almost completely halted in midair simply
by attacking.
It's a good thing your little bird friend
there can bring you those eggplants, else
you'd be in dire pain from one side of the
level to the other.
But for its rather strange mechanics, Astal
sounds quite good (in both languages), the
sprite art is very lush, as are the backgrounds,
and... well, the mechanics kinda grow on ya,
if you're masochistic enough to really try
to figure them out.
As an in-house Sega development, and one of
the earliest Saturn releases, Astal wanted
to push this brand-new hardware, and... well,
to those who could dig the rather strange
style, it presented a pretty sound argument.
Problem was, there just weren't that many
such gamers in '95.
Shame, really.
This could've been the game I go to whenever
I hear that rather distinctive, kinda whiny
voice, instead of Gitaroo-Man.
