Thoughts of the game Astal for the Sega Saturn

[KimagureMachibuse]

I have yet to play the the game but i would like to hear your thoughts on it.

[Koa Zo]

I owned if for a long and was never compelled to play it
The few times I did play it for a bit, I found it to have a slow plodding pace. Maybe it picked-up later in the game, but I had no interest to find out.
Never understood the love for this game. I can guess the popularity may be because it was available early in the system's life when there was a software drought, and it has colorful artwork with a unique character and game world, as well as being a Saturn exclusive - so that created the lasting hype. But there are a hundred other platformers I'd rather play

[Sumez]

My experience is similar to the above.
It's one of the games I bought way back when, when the Saturn was still recent, and I should have been spending the money on shooters instead. It looked amazing with its huge sprites and stuff, but even playing it for just a few minutes I got frustrated with how boring and tedious it felt.
Maybe it gets better later on? But I've yet to see anything pointing at that.

[drauch]

Ditto. I always popped it in and marveled at the graphics, but the slow gameplay fizzled out my awe.

[BulletMagnet]

It's been a long time since I last popped it in, but my memories of it are akin to the previous posts; passable gameplay-wise, but lovely 2D visuals to sweeten the deal. Back in the day I thought it was worth a try just for the spritework, though that was before retro game prices went nuts and the game could be had for a song; presumably it's far less of an "impulse buy" these days.

[Despatche]

It's a pretty cool game that reminds me oddly of Ristar. Like most old "rare" games, please don't buy an actual copy for those ridiculous prices, because it's never worth it no matter how good the game is. You will just come away blaming a perfectly good game for a problem with the system, and that's just not right.

[BrianC]

When I first saw screens of the game, I thought the main character was a girl. I later found out that it's a boy with an obnoxious English dub voice (in cutscenes, some in game JP voices are still intact in the US version). I haven't played it myself, but it definitely has some nice-looking graphics.