Astalon: Tears of the Earth

With a great variety of environments, simple gameplay, and a strong line-up of enemies, Astalon: Tears of the Earth turns out to be one of the more successful action platformers we’ve seen in recent months. It will likely only last a handful of hours, but there’s a lot here to love, and it's a relative no-brainer if you’re a fan of high fantasy Metroidvanias.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a tough, but fair NES-inspired Metroidvania that tests your mettle and makes it worthwhile.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth brings us a Metroidvania-type where the players will be exploring a tower with three different characters, with the need to think about which character to use according to the obstacles. For a simple-looking game, Astalon is amazingly varied when it comes to level design and enemies, which works great in its favour to present us with an adventure that's enjoyable and worthy of our attention.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a very, very simple mix of metroidvania-like exploration, and rogue-lite challenge, but a simple mix that works wonders. You'll die a lot, but you'll keep on returning just to get a little further on the journey towards the top of this treacherous spire, and learn of its secrets, with your skill and perseverance being your main tools. Don't miss out on this modern-yet-retro indie gem. 'Conglaturation!!!' LABS Works!

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a great looking rogue-like Metroidvania game with a good story. It is incredibly challenging and can get very frustrating with the amount of backtracking, collision detection issues and lack of direction of what you need to do to progress.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is an 8-bit aesthetic metroidvania that knows how to give the genre a twist with certain roguelite mechanics and an interesting plot. If we also add a very well measured gameplay and a brilliant mapping design, we will have the perfect formula to spend hours and hours glued to the console. Highly recommended.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth may be yet another in a long line of retro 2D action/platformers available for the Nintendo Switch, but it deserves to be moved towards the front of that line. Fans of the genre will find plenty to like here, so long as they're willing to accept backtracking as a core gameplay element.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth has just about everything a fan of Metroidvania-RPGs could want in the sub-genre. The plot is simple but flexible, the characters are well presented, and the tower is a meatgrinder.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a retro-style metroidvania that deserves to be played by any fan of the genre. In terms of quality, it doesn't disappoint in almost any aspect, featuring an excellent level design and a deep level of exploration along with its fantastic visual and sound presentation. The high difficulty and slow progression may turn some players off, and thebugs hamper the experience, but Astalon is still a standout title of very high quality on Switch.

Astalon: Tears Of The Earth feels like a long-lost NES game that gamers would still be playing 3 decades after its initial release.