I just played some Astral Chain. I'm on Chapter/File 3 but googled to see if it opens up later. It's a fully linear action game with stats (like most character action games have healing, support, attack items or skills and such to unlock via gathered resource(s) as you progress, that doesn't make them RPGs), I dunno why people have been giving the impression it's an RPG and likening it more to Nier than Bayonetta. It's a good and fun game but so restrictive if you expect more of those elements from it so if you haven't played it and intend to don't expect that stuff. The mission areas are preset, it switches from investigation to action phases to even some Persona-like simplistic 'dungeon' areas or Platinum's usual mini game bits. Everything is in a predetermined order by the story and mission, even if there may be some little deadend side paths and objectives for maximum gains per file.
I'm just disappointed, not because of how good the game is but after all the RPG talk surrounding it for apparently zero reason now that I've played it, I had even watched a bit of the DF analysis on it where they were talking about the performance in the action vs the open city areas and those turn out to be just linear levels with some platforming or switch triggering to progress during the investigation phase or even during the action phase. They too said it's more consistent and polished than Nier. Oh well. The combat is pretty rad with the dual character control (just got a 2nd demon).
