I'll admit upfront, I have an odd background for my taste in games. I fell into the jrpg/anime hole when I was about 10-11 years old and became enamored with lots of weirder, less well known games. This eventually branched off into me discovering Japanese indie titles in the mid-late 2000s starting with Touhou, but not ending there. I was super into Touhou[and still am honestly] but other indie titles crossing into my field of view was a bit more of a dice roll. So I had never heard of this game, ASTLIBRA, until it came out on steam.
It'd been developed for over 15 years I've heard, with most of its releases being freeware, so I'm honestly a little surprised I'd never once even heard of it. Doubly so since I just beat the game after a 55 hour long playthrough and was deeply impressed by it. My first experience with it was the demo, which kinda just... thrusts you into the action without much regard for explaining things. I found it intriguing, but also left it being unsure of what to expect.
It's not hard to see the influences that this game has had. Ys, Odin Sphere, Chrono Trigger, and the general vibe of PS1 era JRPGs can be felt throughout this side scrolling action RPG. Perhaps the thing that caught me most off guard about the game was the sheer scale and scope of it. Both in its gameplay, which is loaded with tons of obtainable weapons and skills and special attacks to a frankly excessive[but deeply enjoyable] degree as well as its story and presentation. The story, although shoddily translated[not machine TL thank goodness but definitely could've used another editing pass] had way more twists and turns than I expected and kept me engaged in ways I was not expecting. The music is all royalty free/license free music and expertly picked, with 136 tracks in total rounding out the audio experience.
The visuals are perhaps the strangest presentation element, made up of some decent[if not super fluidly animated] sprites mixed with background and enemy assets composed of what I'm pretty sure were stock photographs. Some of the bosses have really creative/gross/out there designs though, which I respect.
But the thing that really kept me going for 55 hours straight was its gameplay flow and combat. Although the developer was clearly limited by a tiny staff and resources, they knew exactly how to make the kind of 2d side scrolling ARPG combat I like. Flashy, fast paced, with a constant drip feed of rewards and new things to discover that made the whole thing feel expertly paced. You're always getting items that let you get new equips, you're always learning new skills from said equips, the skills are always letting you do new things and try out different approaches to combat.
The game also has an absurd amount of progression mechanics for the kind of game it is. You can level up, which gives you stat points to allocate to your various stats. You can master weapons and armor which gives you either new skills or skill points to equip said skills with. You can acquire elemental force from enemies and spend them on a sphere grid-esque growth board which contains new magic spells and permanent stat upgrades. You even get a pair of scales that let you weigh items on both pans and gain benefits if you balance the scales perfectly. It all sounds like a massive amount, but the game doesn't do a bad job of introducing these systems to you bit by bit at the start. If you like the feeling of a character progressing in an RPG, this one of the best games of its type for it.
All in all, this is a real gem of a game. I enjoyed it greatly start to finish, and am even considering playing through it again sometime on the highest difficulty setting[aptly titled "Impossible"]. For the record, I beat it on "Difficult" mode the first time through. Highly, highly recommended if you enjoy Ys or Vanillaware-esque rpg action games.