Overview:

According to the opening cartoon, two gems were created which led to the birth of Astal [Red] and some girl [Green].  This was good but it caused a monster guy to want to end it so he made another dude to kill the girl.  The monster guy was defeated by a napping goddess then I was on a quest.  It’s a side scrolling game of the era so things are a lot different than they were just a few years ago.  Either way, you go on your quest to defeat birds and gem baddies.

Visuals:

Astal is kind of a visual treat.  As I said in the opening paragraph, it’s a game of its time but the sidescrolling genre changed a lot from the start of the Sega Saturn generation.  This game seems to be more of you walking through super static prerendered backgrounds so your character seems out of place.  It is beautiful though.  The sprites are massive and there is so much stuff going on throughout the screens it makes it kind of a lot to take in.

Audio:

As much as the music is very well done, it almost seems out of place.  It’s very melodic and moody to show how the Saturn does CD audio but at a cost.  The voice acting of all the characters is so so bad it makes you nostalgic for the early days when voice acting was a treat to have.  The other sound effects are also rather bland as they seem to not fit the tone.

Completion:

This game is just hard to control.  Your moves take a while to do and trying to remember what they actually do comes a little bit too late for you not to take a hit.  It took me a few deaths but I beat the first level, died a couple times then beat the second level, died once then beat THE EVIL EYE.  After that I just decided to stop.  I wasn’t feeling it.