ASTLIBRA Gaiden: The Cave of Phantom Mist | Switch Review

October 25, 2024 Eric Sandler

ASTLIBRA Gaiden is a standalone game set in the universe of ASTLIBRA Revision, eschewing the original’s expansive story for a more roguelike experience. Rather than the original amnesiac main character questing to avenge his childhood friend, you instead take the reins of a relatively unknown NPC: the baker’s daughter.

The game opens somewhere in the middle of the main story of ASTLIBRA, with the original main character and his friends having become accomplished members of the adventurer’s guild. Suddenly, one day monsters appear in town and every single member of the guild disappears. So armed with nothing but a broom and accompanied by a talking dog, you step into the Cave of Phantom Mist and try to figure out what happened, and hopefully rescue the lost members of the guild.

Familiar Trappings

The basic gameplay of ASTLIBRA remains in the new standalone title: you’ll fight hordes of monsters in horizontal 2D side-scrolling combat, collect money and items dropped, and gradually improve your character by spending force on a very elaborate stat tree. And of course you’ll unlock various abilities by mastering weapons and armor, learn new spells, and generally wreak havoc on the denizens of the Phantom Mist. One new addition is that of classes: you start off with the basic explorer which gives you a bonus to equipment XP, but can also unlock more specialized ones that focus on magic or swordplay, with each one giving bonuses to encourage that playstyle.

However, while the base ASTLIBRA game was a very story-heavy affair with some light puzzles and backtracking, Gaiden tacks entirely toward the roguelike genre. Essentially, rather than crafted levels, you’ll traverse randomly generated floors, with the goal of each floor being finding the switch to unlock the next level. You can also uncover certain special rooms, like a monster trap room where you have to clear the entire screen of monsters or defeat a powerful foe, alongside bonus rooms like a treasure room or one where you can shoot targets to get a ton of force drops. It’s simplistic, but it works if you’re a fan of the base gameplay.

More of What You Like

That’s really all there is to it: Gaiden is a great standalone game if you really loved the base game and want more combat, leveling up, and gradual progression of your character. It’s a condensed version of the main game, with a bare bones story compared to the original. If you’re itching to play ASTLIBRA again but don’t want the same level of grind. Gaiden is easier to pick up and put down as well, especially on the Switch, the platform of choice for this review. It’s got a great loop of clearing five floors, returning to town to cash in your force to improve your base stats, then returning for another five floors and a boss.

ASTLIBRA Gaiden is currently available for Steam and the Nintendo Switch for $10 USD. As stated, if you’re a fan of the original and want more (and don’t mind the shift to randomly generated levels) it’s an easy recommendation. If you’re after more story or lore to the game, you won’t find much here, and of course if you haven’t played the base game, you absolutely should before touching this one.

To hear me talk more about ASTLIBRA Gaiden: The Cave of Phantom Mist, be sure to listen to the October 24, 2024 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 1:13:08 time stamp.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of ASTLIBRA Gaiden: The Cave of Phantom Mist provided by PR Hound for coverage purposes. It is also available on PC via Steam.