Thursday, November 26, 2020

PrinceWatercress plays Astal - Part 4 of 5


Welcome to ice physics, zoomed-out cameras and the one time in one-player mode where you play as the bird.


Glacial Rift

This is the first level in which you'll face the jumping gem monsters one-on-one without the aid of a giant turtle that swims across water. Thankfully, they're not any harder than any of the other normal enemies that you've had to face throughout the game. If you blow on them with your breath attack, their bodies just spin around, leaving them stunned.

The avalanches of snow that fall every few seconds in parts of the level don't hurt you, but they freeze you in place temporarily. This can be a bad thing if there are enemies nearby. Interestingly, if any enemies get hit by the snow, they'll be frozen for a second or two before they shatter.

There are also icy floors, and yes, they do have ice physics.

The rock beetles will come at you whenever you're close to them. They're pretty fast, and you'll spend more time jumping over them than trying to destroy them (which is possible). If you pound the ground, however, it will get rid of 

The Crystal Palace

You'll meet green variations of the normal flying enemies and the gem soldiers from the very first level here, but they're not any different. The green variations of the normal flying enemies still divebomb towards you when you're in range like the red versions do, though.

The spikes hurt you when you touch them. You'll be able to get past them with the numerous platforms in this stage. Speaking of which, the light blue ones topple when you stand on them. Use their momentum to get to the next platform!

The huge collapsing platforms shortly after the beginning are really hard to cross, but if you know what you're doing and you can make it to the other side without having to deal with everything at the bottom and making your forward from down there (which isn't any harder), that's great.

In case you haven't noticed it already, the mosquito-like enemies dart down at you when you're under them. They have to be close enough to you for that to happen, though, so there is a gap in their vertical tracking abilities.

Your next obstacle are the large icicles that go up and down. Time your movements to get past each one, and watch out for those flying creatures with the huge hands. Believe it or not, if you jump up and hit the icicles, you can stop them for a few seconds, giving you time to cross.

Use the Yellow Gem near the end to get the bird to kick the icicles off the ceiling and into the lava, so you can use them as platforms.

Frostbite!

For this boss, you'll be playing as the bird. Astal will be frozen into a crystal, and a disgusting creature will hold him hostage in said crystal.

Your health bar will be on the bottom right instead of the bottom left, since you're playing as the bird. Take a minute to get used to the flying controls for the bird and get used to flying around, dashing and attacking. The bird has the same commands as Astal, even though you the divebomb you have for the dash attack actually hits instead of grabs. The bird has a multiple-hit combo that you can use simply by whacking the enemy multiple times. The bird isn't that bad of a fighter after all!

Once you deplete some energy off the boss's health once, the boss will finally start fighting back. He'll swing to the other side, and if you can catch up with him with that dash attack of yours and hit him in the eye, that'll be some more easy damage that you can tack on. Wait for the boss to hop backwards before hitting him for the first two hits.

After two hits, the boss will start spinning around like a tornado. Keep on the move and stay away from him, and he'll eventually stop spinning. When he does, whack him again. You can also hold Down-Left and Down-Right to crawl.

If sparkles come out of the boss, a few gems will eventually rain down from above. One of them will turn into a gem soldier that can easily be done away with.

Once you beat the boss, you'll free Astal. He'll figure out that the bird reminds him of Leda, then tells the bird not to follow him as he doesn't want anything to happen to the bird...yet the bird follows him anyway.

The cutscene shows that Astal can be emotional after all...

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