Astral Chain is good for a debut game
Actually I found the story slightly better (or at least engaged more) than the fighting gameplay
The chimera controls never clicked at all with me even after 20 hours, besides my starter and the dog chimera I never found battle use for the other ones. It's like a game where you got many weapons but only one or two are really good and half of them are either useless or VERY situational
This leads me to yet another unpopular opinion: The best part of the Gameplay for me is figuring out how to make use of the outside battle to solve mini puzzles or scape the dungeon (in this case astral plane), there you actually make use of all your chimeras, level-design wise Astral Chain is extremely polished for a first entry
Human world is really great to see and explore
Chimera's world is boring af visually, but the level design is very well made you kinda forgive the bland and repetitive visuals
Investigation sessions/levels are also very cool to keep you into the story. However you will hate them if you just want to blown things up
Overall it's a 8/10 for me. I'm sure a sequel will solve most main my concerns about the repetitive-looking Astral Plane and the situational chimera usage
Essay Pro