Awaken Astral Blade trailer breaks out some neat Metroidvania mechanics and a release window

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Awaken Astral Blade is as slick as it is stylish with deft platforming and gorgeous anime-inspired visuals

Awaken Astral Blade is a larger-than-life Metroidvania with massive monsters, precise platforming, and more earth-shattering magic than you can shake a gated map at. Its latest trailer is jam-packed with all of the above and more, tracking some of bionically-enhanced protagonist Tania's turbulent journey to reveal her origins and fate – while kicking scores of alien enemy butt along the way.  

Better still, Awaken Astral Blade now has a release window – Q3 2024 - as revealed at the Future Games Show Spring Showcase.

With this news you can, of course, wishlist Awaken Astral Blade right now on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, as well as PS5 and PS4 consoles. As showcased in its new trailer, the 2D side-scroller follows Tania through the rainforests of the Horace Islands in search of the missing 'Investigation Force' – but instead finds that a deadly energy has flooded the archipelago that's mutated its animals and plants into deadly beasties. 

Through all of this, Tania will rely on an Abilities System in order to hone their combat skills and combos, such as Parry, Fast-Stand-Up and Hyperfocus. Customizing your loadout in Awaken Astral Blade is vital to Tania's survival, therefore a mix-and-match approach across Talents, weapons, abilities and costumes is paramount on the path to success. In-line with familiar Metroidvania trappings, success will hinge on taking down some larger than life boss baddies, against which your learned skills – as well as Tania's penchant for targeting enemy weak spots to deal extra damage – will help you prevail.

As illustrated in the above trailer, Awaken Astral Blade is as slick as it is stylish, where deft platforming meets gorgeous anime-inspired visuals, all set within a fantastical world full of wonder and filled with hostile natives who are not pleased with your presence? Filling the shoes of the multi-talented Tania, will you prevail? That's a question you can now answer later this year, when Awaken Astral Blade arrives in Q3 2024. 

If you’re looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.

Joe Donnelly
Joe Donnelly
Contributor

Joe Donnelly is a sports editor from Glasgow and former features editor at GamesRadar+. A mental health advocate, Joe has written about video games and mental health for The Guardian, New Statesman, VICE, PC Gamer and many more, and believes the interactive nature of video games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform. His book Checkpoint considers the complex intersections of video games and mental health, and was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book of the Year for non-fiction in 2021. As familiar with the streets of Los Santos as he is the west of Scotland, Joe can often be found living his best and worst lives in GTA Online and its PC role-playing scene.