Absolum is a love letter to the simpler times, when you had to go to the arcades to be able to play video games. Bring in a full pocket of quarters, slide them inside the coin slot, and the screen would light up. You would be transferred into brave new worlds, and besides pinball machines, the beat ’em up genre was thriving in the early 90’s.
From various classics like The Punisher, Golden Axe or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, these were the titles that caught your eye due to eye candy graphics of the time, and as well due to being tough games, where you wanted to show off your prowess to the friend group or the random people that were following your journey to finish the game.
Now we are in 21st century, and video gaming has changed quite a lot. The arcades have almost gone out of work due to gaming going through your PC, or a handheld console. So it’s kind of neat to see a game that harkens to the that period of gaming innocence, but still upgrading and giving a new itch for each gamer to test their mettle out.
This is a combined effort from two developing teams, Guard Crush Games which has established themselves as developer who knows the beat ’em up genre. They already garnered attention with the Streets of Rage 4. The visual part of the game is done by the independent animating studio team from France, SUPAMONKS. When these two combined their imagination and love for the genre, we get a game like Absolum. The publisher that brings them together is Dotemu, and they have a pretty neat track record of releasing games that cater to the specific genre crowd.
Now, what’s Absolum about? We are transferred to a lush epic fantasy world of Talamh. World is in a great disarray, the tyrant king Azra The Conqueror is on a skirmish to eradicate all the magic from the world. People are enslaved or worse, killed while his evil armies go and wreak havoc over the land. But there is still hope, a few heroes step into the light and form a rebellion and they won’t go out without a fight.
They are Galandra and Karl. Both of them are on the path of no return, but they are not alone, accompanying them within this arduous journey are also Cider and Brome. These four heroes will need to discover all the secrets, and use the magic powers to be able to dethrone the tyrant and get back their world into harmonius state.
This sounds quite enticing for epic fantasy fans, which will surely be delighted. Let’s talk about these four characters for a bit. Galandra is a warrior character class, which uses her broadsword (size of the sword and design is a nod to legendary Berserk manga!) to slash and dice them. Karl the dwarf, on another hand uses his fists and agility, and as a special has his trusty blundederbass that’s used for crowd control.
Cider is the mysterious character, that’s agile, and uses mines and clones to be able to take the heat off and then to do some quite insane combos, and i think this will be a popular character due to specific set of skills.
Lets not forget our frog boy, Brome. The wizard that flies like an eagle, but stings with his magic and tongue. All of these four characters are presented with their specific designs, and storylines where you go on about over the map to finish questlines and to see their personal stories and upgrade them for the final battle.
The animation part is insanely detailed, and you can see a lot of effort put for all of them to emote to various states, from getting hit, or a jump, a lot of things are happening animation wise. Same can be said for the design of each of the islands that you will traverse. Penchant for quite high and believable details to make it clear that each island has it’s own biome. All of this clearly, screams for Absolum to get it’s own animated show that can accompany the game. Fingers crossed that it happens at one point.
Talamh may look like a small world, but actually it’s quite vast and wide. That’s where the rogeulike mechanic comes into play. For the most part this genre is oversaturated, but here the devs thought of a way how to improve and do something a bit different. You always start from the main hub, which serves as a place where you can upgrade various skills, from the magical specials for each character, to the stats.
On the map, you start from Grandery, and going through the levels, you have the free will to choose the pathways that open brand new routes. It can be a different placement of enemies, or a new Ritual, Trinket or Inspiration that your characters will find throughout the journey. Dying is a integral part, although you loose the upgrades you find on your initial run. You will then be prompted to try other characters, and to make new builds, and to communicate with the NPC’s within the base.
Which in turn will make them give you brand new quests, that will be shown on the map. With this you will never experience the same playthrough, but open new areas, and even hidden boss enemies or better power upgrades.
Let me skim through the main components that shall influence your future builds. First one is the Arcana. Each character has their specifically unique abilities. They are opened up by buying the upgrades at the main hub, and always stay available once purchased.
Rituals are element based, they are randomly assigned awards during a run, you can usually choose between two, but when you break the Crystal vial, even three come into play to choose from. They consist of five elements, and when you die, you lose them forever.
Trinkets are the items you find through each playthrough, they will either greatly help your character and make some insane builds, or they will be just passable. Whenever you die you lose these, but once you open them up, within the main hub you have a shop where you can go and before each new run buy one of these but choose carefully.
Inspirations which are acquired after beating a boss, these are skills that will really help your character to make insane combo damage. Because of these you will take more care of how you go about through your runs. They are lost when you die, and i would love for them to stay with you, but i guess they wanted the players sweating.
As for the attacks, it may looks simple at a first glance, where you use a regular attack, but there’s also usage of the Skill that you assigned to the character. You can also grab the enemies and chunk them into a wall, or an exploding barrel. It’s entirely up to you how you want to go about it.
Managing a right combination and usage of your Skill and Arcana, can trigger the Clash effect. This blocks the hit from the enemies, and can also stun one, or larger group, and leads into Punish. For example if you Clash the arrow, or energy beam they shoot at you, it will return back to the enemy who fired it. When you master this and the timing, you will become nearly invincible.
Should you continue hitting the opponent, it can raise Pressure. When you get 100% on that, it expands into Overpressure, which deals even more damage, and launches the enemy far away from the player, but outlines them with a white color and makes them impervious to the attacks while this effect lasts.
You can go with the usage of one same attack, repeatedly and this maker your hits Repetitive. Has a same effect as Overpressure, but there isn’t bonus damage included. When the enemies are down, normal Strikes will miss them. You can instead user Skill to land the hits, and to keep the continuation of the combo, which leads into Tech Hits. Critical hits are happening randomly, and are mostly attuned to your luck levels, so if you have great luck stats, then the critical hits shall be bountiful.
Your defence option consist of Deflecting. Basically your Dash button needs to be clicked without moving, and you will be able to deflect some of the incoming attacks and stagger the enemies.
If you choose to use Dash, but move up or down, you will perform a dash up or dash down. Should you dash in any direction, and include Jump, before the enemy attack hits you. Then you will Dodge it, and you can press attack and lead into Punish. Some of the Rituals that you find will trigger during the Dodge, they have various effects.
Besides being able to play a solo run, you are also offered to buy various mercenaries through the levels. They aren’t that intelligent, but they will be your damage sponges, or giving you enough time to survive a near death experience. The mounts are also showing up in each of the levels, and they are cute, you even have the option to pet them all.
Multiplayer online is currently only available for two players. For me personally the experience was a bit mixed. When trying to connect with other players, sometimes it took 15 to 30 seconds, while at certain points took even a few minutes. There have been couple of runs where there were break ups in connection, and you would then continue further without your virtual comrade, and journey on the adventure alone. Would love somehow to see an implementation to get that player back and to resume the run.
I would have also loved that co-op isn’t only for two players online, the addition of other two players would actually make every playthrough totally different. So hopefully the devs, will be able to implement this feature with the future updates. The good thing is that there’s a communication button, a simple one where a wheel opens up and shows, forward, back, stop etc. Which is quite helpful when you encounter the players that want to rush through each level instead of exploring for secrets.
Also when you play with another player, depending on your progression, the story will be accommodated that you don’t get too much into the story but to be on similar track like the lesser leveled team mate.
I would wholeheartedly recommend the game to experienced old school players and especially to new comers to these two specific genres. It might take a bit of a learning curve at the start of the game, but once you get the hang of things, you will be able to enjoy it immensely.
Absolum (PC)
Absolum right now looks like a pioneering game, where the level design, and core gameplay will stir thing up. And atop of it all is the magical soundtrack which will get you hooked to listen to it outside of the game. It will transport you into each part of the land that you will gladly go over and over to discover all the secrets. With the high quality and detailed animation style it should inspire other developers to step up with their imagination, and how old and new ideas can be presented in a fresh take on both genres.
