From the same creators behind Streets of Rage 4 comes “Absolum”, a beat ’em up that utilizes its fantasy setting to integrate roguelike mechanics into the genre. Tasked to travel the land in hopes of defeating the oppressive Sun King, players have a selection of four unique characters to complete their quest. Along the way, the heroes will run into goblins, skeletons, and all sorts of other enemies in their path. Death is expected, but the player will be reborn time and again until they achieve their perfect run.
Initially, players can only choose between two of the four characters. Karl is a brawling dwarf with access to a firearm, while Galandra is an elf who has a mix of quick melee attacks and heavy sword skills. Cider and Brome are a bit more technical than the first two and are unlocked later on. Cider is an agile assassin with an arsenal of gadgets, and Brome is a powerful mage who has multiple projectile arcane attacks. Using classic archetypes found in RPGs as the foundation for a beat ’em up roster is reminiscent of the old Dungeons & Dragons games from Capcom, and it proves to be a fun idea that is worth revisiting.
Absolum challenges common criticisms of the beat ’em up genre by embracing popular mechanics.
It’s worth noting that the developers of Absolum (Guard Crush Games) have experimented with Roguelike elements before, adding them as part of a DLC package with Streets of Rage 4’s survival mode. This proved to be quite popular with the game’s audience, and for good reason. Beat ’em ups have a reputation, among detractors, for not having much replay value on top of generally short playtime. At the forefront of the genre, GCG has seemingly found a solution for these problems — rewarding repetition is a successful way to combat them.
When attempting runs, players will earn the spoils of battle after clearing waves of enemies. Some of these rewards are small bundles of gold and crystals, but there are also trinkets and rituals that can be acquired. Trinkets are items that add additional stat effects, which are tiered by their rarity. Common trinkets can boost aspects like movement speed, damage done to multiple enemies, etc. Trinkets of higher rarity generally have more specific abilities, such as doing +50% damage when attacking enemies with their back turned. Trinkets can also be purchased at the hub world with crystals, but it might be better to wait a bit until all upgrades are received.
Rituals are magical upgrades tied to the elements, which add additional properties to each character’s moveset. These include standard fare such as burn effects and the like, but making deeper runs to stack these rituals together can create some really powerful combinations. Even more rituals and ritual types can be unlocked after making enough progress through the various levels. Defeating bosses can also yield unique attacks for each character, which help flesh out their base combat potential. While these upgrades are strong, it might make players wish these attacks could be available at the start of the run – even if it was at a set cost similar to trinkets.
While there’s plenty of tantalizing offensive options to keep the player wanting more, it’s getting the hang of the game’s defensive techniques that will lead to longer runs more consistently. Players can dodge, deflect, and clash with enemy attacks to avoid damage. Food items that restore health are a long-time staple of the genre, so veterans will notice their scarcity in Absolum. This is obviously in line with the roguelike structure, so utilizing all available options is important to make it through the early portions of the game.
Absolum has all the bells and whistles for a nice experience, but forgot to tighten up some nuts and bolts.
As a product, Absolum wants to set a higher standard for its peers. It excels in style and animation quality, but also looks to build a richer world and cast of characters. It accomplishes this with some pretty solid voice acting and a story that maintains interest without slowing down the pace that beat ’em up fans are used to. With each main area having multiple routes to discover and each playable character having their own side quests to accomplish, there’s a sizeable experience that can be enjoyed solo or with a friend for at least 20+ hours. It’s not without issues, however.
While the overall experience of Absolum is worth its price point, there were some prevalent technical problems. Namely, the primary save file used for this review was stuck in a crashing loop for quite a while. After unlocking and equipping the third color for all characters for a run, the game seemed to always crash after dying and being sent back to the hub world. Abandoning a run is also considered a form of death, so that wasn’t the solution.
With trying to be as fair as possible, the game does grant the player two revives for each run through, upgrading at the hub world. This clearly wasn’t the best run when discovering this issue. Starting another save file also proved to be a fruitless endeavor, unfortunately. When trying to unlock an arcane attack at the hub world, another consistent crashing loop occured. Why this didn’t happen in the first save file is anybody’s guess.
While these particular issues were resolved following an update, they did impact the playing experience. It doesn’t sit right to be too harsh on the game for issues that have already been fixed, but it would also be deceptive to ignore the potential consumer experience at hand in case later bugs are found. With some polish, Absolum will prove itself a solid title with respectable goals.
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