A 2D beat-em-up with roguelike aspects, Absolum pulls wonderfully from these genres to create a great experience.
What Is It? After selecting one of four different characters you set forth into the fantasy-tinged world of Talamh. Your goal is to defeat the Sun King Azra who has the kingdom under his control. You won’t get there on your first, or tenth, attempt, but eventually you will build up your starting stats and skill enough to overtake Azra.
A run starts with character selection. There is a swordswoman, dwarf, assassin, and frog wizard to choose from. You won’t have all four from the start, but they unlock fairly quickly. Each has their own styles and movesets that make them unique. I found myself having significantly more success with Galandra, the swordswoman, than the other characters but each was unique and fun to play. Before heading out you select which of your character’s special moves you want to equip for this run. These are unlocked over time and have a wide range of effects. Galandra, for example, has a short, powerful stab move, a ranged attack, an attack which absorbs incoming damage and deals it back to the enemies, among others. These special attacks get charged up through normal combat and are a major part of the combat strategy.
Once you have your character and their special attack selected, you head off into Talamh. The first area you enter will always have a selection of powerups to choose from. These, dubbed rituals, are elemental-based enhancements which form a core piece of the Absolum experience. You will earn many of them throughout your runs and finding synergies among them, or simply some really cool alternative attacks, is the main reason I bought into this game and kept coming back.
The route is not randomized. You fight through a few screens before reaching a healing/shop pitstop, a boss, a fork in the road, or passage to the next island in the world. There are a handful of different paths to take. While they all end up at the same place, they feature different enemy types and, sometimes, bosses so you can find a route that best suits your style and repeat it if you’d like. All roads lead to the Sun King who awaits on the third island.
After your inevitable death, you respawn back at the beginning. You directly earn currency during runs and also experience which gets converted into one of three currency types upon your respawn. The type you can directly earn during runs gets exchanged for upgrades to your character, things such as additional health from the start, an instant respawn upon death, and increased damage. The other two currencies allow you to unlock special moves for each character and more ritual moves. The stat/extras upgrades are the most impactful for novice players like myself. Simply being able to get an extra life is massive as you try to fight through hordes of enemies and tough bosses. The rituals and special moves are fun and add to the variety as you play.
A run to the end will likely take about 40 minutes, give or take. It took me about 15 hours to meet the Sun King and I was able to defeat him on my first try. In true roguelike fashion, of course, there is much to do in Absolum once you defeat the boss. The game also features online and local co-op. I had fun running with significantly better players than myself early on just to get a sense of the game. I then spent about 10 hours fighting to get back to the spots they carried me to.
The Best Part: Seeing what combinations you can come up with between the rituals, special moves, and trinkets. On my run the first time I defeated Azra, for example, I found a trinket which would add 10% damage to each elemental type I had more than one ritual for. I stacked fire and water rituals for some hefty damage boost. I also had a trinket which allowed me to endlessly dash for five seconds after firing off a special move. This combined with a water ritual which created a small wave of damage each time I dashed made for a comically powerful dash where I often didn’t have to swing my sword, instead letting my waves, complete with their stacked damage bonus from the first trinket, do the heavy lifting. I also had a handful of shields by the end, each of which blocks 10% of the damage I received. I felt invincible and didn’t even need to use one of my two instant respawns I had at that point. Finding these combinations is the true draw of a game like Absolum and I’m happy to report there are some truly fun ones to discover.
The Worst Part: This is less a complaint about Absolum than a complaint about the genre in general, but I always get a bit discouraged by how much of my success in a given run comes down to pure luck. Absolum mitigates that somewhat by allowing you to choose your own path, knowing what lies ahead after going through them each a few times, but the general complaint is still valid. If the RNG of the drops sends you something fun, you could glide through the game. If it doesn’t, you might die relatively quickly. This is, of course, simply a natural byproduct of the genre, but it is the primary reason I don’t often seek out roguelites.
The Verdict: I’m not a massive roguelite fan, but Absolum was highly spoken of by enough people I trusted that I decided to give it a try. The game didn’t transform me into a roguelite fan, but it stands up there with Hades as a game in the genre I genuinely enjoyed despite my general complaints around the genre.
The combat is fantastic, standing up well to some top-notch recent beat-em-up titles. The progression systems in these games often make or break them for me, and Absolum definitely feeds you meaningful upgrades from the start which is a big reason I stuck around. Toss in the four playable characters, all of the various rituals and trinkets, and some wonderful looking graphics and you have a winner in my book.
If you are a roguelike fan, you’ve probably already tried Absolum. If you aren’t, I am here to tell you that it probably won’t convert you, but it might just be good enough to hold your attention even if other games have failed.
How to Play: PlayStation 4/5*, Switch, PC
*console played on for this review
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