The most fun I’ve had with combat for a long time
I’ve played my fair share of games with various combat mechanics, some have been poor, had great ideas but not well executed and others have been amazing, fun, and engaging which is exactly what Absolum succeeded at, very well too may I add.
Several aspects made me enjoy the combat as a whole, which were the various abilities, bosses, enemies, along with the satisfying attacks and combos. The kicks and punches despite throwing hundreds of them were just as satisfying as the first one, I was so into that sometimes I would hit the controls harder and faster than necessary, if I had to say why it was so addictive I feel like that describes it almost perfectly.
Not only was it the basic attacks that made the combat so great, but the throwables which included knifes and axes were a great resource and switched the combat system up, not to mention how useful they were especially in boss fights, allowing for long ranged attacks without taking much damage. The ultimates and special abilities for each character also added more variety, special abilities were easy to charge up, you deal damage and the bar fills simple, the ultimates though are a lot harder to gain, you always start with one but it’s very rare to find more in chests or breakables. Regardless they’re both quite strong and fun to use.
There’s still more, after helping save a frog from the swamp and approaching her upon starting a new run, she’s able to help you enhance rituals and unlock some strong abilities for elements like fire and lightning and also for necromancy and time. These are extremely useful and makes the game so much easier and enjoyable, it does take quite a lot of effort however to unlock ones which are very helpful, so you’ll have to put in a decent amount of hours into it.
Having to beat the game through runs instead of in a single go was its biggest weakness
Most story games have you beat the game in one playthrough, allowing you to save your progress on multiple files and when you die you go back to your latest save. Some games of course do only give you one life to complete it though that’s often on the hardest difficulty, what Absolum does is only give you one life without a difficulty setting, there is no easy, normal or hard mode to choose from, the only feature there is to make your life a bit easier is to reduce the damage you receive and deal.
You can either increase or decrease both so you can make it much easier or a lot more challenging, if the game was too much of a breeze for anyone. But here’s the kicker, this is only available on co-op mode, you’re probably wondering why I’m saying that like it’s a really bad thing, after all you have one extra person helping you beat the game, the levels, abilities, and enemies you fight are the same so what’s the problem?
Well with all good things come drawbacks, and for Absolum’s co-op mode it’s that there are a lot more enemies who all have extra health, to put it simply it’s quite chaotic. Not to mention that if the other player has really bad connection then it can impact your gameplay too, regardless it does make beating the game easier thanks to the difficulty option, just be prepared to fight a lot more enemies on potentially much worse ping.
With that said having to beat the game on one run on your own or with someone else was something I found quite annoying at first. I would constantly die either early on or very late on which annoyed me the most, and to get back there and beat the game I would have to beat the same areas, levels, and enemies constantly which as you can imagine quickly became repetitive and rather boring.
But after a while I didn’t mind, since you were able to unlock more abilities, try out new trinkets, and make strong and unique builds, not to mention the combat even after 12 hours of constant punching and kicking was still satisfying and highly enjoyable. It took me about 20 runs to finally reach the end and defeat Azra the Sun King, but it was worth it.
On your journey you won’t always be fighting alone however, you do have options to hire mercenaries to help you on your quest to defeat Azra, though they do come at a cost. Most of them cost 50 coins with the stronger ones costing 100, they don’t last that long but they can be quite useful, taking some of the heat whilst dealing some damage.
Meds were quite hard to come by which encouraged cautious gameplay
If you’ve ever played any games that have a survival aspect to them or a character health bar, then you’ll know how important healing items are. You’ll look high and low to ensure you have an adequate amount for an upcoming boss fight or for an area you know will be swarmed with enemies. Absolum however strays completely from that, in the sense that you can’t actually carry and stack the already scarce healing items that you’ll come across in the various areas.
Healing comes in the form of food, from bread to cheese you’ll find them in breakables like barrels or sometimes in chests, though they’re not easy to find. There isn’t actually a way to increase the number of healing items you find so most of the time it’s just luck based and considering this is a roguelite game it’s not at all surprising, despite how annoying it can be.
There was nothing worse than going through several different levels and taking so much damage, destroying all breakables and finding only one food item which didn’t heal you that much knowing that a boss fight is upcoming, it doesn’t exactly make one ooze with confidence, if anything it pretty much means the likelihood of defeating the boss is very slim, depending on how low your health actually is of course.
Though there were other ways to heal in the form of Hearthroots which you’ll come across every now and then, it’s a completely safe area with a massive campfire in the middle that heals you slightly, you can increase the amount of health they restore by buying upgrades on the soul tree, you can also buy other upgrades with earned crystals such as increasing the maximum amount of hp you have amongst other things which makes the runs much easier.
Analyzing enemies attacks and improving on dodging and clashing I also found was great to preserve health, I would still get hit of course but it was less frequently, meaning that whenever I found food I was near enough fully healed. There’s also a trinket which reduces the amount of damage you take, so if you manage to find them frequently in shops or after completing an area then you’ll practically be a walking tank by the end of the game.
