Absolum Review (PS5) – Roguelite Beat-Em Up At Its Finest

Absolum PS5 Review

A Constantly Changing Story

The story of Absolum follows four heroes on a quest to take back the magic stolen by the Sun King named Azra. Azra and his followers rule the land with an iron fist and have stripped the world of magic and taken it for themselves. You take on the role of Galandra, Karl, Cidar, and Brome as you set off to defeat Azra and restore magic to the world.

You’re not going to get a grand cinematic story here, but it’s passible. Azra, as a villain, is really cool, and his motives are not all that obvious at first, so there are some twists and turns. Each of the four playable characters also has a story to tell, and a lot of their story comes from the locations you visit as they visit their homelands.

Each character plays roughly the same, but has unique strengths. That doesn’t mean they can’t get through the game and every enemy they face, but some characters perform better in some areas than others.

Cidar, for example, is an expert in aerial combos. She can grab onto an enemy from afar with her mechanical arm, utilizing her special attack, which pulls her close to her enemies and allows her to attack them in the air, maintaining the aerial attacks. Karl, being a dwarf, is more grounded, so he doesn’t pose a significant threat in the air.

A Roguelite With Plenty Of Options

This becomes important to remember as you unlock Rituals that enhance their abilities and even unlock new ones. As you clear areas on the map, you get a choice at the end of each location to select a new Arcana. These vary from adding Burning to each of your strikes to adding additional moves to your combos.

It’s essential to plan when considering which Ritual to acquire. Though the Rituals that appear are random, it still helps to plan what path you take on the map and what enemies and bosses you’ll encounter to build your Arcana up to give you a leg up in those encounters.

As it’s a roguelite, these Rituals aren’t something you’ll get to keep. If you perish in combat, it’s game over, and you have to start over. You do get to keep all the gems you acquired in your run, though, which allow you to upgrade your passive abilities, which range from increased drop rates, more substantial damage from mounts, or increases in critical damage.

Preparation Is Key

You can also use these gems to buy Boons to start your new run with some extra buffs. These Boons, much like Rituals, are more physical in nature and increase your movement speed, health recovery rate from food items, or additional damage from throwable weapons.

All of this can be done from your home base. The home base also allows you to unlock new super attacks for each character and unlock new Rituals and Arcana that can appear in the game.

Arcana are your super attacks, and you can unlock up to eight per character, but you can only use one at a time. Much later in the game, you can unlock two to use.

You can also train and practice your combos at a training dummy, along with some others that unlock later in the game, which can vastly change your playing experience.

A Vast World With Plenty Of Paths To Take

The world of Talamh is fantastic. You get to choose where you explore from branching paths that feature burning towns with a goblin invasion, a forest overrun with goblins, A swamp full of lizard soldiers, or even an undead kingdom full of skeletons and ghosts. There is a lot of variety, and even those paths have branching paths as well.

It’s not so easy to find everything, though. As you play and replay maps, they tend to change with the game’s map generator. One run will have you walking along a beach fighting wild dogs, another run in the same spot will see you exploring a beach with destroyed ships and cargo scattered around.

Here is where the game’s replay value really shines. Not only do locations change, but they may also change with hidden quests. Some locations will have you encounter characters or items that start new quests that lead to new locations.

Some Repetition Doesn’t Hinder The Entertainment

I absolutely love this type of exploration. Every time I died, I had something new to look forward to. A lot of these new quests and locations require different characters to access, as well, forcing you to play the game with everyone at some point, and even upgrading and acquiring specific rituals to access new locations.

That’s not to say there isn’t any repetition, because there is. It’s an issue that happens with every beat-’em-up game, and you will travel through a lot of the same locations and face off against the same bosses.

That is unavoidable, but the game does its best to keep those encounters feeling as fresh as they can.

Excellent Combat And Boss Fights

The actual combat in Absolum is fantastic; the crisp animations and brutal combos make every strike feel meaningful. You can combo, use special attacks, pull off juggle combos, grab foes, and throw them off cliffs or at other enemies. It allows you to do everything you can expect in a beat’em up.

You find a variety of throwable weapons as well that can add a lot to combat, as well as magical items that shoot laser beams, right through to your standard array of axes and knives to throw.

Absolum features some really cool bosses, each of which plays significantly differently from the other. The Underking uses a sythe that is also a cannon, which summons underlings to his aid and unleashes rapid fire flame blasts that you have to use the environment to avoid.

The Undead Queen is invulnerable until you destroy her totems while fending off an endless wave of skeleton warriors.

As Difficult Or As Easy As You Want

Unfortunately, the game only supports two-player local and online co-op. Though I would love to have four-player co-op, I can also see the game getting extremely chaotic with four players. The two-player co-op was already chaotic for me.

One of the game’s best features is its difficulty. You can play the game however you want when it comes to difficulty. You can play in god mode if you so choose, or even one-hit kill for yourself. Absolum allows you to change the amount of damage you take, anywhere from 0% damage to 250% damage.

This works for both players, so if you want to have a challenge but your buddy wants to take it easy, you can set it up so the game feels like Streets of Rage 3 to you while your buddy plays in God Mode.

That being said, even playing on a normal or even easy level of difficulty, the final encounter in the game is a doozy. It’s not only one of the most extraordinary final encounters if experienced in a beat’em up, but it’s also one of the hardest.

Not just because the fight is brutal, but because of the length of the encounter, with the lack of any healing items, you have to get through

Pleasing To The Eyes And The Ears

The visuals are yet another incredible achievement for DotEmu, which has become known for its incredible hand-drawn visuals and animation. Each location is masterfully crafted with great detail from the foreground to the background.

There is a lot to see here. The enemies and characters are also all unique, and the enemy variety is actually pretty high, considering what you get in a lot of beat-’em-ups.

The soundtrack is yet another standout, offering a wide range of variety, from heavy rock to folk-style melodies and symphonic epics, all of which are present. The sound design is also great, with every punch exploding from the screen. Surprisingly, the voice work is also top-notch. There isn’t a lot of it, but when it’s there, it’s very welcome.

Absolum is another fantastic outing for DotEmu and Guard Crush. Taking what they learned from their previous works and implementing it into a brand new IP is something only a few studios can do.

Absolum is not only one of the best beat-’em-up titles I’ve played, but it’s also easily DotEmu’s best outing yet, and easily establishes them as the best developer in this genre for the current generation.

Absolum is out now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Review Code kindly provided by PR.