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dkirschner's Absolum (PC)

[August 17, 2026 10:18:45 AM]

This is an arcade-style beat-em-up mixed with a roguelite. The developers clearly know both genres. The result is interesting for sure. It works for sure. But it only held my attention for about 5 hours before feelings of repetition and boredom set in. I see this as evidence that you can layer most any genre with roguelite elements, but that some genres might tend to produce deeper progression systems and more varied gameplay than others.

I am most familiar with the deckbuilding roguelite genre, wherein every run in a great game is full of strategic battles, tough decisions, varied builds, and so on. You’re thinking all the time. In this beat-em-up roguelite hybrid though, I rarely thought. Strategy goes on the back burner, while combat is foregrounded. This should be fine as long as there’s enough variation from run to run, but the combat got old, despite the developers’ attempts to make each character unique and to offer multiple paths and introduce some randomness to keep things fresh.

There are four characters who mainly differ in their special abilities (arcanas). They all have a regular 4-hit combo with the X button, a strong attack with the Y button, they can jump, grapple, etc…all similar basic moves. But then for the arcanas, the dwarf attacks with his gun in various ways, the frog uses some magic spells, and so on. More variety comes in the “rituals,” which are elemental attacks. This is part of creating a build during a run. There are six types of rituals: fire, lightning, necromancy, and so on. Fire rituals allow you to do things like set enemies to burn with your X or Y attacks, leave a burning trail behind after dashing, create a flaming wreath around you that hits enemies after you block, and so on. Lightning rituals are all about stacking “static” and discharging it with chain lightning, and creating sparks that track and zap enemies. Water rituals are all about creating tidal waves (which damage and knock back enemies) and bubbles (which allow you to launch enemies into things). Necromancy rituals are all about creating skeletons and stacking spectral armor. More advanced spells are ritual hybrids that do things using two elements.

Usually, you trigger burning or spawn skeletons or whatever—the ritual effects—by attacking, dodging, deflecting, or clashing. This is where the game draws inspiration from modern combat systems. Dodge is dodge. You move away from an attack. Deflecting is dodging into an attack. Clashing is using your strong Y attack when an enemy attacks (basically a parry). After any of these three actions, you can press X to “punish” the enemy, which initiates a counter that does extra damage. This reminded me of Space Marine 2’s free pistol shot with R2 after dodging or parrying.

So, you are doing all that, triggering all the conditions for your rituals, and by stacking rituals of the same element or that trigger on the same condition, you tend to specialize for a run. For example, you might start a run by getting a fire ritual that says “apply burn to an enemy after X combo finisher.” That means you’re going to use your X regular attack more than your Y strong attack and you’re going to look for more fire or “X” attack rituals. Then you might get a water ritual that causes a wave upon your X finisher. Okay, now you’re really going after the X attack rituals. Alternatively, you might find a lot of rituals that trigger on Y attack, or that trigger on clash, and so on, so I found myself mashing X, or mashing Y, or focusing on clashing, or whatever during each run.

Runs themselves start repeating pretty quickly. I was really, really tired of playing the first area (which I did 13 times). And there is the most path variety in that first area. In the others, there are basically like 1.5 paths. The first area has a decent amount of branching. But this is the same concept as other roguelites. You choose to go left or right, or whatever, and balance risk and reward. There might be an easier boss one way with a guaranteed ritual, but a harder boss the other way with a ritual and extra gold. I like that the game weaves quests across your runs, such that even after I beat the game, I still had a few outstanding quests to do. I got pretty far on my own, but I was getting bored and the meta-progression (spend crystals that you earn each run to start with more HP, start with more gold, increase damage in the air, etc., etc.) was starting to feel grindy, so I turned on “assist” mode, made myself invincible, then waltzed through two complete runs so that I saw most everything. Cool game, but didn’t hold my attention that long. I wish runs were more varied and strategic. I think I just prefer deckbuilding or other genres instead of beat-em-ups, so the beat-em-up / roguelite hybrid, while novel, didn’t suck me in.