ABSOLVER

First off: It’s Free on Playstation Network This Month

For me, Absolver is worth its time. The game is pretty harshly divided though, so I’ll say this going in that more than anything that’s come across PS+ as a budget game or any of our modern jank it’s definitely one that’s more Love It or Hate It than anything I’ve probably written about so far this year.

(the website i found this on is cool. check them out!)

ABSOLVER is a martial arts - action adventure - souls inspired game. It’s a little bit of that God Hand we liked, but not all of the parts of it to justify a direct comparison.

ABSOLVER is kind of like a much more polished version of the old furry-beatemup that was all the rage on Steam a decade ago.

Primarily though, Absolver is best played as a slow-burn martial arts journey where you’re confused by the system, aimless and constantly losing.

This is all kind of stream of consciousness, but here’s what I like about ABSOLVER

You will lose. A lot. Dying is kind of fun. The areas in ABSOLVER are small, so you respawn quickly and then you jaunt back off to try again and figure out where you went wrong. It’s a frustrating and sometimes cumbersome game to play, so I this is good for me.

The way you learn new techniques is about mastering your block abilities You can either dodge, block or parry in ABSOLVER. Each one of them has their own strengths and weaknesses, but I didn’t like that you get locked into your selection at the beginning of the game.

You learn more moves in ABSOLVER by either blocking unknown attacks, or using your block ability. For me this means I’ve got to study opponents a little bit longer, because I am better at dodging than having a strong guard.

It pays off though. There’s not a whole lot of feelings for me in videogames lately like dodging the last attack of an enemy, and immediately finishing them off unscathed.

Especially because hits in ABSOLVER have that good padded feeling that old martial arts movies had. None of that Mortal Kombat bone crunching here, and you half expect dust to get everywhere when you hit someone.

ABSOLVER is pretty to look at at the very least. There’s a lot of these really incredible views of ruined cities and destroyed citadels. You’re fighting in the ruins of a long gone civilization, and it shows. There are frequent battles on bridges and over crumbling rooftops.


(in a cool bit of sound design here, the music cuts out and you can hear the rickety bridge turn and creak in the wind)

The way ABSOLVER’s combat works is by starting you off with a simple deck of moves based on your starting fighting style. You can meditate at any time in the game world, guaranteeing you safety to re-shuffle your fighting style around. You don’t quite start getting as many options as a game like God Hand gives you until you’re a quarter of the way through the game or more.

You can always get more by learning them from the enemy opponents, whether they’re players or what have you.

You’ll run into players pretty often, and most seemed pretty nice. I was fighting two guys at once, and instead of joining a guy watched and jumped in excitement like a background character in a street fighter stage. When I won, he gave me the thumbs up and ran to parts unknown.

My favorite part is that all of the equipment so far makes me look like a badguy. I’ve seen riffs on standard martial arts movie costumes often, but I’m going for this kind of ragged-hobo drunken boxer look.

There are no jokes in this thread, cuz times are too rough right now for humor.

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I really disliked how much you had to grind blocking against moves to learn them when I played it on PC like a month after release, it just felt horrible and seemed like a real game design mistake

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What I’ll say I’ve found is that if you use the blocking style the game sets you up with, dodging parrying etc, you get roughly twice the amount of experience you’d get just letting attacks hit your guard. You also get more experience fighting players than you do NPC’s.

That everyone in this game is sort of on similar footing except in actual direct 1 v 1 mode makes combat less anxiety ridden than Dark Souls. I’ve so far never had to be afraid of getting ganked in one hit because of equipment. Just getting cornered by some dude’s weird ass muay thai elbows

yeah it’s really neat! I felt like for every genuinely ambitious / interesting / classy thing it did though it also made another weird misstep

like the stats are totally irrelevant and the world is empty and the meta is repetitive but it’s such a strong foundation

the combat genuinely feels good for the most part which is amazing coming from a <10 person unity project but the stances are boring and there’s not a lot going on in the levels

Also: here is a snippet of a video where I just walked past another player a moment before and he had the gall to attack me while my back was turned.

It is exactly the kind of game that I feel would have came out towards the end of the PS1’s lifespan. That kind of weird mish-mash of beatemup and we don’t know yet.

I will also say that there’s something great about ruining someone’s day in this game and then pulling them out of the afterlife before they can respawn away.

I’m glad it’s on plus, it felt like it definitely needed a bigger community

Hopefully it grants the developers the ability to do some DLC or a follow up. There are really good ideas here, just a few missteps.

The thing i didn’t like about move learning was how you lose any gained experience if you die in a fight and you managed to get a few good dodges or parries in. I don’t mind a little penalty but it just feels disrespectful of my time when I just want to build my tool box and get to the meat of the game.

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i don’t usually care about how well games run but this seems really rough on ps4.
it mostly feels good and the style works well. glad it’s free, i should play some more

Unity’s PS4 port continues to blow