Review: Absolum (Nintendo Switch 2)

Absolum is a roguelite beat ‘em up developed by Supamonks and DotEmu and published by DotEmu. With multiple characters to choose from, local and online co-op, and multiple paths to explore, this title will keep your attention for quite a while.

The objective is to take down the Sun King Azra. As with most baddies, he’s conquering lands and has enslaved wizards as if they’re the bad guys all because some wizards made a mistake with magic that created a cataclysm. (Yeah, it’s a pretty big mistake.) Regardless, the Sun King takes advantage of the commonfolk’s panic and uses it as an opportunity to take over the world. It’s up to you, with the help of some friends, to defeat the Sun King.

Absolum begins with a lot of exposition and backstory. Through this, it walks you through a light tutorial—from walking to jumping to attacking. It also introduces the two main characters: Galandra the Elf and Karl the Dwarf. Going forward, you choose one of these two characters to play as during your current run. Or, if you have a friend to play with, you can go through a run together.

There are two other characters to unlock: Brome and Cider. It’s a shame the game doesn’t offer four-player co-op, but I can understand why because it may take you some time to unlock the other two playable characters.

Being a roguelite, Absolum is one of those games where you see how far you can go in one run. Expect to die. A lot. Yet, with each new run, you’ll find yourself getting farther. During each run, as you defeat enemies, you’ll earn gemstones. Upon dying, you’ll appear back at The Hearth, the hubworld, and use those gemstones to get upgrades such as increased health, new attacks, and the like. You’ll be that much stronger beginning your next run.

You’ll also earn money, which is helpful in The Hearth and in the middle of your runs. The map has certain checkpoints, especially after defeating a boss. Here, you’ll be able to heal some of your health, buy upgrades that will only last throughout the remainder of your current run, and even hire an NPC to help along. They’ll fight alongside you until they run out of HP.

You’ll get familiar with the map in Absolum relatively quickly, especially the first areas. It’s a linear path, but there are some branching areas across four different lands, each with its own set of bosses. The boss battles are difficult. After losing to the first boss I encountered so many times, I chose a different path and, because I was stronger at that point, I was able to defeat the other boss in one go. After dying, I went back to the first boss believing I was some hot-shot and still got my butt kicked. Such is the nature of this genre, though. This game keeps you playing without getting too frustrated. At some points, when I had little health left, I wanted to die just so I could go back to The Hearth, get some upgrades, and try again.

Absolum provides just the right amount of challenge, but if it’s too tricky for you, it has unique difficulty settings. At any point during your run, you can hit pause and increase or decrease the amount of damage you take from enemies or you deal to enemies ranging from 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, to 0%. Remember that boss battle I struggled with? I kept my damage to him at 100% and decreased his damage to me to 50% to help me get through it.

I really liked the way they handled the difficulty settings so you don’t feel frustrated if you get stuck. Since you can change it at any point in the game, you can make a boss easier if you need to and then bump it back to normal for the next area. Or, you can make the game more challenging by decreasing the strength of your attacks to enemies. If you’re playing with a younger sibling, you can change it so they take zero damage from enemies so they can mash buttons alongside you without the consequences. It adds so much more replayability despite the game already having a high replayability rate.

Speaking of button mashing, that’s exactly what I like to see from my beat ‘em ups. I don’t even think, I just push buttons and whack enemies with accidental combos. That said, the hack ‘n’ slash wasn’t as fluid as I would have liked. The game did not lag or anything, I believe it’s just the style the developers chose for fighting. It looks great, but I didn’t care for the way it felt. My depth perception was also off a lot of the time, and I missed big slashes more times than I’d care to admit. Now, this isn’t an issue with the game itself, it’s just my personal preference. I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with the title, regardless.

Absolum is a strong roguelite with enough content to keep you busy for hours and always wanting to try one more time. If you’re a fan of beat ‘em up games and want fun characters to play as with challenging bosses, then certainly pick this game up.