By Luiggi Cavanna
What do you get when you grabbed “Dark Souls”, mixed it with a fighting game, and sprinkle a bit of “For Honor”? Well, you would get something pretty similar to Absolver.
Absolver is a very interesting game. It mixes fighting games with some RPG mechanics similar to the soul series and expands on the “stance” mechanic of “For Honor”, without the boring of “For Honor”. Well, I give “For Honor” a hard time because Ubisoft was incompetent in handling their game, but my main problem was that the game got old really fast, with the whole defensive meta and whatnot. For those reasons I approached “Absolver” carefully because I definitely didn’t want another game where matches will boil down to staring contest! Thankfully, “Absolver” seems to be the complete opposite. You get rewarded by being aggressive.
You can get overwhelmed really fast.
I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start explaining the mechanics of Absolver. The game works pretty similar to a Dark Souls game, where you have stats like strength, dexterity, and so on that you can allocate more points into as you level. Unliked Dark Souls, “Absolver” has an online open world where you can randomly find other players without the need of summoning sign or getting invaded. You have character customization, where you pick your hair color, skin tone, and most importantly your combat style.
You don’t have that many options.
There’s three starting styles that have different special abilities. We have Forsaken, with the ability to parry incoming attacks. Windfall, with an extra dodged ability called “avoid” that aside from letting you dodge left and right you can jump or crouch under attacks, and Khalt with absorb, that lets you tank one hit and you get your health back if you land your counterattack.
There’s and extra unlockable style that you get after defeating a boss that spawns
after you beat the game.
The combat works similar to “For Honor”, you have stances and you can perform a combo by pressing X on your controller and you have an extra attack to change your chain by pressing Y (That would be square and triangle for PS4 users). Your attacks are fully customizable in a system called combat deck.
Each attack ends in a different stance, so your next attack has to start in that stance
to form a chain. Try mixing things up with your alternative attack.
Each class starts with a set amount of moves, but don’t worry, you’ll learn more moves, including the one from the other styles, as you fight. You have to fill an experience bar for the move you want to learn. That bar is filled by blocking or using your style’s ability and you gain more experience by doing so. Be careful though, if you lose or run away, you will lose all that experience.
The white part of the circle is experience already acquired, the blue part is experience
gained in the current match.
Learning the other styles is also possible by joining other player’s schools. Yes! After winning an absurdly amount of matches in PvP you can set your own school, and other players can learn your style of fighting. When the game says “Online melee action” it’s not kidding. The game is focus on combat, and this combat is very refined. One on one battles are a blast and perfectly crafted, but facing more of one opponent can be tricky, and three or more can be impossible. That’s only a problem when you play online because the area in which you play is balanced according to how many people are in the area, and the game doesn’t care if these players are co-oping or not!
“Oh come on guys! It’s just one of me… Wait, is that two Bosses in the middle!!?”
Yes, that is two bosses in the middle, which brings me to the cons of the game. I wish I could give this game a solid ten out ten, but this game, at launch, had it’s problems. The first three days of the game were almost impossible to play online, forcing me to play offline. This reduced the difficulty of the game and I missed out on meeting other players which is part of the experience. Also while online, playing with laggy players in the area, the game can behave weirdly sometimes, like spawning two bosses, or one time I was teleported into an area of the map I wasn’t suppose to be.
I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be here… and what happened to my mask!?
Also content is an issue. The PvE part of the game is short, and the story is lacking. The world is intrique and you will get lost plenty of times, that adds to the wonder and magic of the game, but when you get familiar with all the areas, you will notice that it’s really small. The story can be summarized into: fight five open world bosses known as “marked ones”, fight two instance bosses, and the final boss. Congratulations, you became an Absolver, grab this poncho and bugger off, go PvP!
It’s a nice poncho though.
PvP only has one mode and that is “one v one”, but to be fair it’s super fun. The developers are planning to release more PvP modes as free DLC, and that’s good because this game screams “MORE CONTENT PLEASE!!”. That’s the thing, the PvE part of the game also needs more content. They could’ve released a game with just the PvP part of the game, but they released a game with both PvP and PvE, and people will want content for both.
Also, there’s two types of weapons in the game, fist weapons, and swords. This image shows three!
F’ing tease!
What are my final thoughts? Well, the game is super fun, and the combat is satisfying. I know I will be playing for a long time, but I wish that the PvE part of the game could offer more replay value. The combat is definitely better than “For Honor”, there I said it, and if you enjoy that game, and the PvP part of the souls games, you will enjoy this game.
Now I wish someone could explain to me this stupid map!!
So did you play Absolver? What are your thoughts? Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Good-bye for now my friends.
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