Absolum

Absolutely amazing

I only started getting into the Beat-'Em-Up genre recently but it's quickly become one of my favorites and I consider this the closest the genre has gotten to roguelike perfection. It's REALLY hard, even on base difficulties but that just makes it's all the more satisfying when you master the block system and start bulldozing all the enemies who previously beat you down. There's a nice rotation of player options between light/heavy attacks, specials, grabs, and spells that make player expression diverse even within the same build. Easily one of my favorite indie releases of the last few years and my personal favorite beat-'em-up I've played. There are so many different upgrades that no two runs will be the same, which I think is ideal for a roguelike. But there's also the option in the postgame to spend leftover upgrade currency on specific items, creating an easy way to theorycraft and try out specific builds without trivializing your in-run decisions. I think this system gives the best of both worlds and offers a more fun variation to the usual "banish" systems roguelikes use. The hand-drawn art is gorgeous and the animations have a ton of punch that make landing combos feel incredible. I especially loved Karl the dwarf with his grappling, arial mobility, and a super satisfying headbutt. Countering enemies with a heavy attack felt so badass every time, but doubly so when you're doing it with your forehead. It's fully voice-acted and everyone involved does an exceptional job. with the main villain in particular having one of the coolest voices I've ever heard, period. The story is told indirectly over multiple runs but once you start winning your runs it all comes together pretty quickly and creates a unique dark-fantasy world. My only complaints would be with the difficulty occasionally feeling artificial and some of the best content being hidden behind extremely opaque side-objectives, The difficulty feels perfectly-tuned by default to make you earn every victory without necessarily requiring perfect play, but the moment you start adding modifiers in the post-game that balance crumbles a bit. Sometimes the balance tilts in your favor, which creates fun power-trips that feel earned with the amount of challenge just to unlock them. But when it tilts the other way you just get stunlocked by a mob of enemies or two-shot by an endgame-level mob on the third screen of the game which kills all fun (especially when you've invested 3 runs' worth of gold into starting items). However it seems like they've toned this down a bit since I last played so it might not be as big of a problem. As for the overly hidden content: a simple addition of text bubbles at the campfire to let you know whenever there's new dialogue and a couple hints of flavor text so players can more naturally find bosses like the Ghost Dragon on the coast is all that's needed. But with that being said the amount of secrets here is absolutely a selling-point on its own and you'll be finding new secret routes, encounters, and optimizations pretty much as long as you play. It's well-worth beating with all characters and I had a blast chasing all the achievements and doing a couple dozen challenge runs so I'm sure I'll be back in the future, If you like the beat-'em-up genre or singleplayer fighting-game content I would consider this a must-play. Major kudos to Guard Crush games and Supamonks for creating something that is simultaneously so fresh yet so familiar.