Quick Look: Absolver

MEET A FIST!

I heard Rutger Hauer is great in this.

"Absolver" is my favorite song by Snow.

Pretty keen to pick this up, maybe in a month when the dust settles and hopefully Oceanic servers are live.

Is the combat basically Dark Souls a la God Hand, because I'm all the way in if that's the case.

So they never actually said how the combat works. Is it a one button thing that follows what you set up in the combat decks, or do you still have light, heavy etc?

For the heal, you need to hit the enemy while glowing red while not being hit. Gives the heal a major boost.

I always thought this game was pvp only, but seeing the exploration I'm way more interested

Also, the characters have tiny feet.

Whoa, this looks awesome.

I love the concept and look of this game! That being said, does anyone know why it's so difficult to model hands that don't look like the claw of a back-scratcher?

My whole character is built around this mask.

@hobbaswaggle: I wonder if it's the same reason amateur artists (like on Deviantart) always draw characters with their arms behind them.

Serious Series: Direct Punch.

Am I the only one who thinks the combat in this looks REALLY slow paced? I watch a lot of MMA and they just move so slow ... I would think if these characters fought a character like Dante from DMC or even got into a fight with a MK 3 character they would get their asses lit the F up.

Why do they attack so slow...

Me the leg.

I decided I wanted this as soon as I saw how it looked

From what I've read, PvP is absolutely the focus of this game. PvE is basically there to learn how the game works. That bummed me out, because I think the idea is cool, but I've almost never had a good time playing multi-player with strangers.

There isn't as much exploration as you might think, the world is really small. It's still gorgeous though.

Any faster and the "feint" mechanic would be useless, and the combat needs to be just the right speed so you can anticipate moves for the directional dodging system. Any faster and it would be a disaster.

Normally I hate arena-style 1v1 PVP fights but in Absolver it is some of the best content available, I'm sorry they didn't show it. The game does a good job matching up evenly skilled players and every round I've fought has been a tactical chess match. This game is so good!

Are the servers as boned as everyone is saying they are? That's my hesitation in buying this. Also can't decide whether to get it for PS4 v. PC

@creepingdeath0: You execute the combo you have set up for each stance by hitting the X button repeatedly (XBox controller), and you can also set up an "alternative" attack for each stance you do by hitting Y. So basically you can mix and match your normal combos and the alternative attacks to manipulate what stances you're in and what combos you want to do.

@bobafeet: After launch day they got much better on Steam. Can't speak for PS4

For anyone interested in this, the game' "story" only takes 3-4 hours to complete at most, the core of the game revolves around improving your deck and fighting against other players. The "story" is mainly a device to teach you the basics of the game and level up your character a bit, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone that is not interested in the 1v1 pvp fights. Having said that, I'm loving everything about it so far and it's definitely in my top 10 for this year!

Is this the Zeno Clash we always deserved?

High number of Steam users, kinda figured they'd eat this up.

There's no way I could hang online, as cool as this looks.

I wish I could justify buying this, but I'm pretty sure I'd just play through the short campaign and then never really get into the multiplayer, etc.

It looks cool as fuck though...

Wow this game has great ambient sounds.

This game looks great. Right up my alley, if you like Batman/Sleeping Dogs/Shemue combat.

@

@brad Metal Man first. Always.

Thanks for the info. That makes me not that interested really, although I think it looks awesome. I'm very into it as a PvE game.

Really interesting concept and mechanics but it's a shame the PvP stuff seems to be the focus. Jason mentioned the 'build your own combo' system from Remember Me on the podcast which I thought was a cool idea in a mediocre game. I hope these ideas catch on and we see them in a more fleshed out single player game in future, seems like it would be a great evolution of the Souls style games.

I don't know if I have it in me to really get into this, but I hope this game succeeds.

I was sold after 30 seconds. Downloading now, can't wait :D

Update - it's fucking great. Focusing on kicks with fast finishers.

PvP seems to be the focus? Where did you get that idea?

@xbob42: Previous comments on this video. From what others have said it seems like the single player is fairly short and serves to mostly teach the mechanics for PvP.

I'm sort of in love with this game so far. I think it's a bit thin as is, but I love learning new moves, I love the PvP fights, I love the way it looks, and I think it's a fantastic base to build from.

If I were these developers, I would be putting a ton of time into free updates -- more loot, more moves, more weapons, 2v2 and 3v3 fights, more quality of life stuff -- and putting out bigger, more meaty DLC as soon as I could. I would pay money for new areas to explore, new bosses to fight, new stances to acquire and weapons to find. PvE content especially.

There's just so many ways to add new content to this thing and make it enticing and meaningful for the players that I have to imagine it's what they're planning.

@cameron said:

I'm the type of person who really doesn't get into pvp games, that said though initial impressions from the community seems quite nice. There is no text chat or (from what i can tell) voicechat even and I personally basically treat it like a polite, somewhat erratic AI. :)

Two buttons, primary and alternate. Primary will execute the chain for whatever stance you're starting from (front left/right, etc.), while alternate attacks can be inserted anywhere in the chain (or even after another alternate attack) to switch your stance and shift into another chain, throw your opponent off guard, or take advantage of an opening in their defense. There's no light/heavy/whatever in the traditional sense, your combos are entirely determined by how you set up your deck of moves as well as which of the two attack buttons you press and when. The inputs themselves are very simple, but the system as a whole is quite complex.

They have a few videos on the steam store page that give a pretty good, basic overview of how stuff works, I'd recommend giving them a watch. It's tremendously impressive what they've managed to pull off here, but there's definitely gonna be some folks who just bounce right off of it. For whatever reason, I grokked what it was going for pretty much instantly after watching those videos and decided I needed it in my life.

Ugh, if there wasn't a million other games coming out....

Definitely getting this later on though.

This was so close to being my name

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@creepingdeath0: It's a two button system where 1 button is your combo attack chain and the other is an alternate attack. You have 4 stances, these 4 stances gain more slots for combo moves as you level up.

Each move in the game has a starting and ending stance, so you'll start in forward-left and end in forward-right when you press the attack button because you've got a roundhouse kick bound to that stance combo slot.

You can choose what attacks go in your slots as you learn moves from blocking, or otherwise avoiding them used against you, but only if you win the fight against the character using them on you.

Did... Did someone just make God Hand? Soooooold

@hobbaswaggle: Polygon Budget , the hands arent large enough onscreen to warrant full detail, that being said, its looks like a style choice.

@steveurkel: depending on your style and armor loadout, this can play as fast as street fighter.
the most important moves are the timed attacks after the parries, which are also superfast.

Seems slow and lifeless. And the sound affects aren't doing it for me. Every attack sounds like a wet towel being slapped about a wall. Barely anyone makes a sound, they're so quiet. But I knew this game wasn't for me because I'm not into fighters and PVP.

oh how far it has come..

Free code for this game on steam!

https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=cZNZZ6pNdr8tt4zM

I bought a humble bundle for some other games but don't want to play this one.

Its 12:30pm PDT on 03-01-2019 when I put this up.

If someone claims this please reply so I can delete this.

MousePounder