Absolver

I Love This Beautiful Game, but I can't recommend it really because, being honest - The UI is 101 terrible, and the map is very vague and you will most likely get lost on your first time getting around, a lot, unless you have a friend to guide you through. - For a single player experience, Absolver is pretty bad; I only took almost 4 hours to finish the main story (with fooling around). - The learning curve varies, but it's pretty steep. If you're not the experimentative type, you're going to hate this. - The music is... My music kept stopping by itself. Whenever there was music, it's forgettable. - You have to grind, especially to unlock certain moves or to get clothing drops, and the grind mind numbing if you proactively do it. - The lock-on system does not work properly with more than one target; your character may even hit the closest target most of the time and not your locked-on target. The camera gets frustrating too. - Myself and a lot of other people are having inconsistent connection issues. - Even with the PvP, there's not much content in this game. - I got hit by a save corrupting glitch during launch. - I have gotten stuck on a loading screen at least 4 times throughout my experience playing. I had to Alt Tab and turn off the game and then turn it on again to continue playing. I have crashed once, and I do still experience glitches. Hopefully, these will be fixed via patch because - otherwise - the game is running at 60 frames VSync for me. - You can't manually save; the game auto-saves but doesn't even explain how or when so you have to guess when the auto-save happens. - ... And there's still more, but I want to go back in and fight,... and I just hit the word limit. With all this aside, If you're here for the PvP, combat and multiplayer, and if you don't mind the learning curve while having a good internet connection and computer, I would definitely recommend this game; otherwise, no because it feels unfinished and - sometimes - plays like it too.

What's fun: The fighting, grinding for stuff, optimizing the build and learning new abilities. What's not so fun: Clunky movement, especially with keyboard and mouse. Some keys are not rebindable (for example q,e,x and z which are used to switch stances - on a qwertz keyboard this sucks incredibly hard, on a querty keyboard it's okay). Sometimes it seems to be more effective to smash some buttons instead of doing proper timed attacks. I've also experienced a pretty bad input-lag. Auto-targeting. Imho a game that can be played with a mouse should never have non-optional auto-targeting. Also, there are certain builds that benefit way too much from auto-targeting. What's buggy: Collisions with objects are really bad, sometimes you fall off a pit because one of your feet partially started gliching on a plank or you get stuck between some stones. Some enemies spawn multiple times, this also goes for bosses. The world: It feels pretty empty and dead. Except for the enemies around there's almost nothing. In my eyes it's also not very pretty, maybe because I dislike the graphics. I wished for a fighting game that would draw me in because of the polished mechanics and movement, and there's a lot of unused potential in this game. Though I guess it's sort-of in development, I don't see the game developing into the direction that I've been hoping for.

The game offers decent gameplay but the PVE feels like fighting damage sponges; the enemy is particularly smart or difficult, they just have a ton of HP. Enemies tend to gang on up you and controls are terrible at handling that. The PVP is alright, but with no cheat detection whatsoever and no plans for it from reading the forums, we already have cheaters that are simply invincible and can one-shot one. The biggest issue is probably the bugs. In 2 hours of playing, I've crashed roughly 5 times, had to quit 4 times because the game bugged; I couldn't resurrect, the camera locked up and wasn't following me anymore, I fell through the ground and getting stuck into other people that spawn on top of you. Overall very poor experience. I still give it 2 stars because the grounds work is there for a solid fighting game, but they need to basically rework everything; PVE needs to be more intense and not comboing the same boss 30 times in a row, PVP needs to have cheat protection, the gearing system needs to be purely cosmetic.

This game is fantastic. But it's a multiplayer game with a bit of pve, NOT a fully fledged out pve game. As such, it is sketchy to advertise a offline mode and a drm free experience given that without the online it is a WAY WORSE game. If you have read the other reviews you already know about the disappointing length and the locked out higher levels of the bosses. That's not the end of it though. The main draw of this game is the complex fighting system and the custom combo building. However, the AI in this game is not smart enough for you to make use of feints, mix ups and so on. You can beat most (if not all) NPCs by spamming the same two attacks while occasionally dodging and blocking. Thus, if you play offline there is no need for you to get into the combo building, or properly learn the combat system. It is a waste of time. You cripple your experience if you play offline. Don't buy it for the offline mode. Fair enough, but what about the online? It's great, I'll leave it at that. I would like to warn you about buying it on GOG though. While most of the online works great, THE SCHOOL SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY UNUSABLE. If you want to join a school you'll have to find people in the world who are part of a school. Then you sit down at a shrine, enter the social tab and find the player that was part of the school. Players that are part of schools have a triangle next to them. Then you just join their school. But on the GOG version, even though the players have triangles next to them, it will say that they're not part of a school and you won't be able to join. You're essentially locked out from the school system. This also means that you can't unlock all the styles on one character since this has to be done through the school system. The achievement on GOG that tells you to unlock all the styles is therefore UNACHIEVABLE unless you have a friend who has a school. CONCLUSION: GOG is about DRM free games. Given the state of the offline mode this game is essentially not DRM free. Even if you choose to go online you will not be able to use the school system. Given these facts, you are better off buying this from the king of DRM (Steam) or not buy it at all.

You can NOT play this game online with friends from other countries, it is region locked. And even when you get into a multiplayer with people from your "region" (arbitrarily picked by the game) you will encounter various issues with it - lags, desyncs, you name it. The singleplayer component which was supposed to be offline is bland and heavily dependent on online grind. Overall, the base combat seems to be alright, but other than that this game is a bit of a mess.