I’ve become a real beat ‘em up head in the past few years. It’s a genre I grew up playing, with the various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Streets of Rage games being my absolute favourites. Streets of Rage in particular not only shaped my love of the genre but also of music, with Yuzo Koshiro’s pulsating club beats dominating my adolescent brain waves well before I realised I even liked music. 2020’s Streets of Rage 4 is in my personal top 10 games of all time, a sublime example of how revisiting a tried-and-true genre with modern mechanics, design, and aesthetics can make an exhausted concept feel not only fresh but entirely new again. I say all this not merely to fill up my word count but to emphasise just how much I truly do love beat ‘em ups, as well as to give this next statement the appropriate weight: I think Absolum might be the best one I’ve ever played.
With development headed by Guard Crush Games, the same studio partially responsible for Streets of Rage 4, it should come as no surprise. Absolum feels like the fulfilled promise of not just SoR4 but this entire genre. The two play a lot like each other on the surface, with light, heavy, dash, and aerial attacks, as well as grabs and super moves, with the addition of arcana, meter-based attacks with usually much bigger effects that can help in the more overwhelming encounters.
Where Absolum really shines, though, is in its defensive options: every character has a dash, which is useful for speeding up traversal but is primarily meant to be used as a sideways dodge away from trouble or, more crucially, a dash into trouble. With a well-timed dash into attacks, called a deflect here, an enemy can find its posture broken and completely susceptible to a follow-up flurry of attacks, and it’s completely imperative to understanding and engaging with Absolum. There’s also the option to clash against an enemy instead by using a slightly more precisely timed heavy attack to parry an enemy’s incoming one. Both are indispensable to any character’s verb set, though the dash-initiated deflects tend to have more forgiving parry windows, as well as benefit from being a universal timing across all four playable characters.
Balancing out when to dodge vs. deflect vs. clash and figuring out when the best time to pepper in normal attacks of your own gives Absolum some of the best flowing combat I’ve encountered across the entire medium, to the point where I think it would now be hard to go back to anything lesser. The first time I managed to beat the game’s first major boss (the intimidatingly named Underking) without taking any damage, my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. It didn’t, thankfully, and I ended up not even making it to the end of the game on that run, but I felt so emboldened by that thrashing I handed out that I couldn’t even start to feel the slightest bit discouraged, instead opting to jump back in, eyes fiery at the thought of getting a run like that going again, but with an even better build this time.
Oh, it’s pretty important to mention that Absolum is structured like a roguelite somewhere in this review, huh. Yes, there is a meta progression that relies on the player building up a familiarity with the game’s structure and various routes by repeated attempts at conquering it, and there are also upgradable stats and new abilities and passives to unlock back at the hub visited between runs, but Hades this is not. A skilled enough player can, however unlikely, make it through to the end credits on their first ever run, and the game need only be beaten twice to get the “true ending”, as it were.
The skill tree and various unlocks are nowhere near as extensive as other games in the genre either, as I had basically everything unlocked within 10 hours or so. This metaprogression is, I think, more so there to encourage players to take different routes and experiment with all of the various arcana on each character than it is to fill up time and gate progression. Think of each run of the game more like plonking 50 cents into another attempt at a favourite beat ‘em up arcade cabinet, only with the possibility of going down new routes and opportunities to get equipped with new items and upgrades, and I think the decision to go with this roguelite style starts to make a lot more sense.
The builds you can make really can make each run feel completely different, too, even when using the same character. After each combat-laden screen, a reward of either crystals, gold, or new magic-infused passives is presented. These can be as simple as adding fire effects to light attacks or steadily building up a devastating burst of electricity with every successful deflect, or more off-the-wall powers such as summoning a temporary helpful skeleton buddy on each successful dodge or leaving an afterimage of yourself with a heavy attack that can act as either combo extenders or traps for approaching enemies. A lot of thought was clearly put into giving these magic effects unique functions, and that effect is even more pronounced once enough progress is made into the game and the different types of magic can synergise with each other, like mini tornadoes spawning any time a zap of electricity is expelled from the player character.
Each character can also obtain upgrades unique to them on a run. Brome, the anthropomorphic frog mage, has an ability that turns his normal throws into telepathically moving an enemy around the screen and dropping them anywhere, including on other foes or even off the edge. A personal favourite was a spectral sword familiar for the elf character, Galandra, which became an immediate no-brainer pickup every single time I had the option. Who wouldn’t want a ghost sword buddy whenever available? All of these pickups and upgrades make Absolum feel endlessly replayable without losing the feel of its arcade inspirations, a feat which puts it into masterclass territory for me alone.
Of course, a beat ‘em up wouldn’t be a beat ‘em up without the ability to play with other people. While Absolum only allows for up to two players locally or online, a fact which might be disappointing for some, after having played a couple of runs of the game online, two players seems about right; between how many enemies and helpful NPCs can be on screen at once and the fact that multiple players have to be tracked alongside getting dodge and parry timings right, it can feel borderline overwhelming with the addition of merely one more person. The netcode was downright fantastic, though, despite playing over Wi-Fi on Switch 2 while my wife was streaming video, with only one instance of slowdown occurring, and it was in a boss fight with half a dozen enemies and friendly helper characters, each no less. Progression is also handled individually, meaning I got to enter into someone else’s game with much less progress than me while keeping access to all of my unlocks.
Despite my thorough written glazing above and the perfect score most have no doubt scrolled down to see already, I do have a few small issues. Firstly, the true final boss automatically takes a life off of the player as soon as the fight starts, which I think is meant to be done as a slate clear (as in, that fight can’t be entered with an entire militia of helper characters, since they also all get killed in that moment), but it ends up feeling cheap to me, despite having beaten it a few times now; it will never, ever feel good to make it to a final confrontation in a roguelite game only to instantly be met with an unavoidable one-hit kill, and it’s something that I truly hope is re-examined in future balance patches.
I would also add that the tone of Absolum’s world and story never manage to mesh well with its (truly gorgeous!) Saturday morning cartoon-inspired art style. Look, it just feels really weird and off-putting to hear Brome, truly a favourite little video game dude of mine in 2025, talk about how it must feel to be rotting flesh after beating a miniboss, no matter how full of righteous vengeance he is. Generally, I think the world and lore presented here are genuinely interesting, but it falls into the old fantasy trap of presenting the player with far too many proper nouns without enough context, especially in the beginning of the game. Of course, this is alleviated by the mere act of playing the game and learning its ins and outs more, but it’s worth noting since I can see it being potentially off-putting in the opening hours, especially with Absolum’s story being more front and centre than most are probably expecting.
