It's not super obvious how to categorize Absolver. It's a little bit like dark souls but with focus on martial arts fighting with constant multiplayer and a bunch of interesting mechanics. And it's really good though probably not for everybody.

Visually it has quite unique aesthetic. A bit cell shaded with interesting location and a feeling of a grand scale of the ruins you get to travel to. All locations are interesting and well designed with a lot of hidden paths and places. Sometimes it's hard to spot a path between locations though.

The game is fairly short in traditional meaning. All you get is a couple of pretty large locations and a quest to complete training and become absolver. There's no real explanation for anything - what happened to the world, why you need to wear a mask, why you need to fight fallen prospects. At least I didn't get it and it's definitely non essential to the game.

The game puts you in an open world with many paths connecting different locations. The transition between them is only identified by sudden lightning change and information about players entering certain area. Your task so to speak is to defeat all fallen prospects in order to face the final boss and become an absolver. You do that by fighting.

And fighting is both interesting and a lot more than just button mashing. Starting you get a certain set of moves you can arrange in different combos while you level up. You get hard and soft attack but the attack you're going to make depends on the position you're aligned. Different attacks also end in different attack so that gives plenty room to experiment, combine and set. Additionally by fighting other enemies you learn new moves. You do that not by spending experience points but rather blocking those attack. With each blocked attach you learn a little more until you can use them yourself.

You also get to use swords, and additional powers that spice up the combat. And the combat is rather strategic than action oriented. You need to manage your stamina, think of attacks to performs or dodges to make in order to avoid running out of it. It's a tricky dance but all much more enjoyable when you win.

Fighting is not easy at first. As while single enemies can be brute killed facing two at the same time adds a lot difficulty. But you'll usually get a lot of help from the players currently in the same place.

And the default multiplayer aspect of the game is what gives it a lot longer life than just beating the final boss. And either I've been lucky enough or it's a general rule but the community playing the game is super cool and respectful. There's no voice communication and only a handful of gestures available. But due to that occasional meetings were very polite and cool. I think I only once or twice was attacked for no reason, and after being defeated I was revived instantly and the other guy just bowed and moved on.

I think that's the reason it's worth to play this game and why I think It's a really good one. After finishing the game you can still kind of live in the world, fight and learn new moves, enter schools of combat. There's quite a few side activities to do starting with 1v1 or 3v3 duels to others I've not yet even tried.

All in all - absolutely loved the experience and would suggest giving it a try.

A wordless impress of a Guide's hand on your shoulder and you're off - embarking on a pilgrimage for honour a la veritable rite of the fist. You'll Kickbox, Sambo and Systema, Xing Yi Quan/Taijiquan, and Zui Quan your path through the faceless masses of drunken boxing masked masters to absolver mastery and a mixed rating on Steam.

No capes.

It's a shame. I expended one hundred happy hours, which is unlike me, collecting moves like Pokemon, shuffling my fight deck like a first-time magician and getting my PVP finesse to the point I don't dodge off a staircase every round - hitting my pride on the way down.

The devs chose to employ on-the-fly matchmaking to populate discrete sectors of the world for you Destiny-style. Unlike the former, it doesn't feel like some hollow anti-pirate scheme, but that you're all rats in the same barrel, helping one another in the scramble out. 99% of players in PVP bow before every battle using an emote, in spite of an intro cutscene having already done it for them because there's a respectful, meditative something in the water of this game.

I like to roleplay that all the AI fighters are 1 percenters from the big beacon to inequality residential tower behind me and that I beat them into paying their taxes like some anti-Batman so I can get this bridge fixed. Roleplay as you like.

Good natured sparring and collaborating through wordless emoting is the name and more or less aim of the game. That's why the POP. NUM. is such a clincher in these reviews for people. Gaming's broken and getting brokener. We know it. Online populations are only sustainable for the big fish. As it stands, with a few hundred peak a day, it's not bad. The matchmaking blind dates you with a few players, as it would have in those heady Summer days of our 2017 youth and PVP of 1V1 is hardly demanding. 3V3, to be added soon, might, however, be more of an ask in time.

I turn to stone when you are gone. I turn to stone.

For those teetering, it has its server issues, player base issues and relative dearth of content, but it's my definite 'no apologies' selection for the 2017 Steam awards. For all its faults, it respirates a refreshing purity in exercising pure gameplay bliss. If given a chance, it might just evaporate one hundred hours from the wick of your life. You can mention it on your deathbed, in your will, on your gravestone, even on a bench in the park and be absolved by the gods for assassinating that time you could have spent skydiving with dolphins.