Reviews

tl;dr I recommend this at a 20$ price point. 40$? Not as of 2/26/2020.

Pros:
- Graphically, its a very good-looking game. Some beautiful lighting effects, especially for an ARPG. That being said, its very poorly optimized. No reason a 1070 should have issues running this game, but sadly it does. The last patch (1.0.4) had a terrible memory leak issue I found running high level end game content that required a complete game restart. Seemed to be fixed with the last patch though. Still having a hard time getting above 60 fps, which isn't ideal.
- The skill system is very easy to wrap your head around and offers interesting flexibility as well as building opportunities. Sadly, so many seem either broken to the point of being beyond overpowered, or broken to the point of not being even usable.
- One character is all you really need. Respeccing is easily done and allows you not to need different characters to try out different builds, etc.
- Transmog armor/dye system is pretty in depth. Just a look at reddit can show you some of the interesting creations that you don't find in other ARPGs. Need some work on handling the dye drops (ie either not dropping ones you already own or marking them so you know) but otherwise it’s a well done system. I imagine seeing more variety in the next year as content is added.

Cons
- Lack of most quality of life featured in other ARPGs. No search function in the passive nodes, no savable gear sets. The latter is especially bad considering how easily it is to change your build.
- End game currently is fairly dull. I realize its an APRG but its the same half dozen maps with the same half dozen enemies, over and over. The design of the boss having spawn rooms instead of spawning on the player ala Diablo 3 leads to a lot of back tracking and just pathing through a, sometimes, empty level. Some movement skills help, but hardly make up for it.
- Bugs? Yeah we got bugs. Between gold being easily dupable despite devs knowing about it long enough to solve it, to all the character/item resets or issues where they disappear upon relogging, never mind the fact that for DAYS after the 1.0 release the online servers were offline, leading many (including myself) to roll an offline only character to dive into the game, only to have to start over once the servers were finally up. Oh, and the passive tree? How much just wasn't working at release, or was incorrectly entered? 50% damage increase was supposed to be .5? How does that even happen?
- Small dev team doing the best they can, but I fear the game grew too fast for them to control and address. - So many clunky feeling elements in battle. Want to use a potion? Hands off all other keys! Want to move around the enemies? Oops you used left click THAT YOU CANNOT BIND TO MOVE ONLY and just attacked, standing in the AoE. - Gold.... doesn't.... drop. Level 40 map? Drops 17 gold. Level 187 map? Drops 17 gold. Hmm. No wonder people were using the gold dupe!! With only two in game currencies, gold actually matters, and the lack of scaling is almost hard to believe in the year 2020. -
 Difficulty is campaign is fairly spikey. Seems like a dungeon will be almost beatable while asleep, and then an act boss will hit you like a truck.... and then back to falling asleep. - The story is clearly unfinished. They had talked about during four acts, but the current release stops at act three... and it really shows. There's a bit of a buildup in the first two but I mostly found myself not caring, which is unfortunate for a game that has a (albeit small) larger focus on the story elements than other ARPGs, including cut scenes and long dialogue. I wish the story was stronger to really shine here.

I had so much fun for the first 20 hours or so... wish it continued in the last 30 hours. I plan to check back in on the next large content patch and hopefully can recapture so many of the things that made Wolcen fun!

SPOILERS AHEAD: Before I actually got to beat this game, I had three underlying problems with it. 1. Sephiroth's constant inclusion. In the original Sephiroth isn't even shown in Midgar and is instead held for the big reveal later in the game, making it much more dramatic. Sephiroth in this game shows up within the first hour. 2. The fact that it is only the midgar section of the original. Now I get it, the original is a big game and it can't all be fit into one game with the level of detail this remake presents us with but, Midgar is such a small percentage of the game it makes you wonder what section of the game will only be included in the next one. How long will this go on? How much will I end up having to pay just to pay what is essentially one game? And 3. There is a lot of fluff parts of the game used to just make the game longer and are extremely boring. Now with all that being said, up until I beat the game I was still enjoying a lot despite these three things. Now after beating the game and witnessing the ending and understanding what is being done with the original, my first two complaints are totally void. This isn't a remake, it's so much more. This Sephiroth is not the same Sephiroth from the original. He has different goals and motivations that we still don't entirely know. I love the new and different direction this game is taking the original. I now know why it's just the midgar section, because this is the most faithful we are going to get to the original and I fucking love that. From here on out it is not a remake, it is just a sequel. All bets are off for the next one and I seriously cannot wait for the next one. This is now one of my favorite games of all time.

This is a review of Absolver as a singleplayer game.

Absolver has lots of problems. From the short, 2 hour campaign, to the messy level design, to the completely neutered singleplayer game, it was just not enjoyable. Thankfully I knew it was a short game, so I just stuck with it to the end so I could write my review.

To its credit, Absolver does some stuff well. It has some vistas that are pretty to look at. It's got an interesting "build your own moveset" system (more on that in a bit), and it brings some interesting ideas to the table of "Souls" rip off titles. I specifically avoid calling this a Souls-Like, because it lacks most of the important aspects of souls-likes: story, level design, interesting gear, interesting enemies, and playstyle variety.

There's a lot of small things that add up, like the questionable music choices, the automatically progressing text boxes, strange respawn bugs, enemy placement being somewhat random and inconsistent, and clipping character models. Then there's the major problems. Movement speed in combat is horrendously slow, and the "dodge" (if you can call it that) is completely useless as a spacer. It's so bad that I often found myself completely exiting combat after stunning my opponent to walk away and recover my stamina. In order to get some of the best equipment, you have to play multiplayer. You also are rewarded pitiful amounts of currency in the singleplayer. By the time I finished the game, I had enough currency to buy exactly 1 of the cheapest pieces of equipment (which still outclassed all the equipment I found in the world). The story is nonsense, and NPC's seem to warp around the map at will only to deliver out of context lore snippets every time you talk to them. The enemy variety is nonexistant; every enemy in the game is exactly like the player, just with more/less HP and hitting power and occasionally different moves. Speaking of moves, you unlock new moves by blocking or dodging that move when used by an opponent. In my entire time playing, I never unlocked a single new move. It's simply not worth it to bait out your opponent, and if you don't play online you likely won't need those moves anyways. There's likely some more mechanical complexity to be had behind the combat system itself and building your own movesets, but it's not worth learning when you can clear the entire game without it. Finally, the level design is utterly forgettable, to the point that I was getting lost when I couldn't tell one demolished building from another.

There's an additional PvE gamemode (Downfall) unlocked once you finish the game. It consists of somewhat randomly generated gauntlets that you can play with up to two friends. It also features the game's first (and maybe only) enemy that cannot be stunned or staggered. There's more equipment and extras to unlock by playing this over and over, but I found it tedious after the first couple runs so I stopped.

I'm sure Absolver has more to offer on the PvP side, but if you're like me and mostly stick to singleplayer and/or co-op experiences, then Absolver is pretty below average and absolutely not worth the asking price.