A fascinating and short experience with an extremely deep and customizable combat system based on learning new moves and including them in your ever growing catalog of moves. While I'm sure there is a "solved" or meta way to play the game at the highest levels I believe the best thing you can do is let yourself experiment and play around with moves until you find a way to express yourself through your tailored and designed move list. While my time with the game was brief this is something to come back to and praise for its seemless pvp/coop experience and its interesting combat system that is unlike anything else I have ever played.

Absolver was one of the most interesting experiences I've had with a game that I had absolutely no idea about beforehand. I only downloaded it because of its visual identity, which really caught my attention. Mysterious masks and characters in fighting poses were all I knew about it until then.

The gameplay was extremely fun, responsive, and different from what I had experienced with other fighting games. My experience with the game was divided into two parts. The first part involved exploration, seeing the ruined landscapes and abandoned biomes, encountering mysterious enemies along the way, completing quests, and bumping into equally mysterious players. This gave a slight "FromSoftware" interaction feel—somewhat limited and primitive—which added a much more curious air to these player interactions.

The second part, after completing the "single-player" PvE campaign, was a whole universe of matchmaking and ranked 1v1 matches against other players using various fighting "decks." This completely changed the style of each match depending on the deck you used or faced. It was incredibly satisfying how the fights, strikes, and defenses were executed and received in these matches.

In short, the game made a huge impression on me, and I am EXTREMELY happy that Sifu, the new game from the same developer, brought these captivating and original characteristics to a single-player game.