Roguelites: Absolum
Releasing roughly 5 years after their sequel to Streets of Rage is a game that ultimately I'm sharply divided on. It took a mode I enjoyed quite a lot (SoR4's roguelite side mode), made it into a full game and turned it into something I soured on. It's a fantastic beat 'em up like their other games, but the roguelite mechanics drag down the experience straight into hell.
Punch Randomly
Each run in Absolum starts off the same: You pick a character, a starting special attack which uses your MP gauge and then off you go. Each character has a basic light attack combo, a heavy attack, dash attack, grab and a set of aerials. Compared to something like SoR4 this is a slight downgrade but roughly in line with what you can expect in a belt scroller.
Absolum has three kinds of items that serve as the roguelite basis: Rituals, Trinkets, and Inspirations. Rituals are elemental affixes that add new properties or give payoffs for playing in specific ways. These usually consist of two or three additional mechanics which serve as payoffs; for example with Ritual of Thunder you can build up static which causes attacks to fire chain lightning or you can spawn lightning orbitals which serve as combo extenders and enemy management. They can be stacked increasing their power; multiple rituals of the same type increase your base modifier for that type and there are twin rituals which combine the effects of both ritual types.
(an example of some rituals and their effects)
Rituals are...boring, to say the least. Some of them are exceedingly strong (any Bramble rituals is enough to break the game over its knees) but they rarely transform the game or require you to think differently. Some of them might have you play a bit more actively when they trigger, but yeah. Rituals are the most frequent item you'll find sprinkled throughout a run, and rituals seem to all have the same rarity.
Trinkets serve as the more traditional kind of item you'd find in a roguelite. Things like shields or gauntlets, these serve as mostly flat stat increases. You might get increased movement speed, or take reduced damage and so forth. They're not all like this though; trinkets are broken into three rarity groups (common/rare/epic) and epic-tier items has more game-altering effects like allowing for infinite combos or boosted attacks after waiting a few seconds. These are less common and mostly found at shops you'll find a couple of times throughout a run.
Finally, Inspirations is where the juice is at. Inspirations are character-specific upgrades that often radically change your character in multiple different ways. One of my favorites was for Karl called Reload, which changes his heavy attack to be a Prop Shredder type move (see: DMC3), refilling his mana and letting him spam specials. It also gives a Monster Hunter-esque quick reload he can use with specific skills. Another example is Rocket Dwarf, which turns him into a Marvel character letting him fire his gun in the air to do an 8-way dash up to four times with damage and combo properties. Inspirations are the rarest of the bunch and only encountered after defeating a boss.
Lacking tools of the trade
Inspirations are both the blessing and the curse of the game, because every new game you start feels like you're missing half of your kit. The game only feels proper after you've beaten two bosses or so (roughly 1/3rd to halfway through your average run) so every new run feels bad.
There's also a severe discrepancy between inspirations. Some of them feel absolutely game changing, and others feel like they were simply just moves carved out of your base kit in order to make the game more of a roguelite. Galandra is a great example of this issue; to me she feels absolutely incomplete as a character with short stubby normals and an awful heavy attack. One of her inspirations gives her a dive kick, another lets her use heavy attack three times in a row. Both of these give her the identity she sorely lacks at the start, but they're only two out of a set of far better and broken inspirations.
It doesn't help that there's very little run-to-run randomization. There's some minor events that might change, but at the start you're given a choice between two to three locations to start your journey. There's slight randomization in which rooms might show up and in what order, but playing through things twice is enough to see almost all the content each route offers you. There are further branches down each path but again, little per-branch variance.
I suppose I should mention that there is metaprogression here, in the form of small buffs to HP or specific elements or damage. Nothing exciting, don't expect to have your mind blown. The most exciting thing you can unlock is new Arcanas (special moves) which does add some spice and variance to each run.
(an example of the character tree, each upgrade corresponds to new skills and there are also two extra inspirations you can unlock to add to the pool)
(the larger meta progression tree. upgrades often consist of additional lives, starting gold, damage etc)
Roguelite gone rogue
Despite my gripes I did enjoy Absolum, but often in spite of itself. It's an example of how to not design a roguelite, because rather than having a base experience expanded through play it feels like they carved off what would otherwise be an amazing belt scroller to try and turn it into a roguelite. It's almost cynical in its roguelite elements, following the wake of Hades and hoping for the same success while not understanding how well integrated those elements are into that game.
It's a visually beautiful game (as Dotemu games are) with strong character designs, great (if forgettable) music and a lot of gameplay issues (even ignoring the roguelite system issues). It's just...I was simultaneously impressed and disappointed at the same time. The more I played it the more I soured on it and once beating the game I never felt a need to continue into some of the post game stuff that opens up. An Absolum 2 with lessons learned from this game could be an all-time banger, but for this experiment it's a game I can't say was very successful for me.