The game opens with a narrative straight from a Robert E Howard story that tells how the Gods became displeased with the people of Atlantis and summoned monsters from the Gates of Abathor to cleanse the land. But not everyone was deserving of this fate and four heroes have come to stop the monsters and close the Gates of Abathor. Our heroes include a barbarian, a warrior with a more defensive style, a fast-moving female warrior and a wizard, each of whom have different techniques and abilities which help gives Abathor a different feeling than what came before and its own identity.
The controls in Abathor do take a bit of getting used to at first, with jumps that have a lot of weight to them, which means you will need to approach this game differently. You cannot do aerial strikes the way you would in other Hank n Slash games for instance, and will need to adjust your playstyle to compensate. The thing is though, the game rewards strategy by opening up new ways to approach the combat and once you learn how things work, the game gets very good.
One thing that is a nice touch is the merchant found in the stages. The merchant will sell additional power ups and abilities that will make you stronger and help you get through the game, but they only last through your current run. There are other abilities to get though, including screen-clearing attacks, transformations and more that make the combat satisfying.
You can play Abathor solo but you will not get the full experience that way. No, the way to experience Abathor, is the old-school way, with four player co-op that creates frantic and chaotic action.This may not exactly replicate the arcade scene, but is extremely satisfying. There is a catch though that needs to be mentioned and that is that Abathor does not support drop-in/drop-out gameplay, so if someone wants to join in the fun, you must end your current gameplay session and lose your progress.
If there is one other game I can compare Abathor to, it would actually be Castlevania. Some stages not only have music that calls to mind the Castlevania series, but also stages and enemies that will make Abathor feel familiar in a good way. The way certain enemies move and the music plays in the second stage will especially make clear this comparison.
But how does Abathor look? The developers, Pow Pixel Games, went for a throwback pixel art style and it is fantastic, with the characters, enemies and stages all standing out in fantastic ways, although the animations could be a bit better. The framerate and overall performance held up in multiplayer as well, and the game handled well in handheld mode on the Switch. In terms of audio, the soundtrack is outstanding and as mentioned, some stages call to mind other classic games, but manage to put a unique spin on them. That being said, the sound effects could have been better and worked more to recapture the old school feel.
So how did I like Abathor? I have to say that while it was a bit different than what I expected, especially in the gameplay and control department, I overall had a blast. Abathor manages to have the spirit of what made the classics work, albeit while requiring some time to adjust to the game, and has a spectacular presentation. While I wish it had drop-in/drop-out for its multiplayer, it was still overall an enjoyable experience both by myself and with friends. As a fan of classics like Rastan and of the Conan stories and other works of Robert E Howard, Abathor was a game I really appreciated. This one is very easy for me to give a recommendation to.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
