In Adore you catch dozens of monsters and send them into battles. Instead of turn-based like in JRPGs, however, in true action RPG style – a pretty good idea!
The genre of action RPGs is finally on the upswing again: After what felt like an eternity of drought and we were served nothing but problem children à la Torchlight 3 or Wolcen, there’s finally a wide selection of really good titles like Lost Ark or Weird West. And yes, even Wolcen seems to have finally conquered its most serious teething troubles:
But even away from the big names, little insider tips keep landing on Steam. One of them is the Early Access game Adore, which mixes Pokémon and Diablo with Roguelite elements. Of course, that sounds like a cool idea at first – but is it fun?
What is Adore about?
In Adore, you play as the young boy Lukha, who has to save the game world from a rampant curse by capturing creatures and then fighting other creatures with them. Sounds kind of like Pokémon, but plays much more action-packed than the typical JRPG round-robin battles usually presented in monster collecting games like Temtem or Coromon.
By mouse click or with the gamepad you control the young priest from the iso-perspective through a picturesque, if somewhat empty-looking game world. This is not an open world, but rather reminiscent of roguelikes such as Hades, in which you move from one procedurally generated room to another in compact runs.
Here, of course, numerous monsters lurk, all of which you have to kill with your own companions. Lukha cannot fight himself, but can only dodge enemy attacks by diving. Instead, you summon previously captured servants. They use their attacks and recharging special skills and then disappear back into your pocket.
The battles are generally action-packed and more reminiscent of Diablo than Pokémon. You not only have to summon your monsters for attacks, but also call them back in time so that they don’t suffer any damage. If the HP of a companion drops to zero, Lukha takes the incoming damage from then on.
Due to the numerous different monsters, each of which has unique skills, powerful combos can also be created – otherwise it would be boring. You can see this in the following trailer:
Once you have successfully completed an excursion into the game world, you can invest your loot in various upgrades and, for example, unlock new talents for Lukha and the individual companions.
What do we like so far? What not?
Adore is still in Early Access, but already offers a decent amount for the price of 12 euros. The battles are pleasantly action-packed, there are numerous improvements to unlock and the constant capturing, upgrading and trying out of new companions is motivating.
However, there are still some unanswered questions: Adore currently has only a rudimentary story. Although it does a lot of world building in its quests and conversations with NPCs, you see very little of it in the excursions into the game world. Is the upcoming main storyline any good? That remains to be seen.
We like it
- Nice Art Style
- Cute Creature Designs
- Motivating monster hunting, finally with real-time battles
- Many upgrades and creature combos invite experimentation
We don’t like it
- No real story yet
- Some weak dialogue
- Much forced backtracking
- Little varied maps
- Editors’ verdict
Editorial summary
I actually wanted to start with the summoner in Lost Ark, but as you know, this was cancelled shortly before the release. Adore is a small consolation, because the summoning of monsters works similarly to the Lost Ark class: Your monsters are rather your spells and attacks than permanent companions and always active for only a few seconds.
The gameplay idea is definitely cool – instead of putting ability points into talents of my character, I put them into my ever-growing monster collection and get more and more options for strong combos and builds. That’s fun for a few hours, but it also gets repetitive at some point. We’ll see if the developers can offer even more variety – there are still at least three big content updates to come before the final release.
