Adore Switch Review

Adore is one of those games that flew under the radar for me upon release back in August last year, and I have always wanted to give it a try due to the unique concept of the game. To me, Adore looked like a cross between Diablo and Pokemon, which certainly seems like a winning combination. Now that I’ve got my hands on it, do I adore Adore? Get your staff, tame some animals, and prepare to explore some ruins as we review Adore on Nintendo Switch.

You play as Lukha, an Adorer, who essentially trains monsters to fight for them much like a Pokemon trainer. In the opening moments of the game you confront an evil creature called Ixer, who promptly slays you in an unceremonious fashion, sending you to the refuge. It turns out you are not really dead however, as you share your body with Draknar, who is the fallen guardian of creatures, and so begins your quest to defeat Ixer and reclaim your body by freeing Draknar. On paper, the story is quite interesting, but it is overshadowed by the exposition delivery which makes it land a little flat, and in time I lost interest in the story but was spurred on by the experimental style mechanics of the game.

The game plays from an isometric view and you have direct control over Lukha, who can move and roll but leaves combat to the monsters. Monsters can be tamed in a unique way by staying in a zone of control for an allotted time period until they are successfully tamed. Once tamed, they can be added to your party and used in combat. You can summon the specific monster by pressing the corresponding button on your toolbar, or hold it down to temporarily control the monster’s direction of movement, you can also recall your monsters to avoid enemy attacks, preserving their HP. Each monster also has a specific moveset, as well as elements, that you can combine with other monsters called “Synergy,” which allows for rewarding experimentation of your party makeup. There are 39 creatures to discover, all with unique looks and well-thought-out designs and I did find it exciting when exploring a new biome, discovering new creatures.

The game is unique as in combat you, the Adorer, can take damage, as well as your monsters. It makes for a challenging experience, especially in boss fights, and I found it initially a bit tricky to constantly stay on the move. If your creature runs out of HP, they do not die, instead, they are cursed and can be used in battle still. The caveat is that when cursed, you take damage with them, quickly ensuring a game over screen should you be careless.

There’s a bit of grinding to do and the Overworld shows you the areas and quests you can accept, with multiple quests per biome, some for farming cooking goods and materials, and urgent quests that propel the narrative forward. This is where I started to run our of steam in Adore, as most of the missions consist of defeating enemies while running around randomly generated “mini dungeons” so to speak. You can teleport around these dungeons which is confusing at first but helps you get around quickly. Some quests the formula by offering objectives, but unfortunately, if you are not a fan of grinding, Adore may not be for you. There are additional things like expeditions, cooking, and some deeper mechanics when forming your party that you can do as well. Expeditions offer up rare statues to uniquely customise your party, but even then, the tedium of the grind sets in a little.

Another issue with the game is that the dialogue delivered can be a bit flat as mentioned above. Usually just laying out exposition and objectives in a plain manner. At one stage early on I was asked to apply a rune in the Rune Tree. Thinking this was a skill tree, I foolishly spent my time navigating the menus only to find out the Rune tree was a literal tree in the hub area. I also had some experience ruining bugs that make sometimes the most basic of tasks an absolute chore like seemingly getting stuck on invisible objects, forcing your taming progress to reset completely. On top of that, there are some framerate issues, mainly present while navigating menus and visiting your party, as well as some dips in the dungeons.

Graphically, the game’s environment and creatures are well-designed and unique, as well as the characters which have their own individual charm. The music in Adore is a standout with mellow percussion and beautiful acoustic guitar work that sets a wonderful and whimsical mood while traversing the world. I did have to turn it down as it managed to drown out the rest of the sound production and I’m not sure if that was the developers playing to their strengths, but it certainly pays homage to the Latin American roots of the developer QByte, and I found myself really enjoying the relaxed vibe of the score. For my vision-impaired Monster Tamers, there are no accessibility options, so further research may be required to see if Adore is for you. I did notice the UI can be very small at times and even I struggled to see certain things happening in the game due to the hectic action in some boss encounters.

All in all, Adore is a solid game that will tick all the boxes for fans of Pokemon-like games, and isometric dungeon crawlers. It looks good, mainly performs well, and has a lot to do if you don’t mind a bit of the grind. For $30 AUD, Adore will certainly keep you occupied for a lot of hours as you experiment with your party makeup, and explore all there is to offer to make your team uniquely you. While I don’t adore Adore, I certainly like it, and I look forward to revisiting it in the future when I have some downtime.

So, What’s It Like? Adore is like Torchlight 2, crossed with Pokemon.

In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this does not affect my score.