What do you get when you mix Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda? Well, I’ll tell you, you get Adore. I’ve been looking for a new Switch game to sink some time into and thanks to a YouTube ad, I saw the trailer for Adore. The concept stood out to me straight away after seeing the trailer, the art style, and the creature designs. So, I dusted off the Switch, installed the game, and venture into the world of Gaterdrik.
Adore is a monster-taming action game where you play as Lukha and have the ability to summon and control creatures to fight by his side in simple but creative real-time gameplay. Gaterdrik is a world ruled by a good dragon named Draknar and a bad dragon named Ixer.
Ixer kills Draknar and plunges the world into darkness but all is not lost as a piece of Draknar’s soul manages to survive and attaches to the main character, Lukha. Adorers all can tame and summon creatures but thanks to the added boost from a fallen god, Lukha sets out to do what Draknar originally couldn’t.
Adore from the get-go is very repetitive, you go out into the wilds collecting resources, gathering creatures, and fighting off the other creatures. It’s a loop that starts quite charming but after a few hours of gameplay gets mundane. Catching the creatures is fun and when I came across a creature, I hadn’t tamed yet always peaked my enthusiasm as I wanted to collect them all.
Anyone who has played this type of genre before knows that there is a level of repetitiveness but thanks to Adores combat and synergy system it can make the loop of venturing into the wild a little less samey as there are plenty of creatures to choose from which allows for countless team compositions.
One of the core mechanics in Adore is the creature collection. If you don’t collect creatures you won’t be able to fight against the corrupted creatures. Creatures can be obtained in two ways, through chests or by purifying them in the wilds using a resource called Particles of Gaterdrik.
Although the second method is how you primarily will use to collect your creatures it can be super frustrating when there are multiple creatures in the wilds and the targeting system becomes slightly unreliable and frustrating at times when trying to capture a creature. How this works is that you have to bring down the creature’s health and then lock onto them and stand within a small area to gradually tame them. The first few creatures you come across are simple to tame but as the game progresses it becomes more challenging to capture certain creatures.
Levels are procedurally generated, which in some ways helps make the game have some variations. It populates each room with different corrupted creatures and on the odd occasion a sub-objective. Though you will find yourself doing the same thing over and over, thankfully different areas offer different corrupted creatures and landscapes. You will even face off against legendary creatures or rouge Adorers which can be quite challenging.
Creatures come in four varieties: Beast, Nature, Mystic, and Arcane. Making up your party composition with the different variations can be rewarding and surprisingly complex as later into the game you will start applying synergies which can give them a special boost when summoned alongside certain party members. Lukha can also be upgraded with Runes and artifacts, which provide passive buffs and make Lukha more durable.
You can gather ingredients during your time in the wilds and these can be used to cook unique dishes to help Lukha and your party. Making sure that you’re stocked up with healable is one way to make sure you stand a chance in the hard moments in the game, if your creatures lose all their health they don’t go unconscious but do damage to you if you summon them while they have no health. This can be frustrating during boss fights if you don’t have heals because you struggle to dish out damage and find it near impossible to do anything.
Graphically the game is beautiful, I have gone for a 3D art style that looks similar to Diablo. I love the creature design, the world of Gaterdrik, and the art style they have gone for. Adore is super relaxing to play with its charming soundtrack and the story, even though simple, is good enough to help drive you forward. It doesn’t feature voice acting but that isn’t a problem as the game is loveable in all the right ways. Adore, sadly suffers from performance issues when playing on the Switch which is a shame.
The game looks crisp and sharp while playing docked and undocked but often enough there are frame rate issues. Don’t get me wrong it’s not game-breaking it just is frustrating.
Adore has a high level of replay value due to the different team comps you can choose from and the grind element of the game. I find the grinding a bit tedious and don’t enjoy having to grind multiple times just because I died and lost all my gold and fragments or trying to get certain items to be able to craft/cook items. The one thing I did love doing was trying to capture all the creatures as when I play Pokemon, I always make it my mission to catch them all, so it seemed fitting to make sure I tamed them all in Adore.
Conclusion
Adore is a good game and a nice addition to the monster-taming genre. The combat system is one of the areas that excels as well as how you tame the creatures. The charming art and soundtrack are the foundations that help make the magical world of Gaterdrik.
The unique way in which you command your team when fighting is one that I haven’t seen done in this type of genre before and the synergy system helps you make your perfect team stronger by giving them extra abilities. There are very limited variations when it comes to quests and I find it frustrating that you lose all your coins and fragments upon death but you will find enjoyment in Adore’s take on an isometric dungeon crawler with the added monster-taming element. For those reasons, I’m giving Adore a 6 out of 10.
Adore Launch Trailer
Grab your copy here https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Adore-2420534.html
Read more reviews here https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/category/review/
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