Abyssus: A Beautiful Dive That Doesn’t Quite Reach the Bottom
There’s a moment in every good roguelite where the build clicks, the chaos becomes controlled, and you feel like a god of destruction. Abyssus has those moments. It also has moments where you’re stuck on a piece of geometry, watching your framerate tank as a frog T-poses at you. That’s the Abyssus experience in a nutshell: a genuinely promising, often beautiful, sometimes frustrating first-person roguelite that feels like it shipped about six months too early.
Let’s start with what works, because when this game hits, it hits. The core shooting feels responsive and punchy. The eight weapons each have distinct personalities, and the 45 weapon mods let you tweak them in satisfying ways. I’ve had runs where I felt like a brine-powered John Wick, and others where I was a walking artillery battery. The gunplay is visceral in a way that reminds me of the better days of the genre — back when a shotgun blast actually felt like it meant something. The hand-crafted levels are genuinely gorgeous in places, with a rich, sunken-civilization aesthetic that owes a debt to Bioshock but carves its own brinepunk identity. The music is fitting, the enemy designs are creative (those pseudo-Aztec guardians are cool), and the bosses… oh, the bosses are something special.
Several players mentioned the boss fights as the game’s standout feature, and I agree. These aren’t just bullet sponges with a health bar. They’re multi-phase, mechanically dense encounters that demand coordination and positioning. One reviewer called them “raid-worthy,” and while that’s a bit of a stretch, the comparison to Kingdom Hearts’ tougher bosses isn’t entirely off. Each boss has multiple elemental variants that change attack patterns, not just damage colors. That’s a level of care I respect. The final boss, in particular, is a set-piece that genuinely gave me goosebumps the first time I stumbled into its arena. It’s the kind of encounter that makes you forget the jank for a few minutes.
The meta-progression is solid. You earn soul fragments, unlock permanent upgrades, and the sense of growing power is palpable. The roguelite loop of “die, upgrade, try again” is well-executed here. You’re never grinding for meaningless 5% damage increases — every upgrade feels impactful. There are collectibles hidden in levels, lost items to find, and secrets that reward exploration. The game respects your time in that regard.
But.
And there’s always a but, isn’t there?
The first problem is balance. Multiple players noticed that the optimal way to build is to dump everything into a single blessing and ignore the rest. Spread your points around, and you’ll fall behind the difficulty curve. This narrows the gameplay dramatically once you figure it out. Instead of experimenting with synergistic combos, you’re funneled into a monoculture. It works, but it’s not as fun as it could be. The late-game difficulty scaling also feels off — enemies become absurdly tanky, and the modifiers (like Lethargic) can end a run in a way that feels cheap rather than challenging.
The second problem is performance. For a game that doesn’t look like a Crysis remake, Abyssus has some shocking framerate dips. At 1080p it runs fine, but at 4K there’s noticeable stutter. In the third biome, fighting enemies with slow laser beams can drop you to 45 FPS. One player reported 15-20 FPS in late-game particle chaos. Back in my day, a game shipped optimized. This runs like a three-legged horse in certain areas. The T-posing frogs are funny once, then they’re a bug.
Third, and this is the one that hurts most: the story. I’ve read better worldbuilding in a second-hand paperback. The lore is thin, the narrative is almost nonexistent, and the scattered collectibles repeat so often you’ll see the same book fragment four runs in a row. The game throws you in with barely a premise — “go get brine, fight things” — and never builds any meaningful context. Who are the Brinehunters? Why are multiple squads being sent? What is the final boss? The game doesn’t care to tell you. For a fantasy literature lover like me, this is a missed opportunity. The setting has potential, but it’s wasted on vague fragments that feel like placeholder text.
Co-op is a mixed bag. When it works, it’s a blast. The raid mechanics (like one player generating a shield sphere for the team) are clever. But the end-of-run bug where only the first player to interact can proceed, and everyone else is stuck, is inexcusable. My co-op group stopped playing because of it. A game that advertises 1-4 player co-op should have a working lobby system.
Some players found the combat too chaotic, with too many charging melee enemies and too many “stand in the zone” objectives that feel more annoying than challenging. I don’t entirely agree — the chaos is part of the fun — but I understand the complaint. There’s a fine line between “tactical chaos” and “spammy nonsense,” and Abyssus occasionally crosses it.
So where does that leave us? Abyssus is a game of strong highs and frustrating lows. It has a gorgeous art style, excellent boss design, and satisfying gunplay. But it also has balance issues, performance problems, a weak story, and co-op bugs that sour the experience. At $20, it’s not overpriced, but it’s not the steal some fans claim. I’d put it at a cautious recommendation: buy it if you’re a roguelite veteran who can tolerate jank and wants some genuinely excellent boss fights. Wait for a sale if you’re on the fence. And if you’re looking for a polished, replayable experience that rivals Gunfire Reborn or Deadlink… you might want to hold your breath a little longer.
Abyssus is a good game. It could be a great one. Maybe in a year, after a few more updates, it will be. For now, it’s a beautiful dive that doesn’t quite reach the bottom.