Review – Adore

Developer: Cadabra Games | Publisher: QUByte Interactive

Thanks to the Indie scene, creature collecting and monster taming as a genre feels like it’s thriving. Gone are the days where the genre belonged to Pokemon and might have occasionally been rented out to Digimon. No, indie developers are treading where many AAA studios don’t dare. Adore, developed by Cadabra Games, is doing exactly that. Adore is a Monster Taming game with a top-down perspective, where you control Lukha as he summons monsters to help him traverse the world and head out on his journey to resurrect the God of the Creatures. Will it capture your heart?

Adore isn’t your typical Monster Taming adventure. Yes, you are a kid with an incredible burden set upon your shoulders, but you’re on a quest of destiny set upon you by a god. The aim of the game isn’t to traverse a region in order to catch them all and to make friends with your beasts. They are more of a means to an end, to create a perfect build of attack, defence and strategy in this Diablo meets Monster Taming adventure. Adore feels different to anything else in this genre at present, and that’s an incredible feat in what’s becoming a slightly saturated market within the indie scene. 

You have a base of operations where you can prepare for your adventures. There are vendors who will cook your ingredients, at a small cost, to create recipes for meals that will replenish your health and assist you on your adventures. There are those that will sell you items to equip your beasts and to boost your own stats and likelihood of surviving the treacherous world on your adventure. To get out of this sanctuary, there is a portal that will take you to a selection of destinations, which you unlock more of as you progress through the game. You can either storm ahead to try and progress the story, or take your time and collect more items and attempt to tame more beats for your collection. As well as the aforementioned Diablo vibes Adore gives, it also had a sprinkle of Monster Hunter in this aspect. No, you’re not grinding for armour or for weapons, but you may want to return to previous destinations to stock up on your supply of meat and other precious supplies to assist you in progressing the main story. It’s an addictive loop that works incredibly well in keeping you invested. 

Combat is exciting and fast-paced in the field. You need to be careful in your timing of when and where you summon your ferocious beasts, as well as being mindful of where you are standing and running to at all times. Just because your loyal beasts are summoned on the field, does not mean you are safe. Any of you can and will be attacked at any time, so there is always a lot that will keep you on your toes, especially as you delve further into the game and come across stronger enemy-types and bosses alike. At any time, you are able to carry four beasts with you to your destinations. Each beast is assigned a button, A, B, X or Y. By hitting the button, that beast will be summoned and perform its action. These actions might be attacking the opponent, or it might be a more strategic move like freezing or stunning the enemy, to give you a chance to manoeuvre to a more advantageous spot on the map. All of your beasts, as well as you, have hit points. If you lose all of your Hit Points, you will be returned to the sanctuary. If any of your beasts lose their Hit Points, they become “Cursed” and they must be left at the Sanctuary for at least one of your journeys.

With this in mind, it’s always ideal to keep a few beasts stored away so you have back-up for your cursed ones to recover when they need it. Overall, there are thirty-nine creatures to discover. While it may not sound like a lot, Adore isn’t the kind of Monster Taming title where collecting is necessary, nor is it imperative to your journey. As mentioned above, there’s always a need for additional beasts in your storage, however having too many to pick from would be problematic and perhaps feel hard to balance. Afterall, while Adore has fast-paced and action-packed gameplay which is easily accessible, too many options would spoil this a little bit and make the player feel overwhelmed with the possibilities. The beasts in Adore should feel like your character’s build as opposed to a team of buddies who are fighting with you. If we had hundreds to pick from it would be far too many and over-complicate a fine-tuned game. 

Capturing beasts is not something that necessarily comes easy or as frequently as one might expect. You must first obtain particles of Gaterdrik, which can be found in any of the quests you pick up, but aren’t easily obtainable. Once these are obtained, you can use your staff to attempt to capture a wild beast that is attacking you. By holding L, you raise your staff and begin the capture process. A semi-circle of sorts will usually appear and you must stand in front of this at all times to fill the capture gauge. Some beasts are easy to capture and will stand rather still, with the gauge hardly moving. Others will have smaller areas of capture with a fast rotating gauge that feels near-on impossible to keep in front of, while also avoiding attacks. While frustrating at times, Adore’s capture mechanics are unique in their own way and will force you to consider if it’s worth capturing this beast on this run. With the Particles of Gaterdrik being sparse and capturing being relatively difficult for stronger beasts, Adore does a brilliant job of adding a more physical and reactive challenge to the capturing process that other taming games fail to do correctly, if at all. 

There’s also a level of individuality you can grant each of your captured beats to set them apart from others. You can build them after setting out on expeditions to add to their attacking arsenal, or make a more defensive and tactical build by adding more moves to it. They will also level up the more you use them, making them stronger in the field against lesser enemies and making them feel like something you have raised, rather than the essence of something you are borrowing for your own good. You must be creative in your approach to the beasts you take with you to create synergies to get the best out of them. Simply taking four with you on your journey that are all-out attackers is a good way to fail. 

Graphically, Adore is relatively simplistic, but it doesn’t need to be anything more. It has a unique style which is suitable for the top-down perspective and runs relatively well on the Nintendo Switch. There are occasional frame-dips unfortunately, but that feels to be the case with the majority of games on the dated handheld-hybrid these days. For a more detailed look at the beasts you have captured, there is a Bestiary in-game which has 3D models of the beasts, which are reminiscent of a charming Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 era. It’s a wonderful art-style that invokes touches of nostalgia in a modern title. 

There is a narrative to Adore, but it feels like a very small part of the game simply to give you a sense of direction and purpose. It’s not an award-winning narrative, nor did I ever feel excited to learn more about it or felt very invested in what it had to offer for the game, but it’s arguably necessary to push the game forward. It’s like the over-cooked and soggy vegetables on your otherwise glorious roast dinner. You don’t care that the veg was lacking because the meat and potatoes were divine.

Thanks to the lacking narrative, Adore is an easy game to keep up with and jump back into whenever you want. You’re never going to get lost with what you are doing or where you are going, and the controls are simplistic yet compliment the gameplay excellently. It has a relatively short campaign but there are arguably hours of fun to have here and the game feels easily replayable.

7 out of 10

Review code provided by Publisher – tested on Nintendo Switch