Avowed

From the acclaimed developers at Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds), Avowed presents itself as a promising first-person RPG set in a vivid fantasy world known as the Living Lands. The game boasts impressive visuals, with rich textures and fluid animations that reflect current-generation capabilities. Initially, the world-building is engaging, with interesting lore and a solid pace during the first quarter. Unfortunately, that momentum doesn't last.

Gameplay is where Avowed shines. Combat is fast, fluid, and varied, giving players plenty of freedom and avoiding the usual pitfalls of stat-heavy RPG mechanics. The progression system feels balanced, letting your weapons and skills grow naturally as you advance. That said, this strength becomes a weakness later on: weapon upgrades become almost mandatory to proceed, and the dependence on gear progression begins to overshadow skill.

The experience starts to unravel in other areas. Conversations with NPCs begin promisingly but devolve into repetitive and shallow exchanges. Many characters feel lifeless - more like set pieces than personalities - which hurts immersion. Enemy encounters suffer a similar fate. Initially diverse, foes later become repetitive, and the challenge turns into a numbers game, with difficulty ramping up through sheer quantity rather than thoughtful design.

Narratively, the game struggles. While side quests and lore exploration help elevate a weak premise, the central plot involving gods and an internal entity becomes muddled halfway through. Too many concepts are poorly explained, and by the time the finale arrives, it's underwhelming and anticlimactic - a missed opportunity for a story that had potential.

Overall, Avowed delivers exciting gameplay mechanics in a beautifully crafted world. But for a title with such high narrative ambitions, its weak story, forgettable characters, and uneven pacing ultimately hold it back. Still, it's worth trying if you're looking for a fresh combat experience in an RPG setting.

Rating: 7.5/10.

The game is technically and mechanically good, it plays well and it does not have irritating mechanics like stamina loss while exploring or weapon decay that makes them need repair.

... but the writing, oh god the writing and storytelling!

The absurd amount of made up words that we have to memorize to just keep track of what's being talked about is appalling!

Then sometimes different words spoken by different people have the same meaning and we are supposed to keep track of all this convoluted internal structure just because a character one time said that word.

The amount of interruption in the game just to spit a meaningless dialogue in our face is also absurd. After a few hours I just stopped even reading and skipped everything because it was just time lost, it amounted to nothing.

Mind you, I have the suspicion that all the interactions with "the voice" will decide the ending of the game, but they irritated me so much that at this point I'm more eager to get it over with than to care for how the game end.

EDIT: After finishing the game I have to say the writing is even worse than I thought just because it has no actual influence on what happens, it's literally hours of mindnumbing armchair psychology that does nothing but change the slideshow at the game's epilogue.

There are 5 or 6 choices that have minor gameplay consequences, the rest of the dialogue can be skipped and the player would see no difference.

I had high hopes for "Awoved," but it turned out to be about as romantic as a trip to the dentist. The graphics looked like they were last updated in the early 2000s, and the dialogue was so cheesy it could be mistaken for a pizza shop menu. The love interests had all the charisma of a wet sock, and the gameplay felt more like a punishment than a delightful experience. If you're looking for a game that kills time, this one will certainly do that-but your brain cells might also file a restraining order against you. Save your money and go play something that doesn't make you question your life choices!

Fun game, some weird decisions.

Finaly finished Avowed, the game is definitely fun to play, some RPG mechanics are quite basic but the punchy and varied combat makes up for it for the most part. If you feel the combat is getting boring, switch up your load outs and re-spec and it changes enough that it rarely gets boring (at least so far).

The story is okay, nothing ground breaking but overall good enough to keep you engaged and you decisions throughout the game have an impact on the ending.

The companions are a bit on the boring side unfortunately, most are one dimensiona and annoying, it feels like their opinions change so that some always agree with your decisions and others disagree. Only 2 of the 4 have companion quests for some reason and even these are not really fleshed out. They might have kept the companions down to 2 instead of 4 and made them more interesting and complex.

The writing is okay for the most part as is the acting, but some dialogue is cringe and takes you out of it by being to "21st century" and too grounded on our reality for the setting (you will se what i mean as you play it).

Another small critique i have is that like 95% of all characters with any power (captains, leaders etc.) are women, I'm not exaggerating here, I thought it was just the first zone or something but the more I played the more i noticed this. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, this paired with poor writing for these female characters (they all have basically the same personality, abrasive, arogant, short tempered and aggressive) makes it stick out like a sore thumb.

Another thing that I found a bit disappointing is that you cannot harm NPCs, I noticed this in the first few hours but it only really bothered me when, after helping an NPC with a fetch quest, he does something completely evil killing another NPC. The scene just ends with you and your companions commenting that he just killed the guy and no dialogue option pops up so you can kill this evil NPC. I just stood there hitting the NPC with my sword as nothing happened.

These things however did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the game and after a while I just started finding it funny if somewhat frustrating too.

One of the best things about Avowed is the exploration, firstly because you are always rewarded for exploring with useful loot or surprise boss fights. If what you are exploring is tied to a quest you haven't started, it will automatically pop up notifying you you completed a step for a quest and the quest will become available in your journal. This is a great quality of life decision from the developers. Another great thing about exploration is that you can go almost anywhere without need to "come back later" with a specific item or something (as long as you stock up on lock picks) so if you come across a cave or building that seems inaccessible, just keep exploring and you will find a way in. So far i have almost never needed to back track to a previously explored area unless I ran out of lock pics (I started buying them everywhere after that and never had this issue again) or a chest was hidden behind an ilusion that one of your companions can dispel but was not with me. Exploring is fun, rewarding and the parcour mechanics offer mostly fun vertically to the exploration (some exceptions here and there were it feels like you are floating and just fall, sometimes to you death, because the ledge/rock you are climbing on is not climbable).

To summarise.

Pros: Fun combat Great exploration Vibrant world Good visuals Okay story

Cons: Boring and annoying companions; Bad dialogue writing; Simplistic RPG mechanics.

7.5/10.

Seems like the ones who build this world and the ones who filled it with these characters and bad dialogue are two different teams. It feels like the potential of the beautifully created world is not met due to bland dialogue and corpo lunchtalk npcs.

Some levels are pretty nicely designed while most of the side missions are empty and generic.

The graphics are really spot on, the cities feel good but are lacking flair. It's a world that can be filled with major updates in the future hopefully.

For a game that was at first designed to be live-Service - it should've probably stayed on that path.