Avowed Review
Overall, I liked Avowed. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but despite that I had a good time with it and would recommend it to other people. It’s a fun, visually polished and easy to pick up first person RPG. It lacks the depth of many other games in the genre and I think that comparison disappointed a lot of people. If you put that aside and take the game for what it is then you’re looking at a fun, lighthearted twenty hours.
Visually, Avowed is wonderful. The world is beautiful and interesting to explore. The colors are vibrant, the landscapes are varied and interesting and the NPCs and enemies are all interesting and blend well into the environment. I spent a lot of time playing Pillars of Eternity one and two and seeing this same world turned up to eleven was wonderful.
Exploring the world was also very satisfying. Each area had its share of secret areas and a wide map to explore. Walking between quests I’d see something out the corner of my eye and detour off for some explanation. Sometimes the reward for the detour was small and ultimately useless but it never felt like a waste of time. There were a few moments where playing with a controller was a bit of a pain trying to combine sprinting and jumping in a small space but overall tolerances for hitting edges were pretty forgiving. The game isn’t aiming to be a platformer so for the most part a rough jump in the right direction gets you where you need to go.
Unfortunately despite its positives, the exploration revealed a number of the shortcomings that hold the game back. Broadly, combat scaling, character progression and writing. Each of these felt under-baked. The game has all the building blocks of modern RPGs but in so many cases they’re there more for show than anything else.
First, lets talk about combat. On the whole, if you’re matched with enemies in the same rough bracket as you then combat is fun. Enemies move around, attack back in interesting ways and provide a nice level of challenge. If you’re not in the same level bracket its either way too easy or nearly impossible. During the early access period this was even more pronounced with some groups of enemies being next to impossible if your current weapon and armor weren’t in the right range.
What made this so frustrating was that for the most part there isn’t really anything you can do about it. The game has a variety of weapons and armor but other than some minor perks on unique items they all have a quality level that dictates their main stats. Each item levels up in tiers of quality and then when facing enemies your weapon and armor tier are compared to theirs. If you’re under powered you get an immediate thirty five percent reduction in damage, or take the thirty five percent more if your armor level is low.
The only way to increase your weapon level is through collecting materials. Materials that are unique to each stage in the game and unlocked on a very linear path. This means you’re basically locked into a fixed power curve and have no creative options to grind your way up. So many games like Skyrim and other RPGs give players much more freedom. Yes, those games have a main story which dictates your power scaling but if you’re crazy and want to grind your way to max stats in the tutorial area, you can. There are plenty of games that have a more linear path but in those there’s often more variety to make up the difference.
Avowed feels like it took this to the other extreme. There are really only one of each weapon and armor type. There is a fixed amount of XP in each area. Leveling up only shifts your stats in a small way and those choices don’t really feel like they matter. There’s not much in the way of builds other than three loosely defined skill trees which provide some passive benefits and active skills. Skills do get used a lot in combat but again they lack the needed variety to make choosing between them a meaningful exercise. I think in many ways the game would have been just as good without the leveling system and with half the available skills. If Avowed wants to be a simpler style of RPG it’d be better to lean into that and put more variety elsewhere. I’m hopeful any sort of sequel goes the other way though, make the stats and skills mean something.
The same can be said for side quests. Each area has its fair share of side quests, handed out by NPCs you run across while exploring. Early on, these quests are fresh and interesting and do add a little extra to the game’s story. By the final area they start to feel stale. Go here, kill this, come back, skip dialog, get something you probably wont use.
Much of this falls into the games biggest flaw which is pretty average writing. The world of Pillars of Eternity is full of interesting lore and back story but Avowed makes learning about it feel a like a chore. Having played the previous games I initially liked the call backs to events that happened but by the end it felt like that’s all people talked about. Every character with something to say felt like their main point was “there’s a lot in this world, please let us make more games”. On the whole, I’d love it if they did but this left Avowed occasionally feeling like a trailer for what the studio could build in the future rather than an immersive world full of interesting stories.
This comes up a lot when engaging with the companion characters. Kai has a mildly interesting storyline throughout the game but the others either have next to nothing or you never become invested enough to bother with them. There’s a mild sense that your companions care about your choices but other than some extremely major changes they never act as if they do.
Reading all this, and even having reread it myself, it sounds like this game is bad. It’s not. It has a lot of things that aren’t great but if you told me this was the end for the studio, the series or even this style of game I’d be disappointed. It’s a world I enjoy and I am happy to give the team a pass for some rough edges. While this is far from the studio’s first foray into first person its a first for this particular IP. They hit what I’d call a solid seventy five percent on this one and I hope they get a chance to build on it with a future game.
