I feel a little sorry for Obsidian Entertainment. I can't help but fail to shake the feeling that they want to make games that are just a little bit larger and a little more deep than they manage. Avowed is, on the whole, not a bad game at all. What it sets out to do, it does well. It just does a little less than players may have expected. Avowed is, perhaps, a victim of its marketing.
The world is easy to compare to The Outer Worlds. The game is divided into four open-world(ish) maps rather than one contiguous landmass. There is also a town within each map and additional dungeons to explore, usually as part of bigger sidequests. There is not a lot of enemy variation, which is a shame, but it is still an improvement over the very sparse list that The Outer Worlds had. I enjoyed the number of nooks and crannies there were to find, but it does start feeling more like a game and less like a natural world after a while.
I made a bit of a mistake with Avowed. I found the combat did not "click" at first, so accidentally swapped to a playstyle that completely trivialised the game: dual pistols. Like many action-based roleplaying games, the difficulty reduced as my toolset expanded and crystallised into my final built. I may return to the game to try it on the hard difficulty using a more melee-focussed built. Still, the combat became fun once I settled into it and I found myself jumping into groups of enemies that I really didn't need to bother fighting.
I was not blown away by the story. I found all the major story beats to be predictable (for goodness sake, the main "bad guy" is literally a skeleton with burning eyes), but I appreciate that not only are there two major routes through the story, but there are also a few moments where the world does change drastically based on your decisions. I felt a bit let down by the very end, however, as Avowed committed a cardinal sin: a skippable final boss followed by the usual powerpoint-slide-style reveal of what your choices meant. I can't think of a single game where I haven't experienced this exposition dump and not felt deflated.
Still, Avowed is a solid game with solid gameplay. I think that RPG fans should play it, but it's a harder sell to people less enthusiastic about the genre.
Is it Worth Playing?
Just about. Fans of The Outer Worlds will find a game of similar scale, but others may find it a little limited.
👍
Loot for the Hoard:
A chunk of Adra Bán and 312,680 skeyt, made up of copper skeyt, silver fennings and gold scellings.
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