Avowed is the latest RPG from Obsidian, is it worth getting lost in?
What Is It? Avowed is Obsidian’s latest first-person RPG game set in a fantasy world full of colorful characters and landscape. You take on the role of the Envoy, sent by the king to the Living Lands in order to help stop the spread of a disease that is corrupting people and animals alike.
Upon arrival, you will quickly find yourself with quests to take on, side quests to learn about, areas to explore, items to upgrade, and so on. Very much typical tropes of the genre. The story will take some turns, and you will have some choices to make to potentially affect the outcome, but the basic gameplay loop is to complete a handful of main quests in each major area before moving onto the next. As such, the main game can, supposedly, be finished in a trim 20 hours. Not bad for an RPG. One testament to my enjoyment of this game is that I spent over 40 hours in the Living Lands.
Combat is focused on crowd control above all else. There will be boss fights, both in the main quests and the numerous side quests along the way, but most of your time will be spent trying to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of opponents. I leaned heavily on area-of-effect spells to get by, particularly the frost spells to freeze enemies in bulk to avoid being overwhelmed. A really great thing about this game, however, is the agency it gives you over how you approach combat. I, personally, could not imagine playing through this without investing heavily in spellbooks and upgrades, but I’m sure there are plenty of others who do just that.
Each enemy has a one-through-four level rating, this directly corresponds to the levels of weapons and armor you can equip in Avowed. If your equipment matches or is better than the enemies, you will have a fairly routine fight on normal difficulty. If you are underpowered, each fight will be tough. I was mostly one level behind the entire game, but you can do a bit better than that with more exploration and side-questing. I did a lot of side quests, see the extra 20 hours I spent with the game, but there were plenty I did not engage with.
Beyond combat, Avowed does a surprisingly great job of incorporating fun traversal and, dare I say, a bit of platforming into the affairs. One complaint I have is that there was not enough platforming. The final areas have some really fun spots of tough jumps and obstacles to dodge, these were great and would have been fun sprinkled in throughout the game. Movement is swift and smooth. There are a few light puzzles thrown in to mix things up as well.
The game looks very good, with vast, varied landscapes being the headliner. The enemies get a bit repetitive after a while, however. The story is okay. It tries to weave a twisted tale of right and wrong, trust, privilege, forgiveness, etc… but it didn’t totally land for me. There were some choices you could make near the end which would, seemingly, have massive implications on the outcome of the game, but when I tried to do something “bad”, the game argued with me through my companions. I enjoyed my time with Avowed, but not enough to go back through trying different approaches to see how much freedom you actually have to make decisions.
The Best Part: The customization in combat. This comes in two primary forms; your companions and your weapons. You have a few companions join your party throughout the game, you get to choose which two to take with you at a given time as well as select which special moves of theirs to unlock and upgrade. They will use these abilities independently during battle, but you can also manually trigger them which creates some fun synergy moments.
The game allows two weapon loadouts, they are switchable with the press of a button. Each allows you to equip both hands, with two separate items or one two-handed item such as a massive sword. I went with a spellbook and wand in one loadout and a spear/pistol combo in the other. I would cast powerful spells by default, then annoy enemies with weak, but quick, ranged attacks of the wand while waiting for my spell cooldown. When I needed physical damage, I would switch to a powerful, but slow, pistol and a spear which was medium power, but very quick to attack. There are a bunch of weapons, not all will be totally unique, but there are dozens, if not hundreds, of possible combinations for you to explore.
The Worst Part: The story is kind of messy and not terribly interesting. The game tries to make you question right and wrong, who to trust, etc… but then it kind of spits on you, via dialogue from other characters, when you make the “wrong” choices. Maybe if you make them from the start this is less prevalent later on as the decisions hold more meaning? Regardless of your agency, or lack thereof, in the decisions, the story just doesn’t stick very well. I won’t spoil anything here, but the twists and turns were not exciting to me.
The Verdict: Avowed is a very good game, but not a great one for me. It might be a perfect representation of a 4 out of 5, 8.5 out of 10, or B+ game, depending on your preferred rating scale. Everything the game throws at you is good and fun; combat, customization, exploration, traversal, etc… It all works really well. There are some small misses on the story side, but nothing major. There is a lot of game to explore and it is absolutely a game many people will happily get lost in to the tune of 70+ hours. For me, it never rises above “very good” in any aspect, but that’s just fine. I enjoyed over 40 hours with this very good game and that’s a very impressive accomplishment for Avowed.
How to Play: Xbox Series X*/S, PlayStation 5, PC
*console played on for this review
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