Avernum 4: Greed and Glory

It's a slight recommendation, and I am writing this definetely with nostalgia-tinged glasses. The game is a great remake of the original Avernum 4. The story is fleshed out more and the whole setting fits together beautifully. A very good, very classic old-school CRPG. And the setting of the underground world of Avernum with its weird magic, huge fungal caverns, mutant flora and demons comes to life and feels vibrant, even though the "cities" are little more than three shops and a wall around those. Even the "big cities". However the combat is even worse than in the previous games, for all the same reasons, although now they are a bit more obvious, since you can click enemies to view their stats. Avernum 4: GaG is very balanced and fun for about 60% of the game, before the level scaling becomes absolutely absurd. My main gripes with the combat are: 1.) This is by far the biggest point: enemies have waaaay to much hitpoints and resistances after midgame. A lone brigand (an ordinary brigand, not a special boss) has about 5 to 6 times the HP of my main frontline fighter, who is designed to be as beefy as possible. And the same brigand also has extreme resistance values (60% physical, 60% magical, 40% fire, ...) which turns combat against such "low tier" enemies into a chore. I get the reasoning behind it: keep combat challenging. But I'd rather fight different enemies instead of the same ones, just level-scaled. It is very tedious and immersion breaking. Kinda reminds me of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, where suddenly every bandit was completely equipped in magic armor from head to toe. Really not a fan of this. Bad design choice in my opinion. 2.) Enemies can do things you can't. Again, not talking Boss monsters, but very simple things. Enemy archers, for instance, can shoot an arrow volley, which blankets an area with arrows/damage. Your characters will never be able to do that. Ever. There are just a few abilities like that in the game, all used by regular enemies, which makes it very frustrating to learn, that you will never be able to do the same with your party. 3.) Too much CC on regular enemies After some time, a lot of enemies will have one or two abilities to snare, stun, or immobilize their targets. Which in itself would be okay, because your fighters can also learn those abilities. However enemies can use these abilities way more often and with a very short cooldown (if any), which can lead to your pure melee fighters just being thrown around the battlefield, perpetually snared or immobilized, unable to act. It's not game breaking and there are ways around it, but it's - again - tedious. It stretches battles out without adding anything tactical to them. If I would have to be brutally honest: I love the Avernum games. I have been playing Spiderweb's games since Exile 1. And I know these games are hard and janky. That's part of their charm. But a remake of a remake in the year 2025 should have a bit higher standards and not resort to cheesy combat tweaks like hitpoint level scaling. Especially since this scaling is hard coded and can not be disabled. I still reommend this game, but I am quite sure that without my love for the series and the older games, I would have to give it a thumbs down.

Long-time Avernum player, who was very excited for this reissue. I'm enjoying the game but I have some pros and some cons Pros: --you can close doors behind you again, which makes theft an option. In the first three reissues, once you open a door, it stays open. Before that in the original Avernum trilogy (not Exile, but Avernum) you could open and close doors, which lead to situations where your party would be blundering through a bandit hideout or Empire outpost, and you'd open a door onto a room full of powerful enemies... and you could just close the door gently and back away like "I did not see it." This most recent Avernum 4 allows doors to be closed again, so you can block yourself from the view of citizens so you can steal their stuff. Cons: -- keyboard commands are all banjanxed up. One of the best parts of Avernum is how its all playable with keyboard commands, commands that were almost unchanged from game to game (A is always Fireball, E is always Haste and so on) and once you have those commands down you can navigate the entire game quite quickly. But in A4, //all// the attack options are under U, rather than M for magic, U for cleric spells, F for combat disciplines and so on. I'm sure I'll gradually get used to this new system but its discouraging that it had to be overly simplified this way, serving no purpose. -- enemies are no longer assigned numbers. This is part of the keyboard navigation, being able to select M for magic, A for fireball, and then A again for the first enemy, B for the second, C for the third foe etc. This was also really helpful in certain battles when you couldn't end combat because there is still an enemy somewhere, but you can't find them. You could just select your missile weapon and then select A, and you'd fire a missile at the hidden foe, exposing their location on the map. I miss this function -- reputation. With no more reputation gain, there is a loss in how satisfying it is to help the different people you meet in the game. Do a lot of good deeds and even if there's not much of a material reward, you can watch your reputation increase from local nusaince to glorious folk hero. That was a nice aspect to the game, which would provide benefits in certain interactions, but mostly it helped you feel like your actions were contributing to your community and the world of the game. I'm noticing that in A4 everything seems more isolationist and mercenary, more cold and mechanical. Its not Avernites helping Avernites, but just adventurers doing missions for cash and nothing more. --move mountains and sanctify altar are gone. I really enjoyed paying close attention to the map and scenery to determine where hidden areas might be, and then being able to cause a small localized earthquake to tear down the walls. That was a great spell! And it was another one of those distinctly Avernum pleasures to be able to sunder evil altars in dungeons. Again, not a great material reward beside XP, but you got the feeling of accomplishment that you were helping your fellow Avernites by exorcizing evil from the underworld. -- I miss the Phil Foglio art. I know its been the same little images for player stats and skills for 30 years, but there was a reason for that and that reason is Phil Foglio is a great cartoonist. It was such a distinct flavor that defined Avernum, that without it the world feels emptier. Huh, I guess i have way more cons than pros. I still like the game, I'm still giving it a thumbs up, but as a fan from way back, I'm noticing a lot of things missing that had come to define an Avernum game. I was excited to play a new Avernum, and this is technically a new Avernum. But some of the aspects that have lead this to being one of my number one comfort franchises are gone. I can always play 1 through 3 over again for the 500th time I suppose. Jeff deserves to make changes if he wants, he doesn't need to keep making the same game

This is an Avernum game. What else is there to say? They're all great, all fun, and you can look at the playtime for how long it took me to beat it. I wouldn't say I 100%ed it, but I think I came pretty close? And it was great the whole way through. By the way, all Avernum games are self-contained, so if you play this without having played the previous, uh, 3 + 6 + 3 games in the series (Exile 1, 2, and 3, then their remakes, Avernum 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and finally, the Avernum remakes 1, 2, and 3, this being the remake of Avernum 4), you won't be missing anything important. While there are certainly some nods to events of earlier games in the series (and future games in the series, since there are some references foreshadowing 5 and 6), understanding them is certainly not important to the story here. Speaking of which, there are a ton of differences between this game an the original Avernum 4 as well, so if you have played that, which I have I think twice, this one is still very enjoyable. There are a couple of design decisions I wasn't a huge fan of, though. One is that the non-human races can't equip armor and helmets made of metal or enchanted cloth, so if all of your warriors are non-human, nobody will ever get to wear that Radiant Plate. Another is that lockpicks are very annoyingly limited and are strictly required for opening locked doors; there's no bashing or Unlock Doors spell. Overall, though, it's still incredibly fun to go dungeon-crawling, fighting enemies and collecting their loot. There are lots of unique enemies to fight that drop unique items, too. And while some games have this endless replayability thanks to everything being procedurally-generated and therefore meaningless, this game places everything carefully, with attention to story and gameplay. Every corner of the world has something worth exploring. There's no empty space. You know, Avernum as a deep series of caves is similar, in a sense, to the Depths in Tears of the Kingdom. But there's nothing worth finding in the Depths. In this game, on the other hand, you're always getting somewhere cool. Oh, the original Avernum 4 introduced the job board, with annoying quests like collecting 8 wyrm tails or fungal polyps or whatever, and some special enemy would spawn randomly that you had to kill to get them; this is easily the most annoying kind of quest in RPG's generally. Well, *some* of those quests are still here in the remake, but they're a whole lot less annoying now for some reason. I think there are just a lot fewer of them, their requirements are much less annoying to get, etc. The vast majority of the job board quests have interesting unique content. Anyway, that's it. Go play this game. It's definitely worth the 100 hours. So is the rest of the series, if you can find a computer that will play it! (I paid money for the Exile series back in 2013, but I think Jeff was ashamed people were still paying for a 20-year-old game so now you can download the Exile games for free!)

Avernum is one of the great fantasy settings in any medium. This game, a thoroughgoing and creative remaster and expansion of the original Avernum 4, provides a greatly enriched experience for veteran players and, being the first installment of the “second trilogy” while featuring many accumulated improvements to the interface and mechanics, an ideal entry point for new players. It deserves to attract many. There are two principal sources of strength: story and gameplay. The story is novelistic in scope and quality, told partly through action and environment but primarily through textual description and dialogue, which cover a well-judged tonal range from grandeur and high tension to wry humor and occasional whimsy. Although a solo game, the player is invited at crucial junctures into a role-playing mentality thanks to the depth of the political and political-economic world-building (the complex factional landscape and mutually exclusive decisions reflect Spiderweb Software’s most recent series). At a finer-grained level, I found myself savoring "flavor text" and talking to characters outside the quest progression – farmers, soldiers, and…spiders – in order to understand the mentality and social temperature in the various regions. The difficulty levels let the player calibrate the balance between the sweep of the story and tactical decision making. At casual and normal levels, the player can focus on the former. At veteran level, equipment, character positioning, and skill progression require continuous thoughtful attention. At torment level, each facet of the systems demands careful management, with a proportionate sense of achievement. It’s enormous fun – a memorable work crafted by a master of the genre.

Jeff's games are like crack to me. I can't get enough. I've been playing them since the late 1990's. I love everything he's done and this remake is no exception. Superb writing - compelling narrative - engrossing exploration... I'm 56 years old and I still find myself thinking about the current Spiderweb Software game I'm playing while I'm at work or driving a car, riding a bike, etc. They just saturate you in a whole new level of fantasy immersion. I loved battling the cleverly named "Hhortah" in this one (oh you devil in the dark) and actually found a nice folded towel to take with me everywhere because I'm such a hoopy frood. Thanks for all the obvious winks and more subtle references you put in your games Jeff! Just love it!

The series is getting tiresome and repetitive without the gripping storyline in the previous 3 installment. This one is very dull and mechanical, with the choices of your action having limited impact on the ending. Kind of disappointing.

I do like some good old RPGs, but this remake doesn't fix the fact that it's an old school RPG with a lot of pitfalls that didn't really get me hooked enough to play it through. The story is boring, the maps are samey, the combat is a bit simple, and so many decisions can irrevocably screw over your party hours later. I'm out.

It’s a real gem despite its appearance. The UI is much cleaner now and finally makes full use of the display. Still no zoom, though, which isn’t great for my aging eyes. And they even retired the classic floppy‑disk save icon. :)

This game is terriffic! It's really nice to have this newest version of the Avernum series. It's a sleek upgrade from previous versions, but it's also a great stand-alone game. This has completely new content for people who have played Avernum games before, but would be an easy entry game for those who have never spent time with Avernum. The graphics are nice (familiar from previous Spiderweb games, but enhanced in a really nice way). The plotting/dialogue works well and has humorous elements. Navigating the map is easy. I love that there is so much autonomy and fun things to find around every corner. The map (with flags you can add!) and the journal and quest lists help you keep track of your goals which is great, because there's a whole lot to explore. It's easy to pick up and put down when needed, but you want to keep coming back to it. All in all a wonderful game! I'm so glad Spiderweb Software chose to revisit this wonderful title.

It is more Avernum, so that's good! Been on and off the series since it was called Exile, now you already kinda know what to expect at this point, so let us get on with the good and bad Good: - Feels more immersive to not have a different map mode (however...) - Still the same core experience, just feels more fluid now - Works better on linux than the other installments (no weird slowdowns) - Writing and world building has staying power even after so many entries, however... Bad: - ...Gosh it feels like multiple solutions to quests should finally start raising their heads in an immersive game right this, right? - ... About that no map mode thing... it does make the world feel so... so much smaller, it has good sides, sure, but... somehow it feels so much more small - STILL NO MUSIC IN GAME, there are producers, much like me, working for a dime... SOME ambient music and town music pleeeaaaaassseee, at least the way wow does it (kicking in every few minutes or so, for few minutes) It's a game in Avernum series, not for them people who think Skyrim is peak RPG, but for us old school people. You know by now if you like it, you don't really need me saying it. 7/10