Avowed

An excellent RPG with some amazing level design, excellent world building (especially for POE heads). The narrative as a whole is great but gets a bit dry. The quests range from decent to really great, with some very nice reactivity within the world, and the orgainc way you can stumble onto them is really well done. The combat is decent, punchy and fast but gets a bit samey as the game goes along but still not really the main draw for me. Love the art direction of the living lands and the game looks gorgeous throughout.

Buen juego, no es tan malo como lo pintan. No es un RPG pero es un juego de aventuras con subida de nivel y armaduras/armas mejorables, aunque una vez encontras la que te gusta solo mejoras esa. Tirando al final se hace un poco denso en cuanto a historia, pero el gameplay es divertido y eso te hace seguir jugandolo. Eso si, no pienso sacarle el 100%.

Avowed wasn't bad... but it wasn't great either. So I am late to the party. I just got the game last week due to a combination of it being on sale for cheap and being bored with nothing else I wanted to play. This is a personal opinion and not necessarily a critique but the reason I waited so long to try it is twofold: one - I loathe guns in a fantasy game. I feel they are jarring and out of genre when I want sword & sorcery. Everything I saw about the game when it released showcased using flintlocks and arquebuses and that alone was enough to make me go 'nah' and pass. Secondly, the little skull faced mascot graphic for avowed gave me more of a "what the hell kind of game is this" vibe and I found it confusing enough to where I didn't bother to look deeper in. Past that, I'm bored and wanted something new to play and saw it was on sale. I've recently finished a first playthrough (though I have gotten four other playthroughs into act 3) to try different character builds. Speaking of that, it is nice that we can respec our abilities and stats so easily, but it's not terribly useful since the game is SO STINGY with upgrade materials and there is so much focus on upgrading gear. You upgrade the one weapon and one armor you're going to use and that's that. Everything else is going to feel subpar by comparison. If you're doing a bow ranger and late in act2 early act 3 realize that the devs really hate bows and want everyone to use a gun, you're kinda stuck and have to start over since you've burned so much of a very limited resource on upgrading a bow that ultimately turned out to be weak. Next major gripe - stealth is nonfunctional. I don't know why developers lately have such a hate on for stealth in games. Either let it work or not even present it as an option. In Avowed, you are OCCASIONALLY allowed to get a stealth ambush on ONE mob, which instantly aggros everything else nearby. And that's only if you are using a melee weapon. I found attempting stealth shots with a bow to be functionally worthless. It was no different than shooting something in open combat. Either support stealth (let the players who like taking 15 minutes to clear 5 mobs with careful maneuvering instead of 30 seconds to steamroll over them without stealth) or do not support stealth at all and admit that stealth is not an allowed playstyle. On to RPG stuff. Is this supposed to be an RPG? It doesn't really feel like one. More of a looter-shooter style game where the looter aspect of it is just this tedious upgrade system where you find "the weapon" you will use and then you spend the rest of the game picking flowers and searching every corner of everywhere looking for materials to upgrade that one thing. Where are the skills? Where is the FEEL of being one class or the other. I had a "wizard" build with every point spent in wizard abilities and a high intelligence and I still got called a "layperson" by the archmage. No ranger recognizes the character with most of the points spent in the ranger tree as a ranger. Versatility isn't necessarily a bad thing but it sucks all the flavor out of the character. No matter what you do, you are "generic adventurer 002". And lockpicking... i mean the best thing I can say about the lockpicking in this game is that there's no tedious minigame associated with it. But I am SO freaking sick and tired of lockpicks being treated as a consumable item or flimsy things that break if you breathe on them too hard. I miss the fallout 1 & 2 thing where lockpicking was a skill and you could either open something or not if you were properly trained for it. If we have to keep buying or finding lockpicks they're functionally the same thing as buying keys. They're not lockpicks. They do not have a skill feel or a class feel. (e.g. if you were playing a rogue you could've opened that door, but you're a mage so you have to take the long way around). There's none of that feel to this game. It's just generic. Magic - My "wizard" spent 90% of combat using a wand. If i wanted to stand there and spam "primary attack" to kill things with a ranged attack, i'd be a ranger with a bow or pistol. People choose wizards to cast spells. The essence system is too limiting. And most of the harder hitting spells like blizzard or meteor storm or the lightning storm are a nightmare to target. more than half the time they either land directly on my head and do nothing or they overshoot and go off behind the mobs where they, again, do nothing. The Lords of Nevermiss - so, so, so sick of games where the mobs NEVER miss. There will be a mob in deep foliage so bad that I can't even see them but their arrows or thrown spears unerringly hit me no matter what i do. If a mob winds up a melee charge attack, it WILL swerve and hit me no matter what. And moving on from that to the absolutely most frustrating part of the combat in this game - Whoever made the decision to make dodge and jump the same button should not be allowed to make game design decisions without adult supervision. The character CONSTANTLY dodges when I want to jump over an obstacle and it constantly jumps like an idiot when i'm trying to dodge (which results in getting hit). The impotent jump while trying to dodge happened so often it started to feel like the game was cheating intentionally. (If any of the devs want to see dodging done right, go play Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon) SO EDGY - I get the whole "let's make the player make hard moral choices" thing but video games are saturated with this stuff lately and sometimes, it feels like a game is just trying too hard to be edgy when there's no reason for it. A situation happens and it's choice A stinks because bad stuff happens one way, and Choice B (the only other option) stinks because bad things happen a different way. There's no "hey, why don't both of you just wait and not do anything and give me another week to see if I can fix this before you kill a bunch of innocents" option. Moral dilemmas are good but when they're THIS forced, they fall flat. It just feels like the writers are saying "look how edgy we are" rather than trying to tell a story that makes logical sense. love that the mobs do not scale. Scaling mobs is annoying. It ruins any feeling of progression. So, good choice. Except... it would be nice if it were easier to tell if mobs were over your level or not. I know there's the whole gear thing comparison but that's basically like putting out an RPG where there are only 5 levels. (item qualities). It doesn't feel great. I beat the game with the wizard build... all the while not feeling like a wizard. More of a ranger with a glow stick (wand). Tried a bow/stealth ranger. The game laughed at me attempting to use stealth. The game also laughed at me for using a bow when "guns are much cooler". So i gave up on that. Tried a dual pistol ranger since all the guides say that was the most powerful... and it was noticeably better than the bow. Who needs to stealth when PEW. Still, after the wizard playthrough felt like I was basically "Obi-WAND-Kenobi" that didn't really cast many spells, it felt nearly the exact same as a pistol ranger. The only real diference is fast attacks that do low damage vs slow attacks that slam. It's the same character with different sound effects. So yeah, despite there being technically 3 different classes, nothing ever felt like I was a class. The game played the same with the wizard and the ranger. Melee DID feel different but it was a bad different. It was a "Meh, nah" different. RPGs should have skills. They should have character classes insofar as the world and NPCs react to your character class or being a particular class does things that other classes can't do, so you have more reason to replay the game on a different class. Avowed's version of versalitity ends up making everything feel samey. So, all in all, not a bad game. Not a great one either. Extremely mid.

Tried to push through and finish it but was just not having a good time, I don't care at all about the story, combat is pretty lame in my opinion, none of the characters really got me invested in them at all. Hope they return to making CRPGs

Obsidian c'est vraiment un studio polyvalent qui sait tout faire , j'ai découvert il n'y a pas si longtemps que ça que les mecs , en plus de la série Pillars Of Eternity ( Rpg génial en vue iso à la Baldur's Gate ) étaient aussi à l'origine de Fallout New Vegas et même Kotor 2 dans le passé. Du coup ayant adoré Pillars, j'ai été agréablement surpris en constatant que Avowed se passe dans le même monde que Pillars , à savoir Eora , avec tout le lore qu'il y a derrière. On est sur un action rpg assez classique à la première personne avec plusieurs grandes zones ouvertes à explorer librement et il est plaisant de constater qu'ils ne sont pas tombé dans le piège de l'open word vide rempli de collectibles et point d'intérêt inutile. ( Ubisoft lol ) Les maps manquent un peu d'organisme et les villes sont peu animées mais c'est contrebalancé par une bonne histoire et des quêtes secondaires scénarisées ( et non fedex ) avec plusieurs choix pour les conclure. Ajoutez un ça un gameplay ultra nerveux et bien ficelé ,que demander plus, c'est un grand oui. Unreal engine 5 fait le taf , c'est beau et artistiquement on retrouve la beauté des décors de Pillars. Et pour finir le level design est au service de l'exploration , c'est rempli de secret et de zones à découvrir par hasard au gré de vos randonnées.

What did I like ? - The deep lore of this world, the questions that inevitably follow stubborn science, stubborn gods, stubborn politics (as we all obviously are better pious, science-lover politicians) - Exploration (climbing every rock, swimming, beautiful landscapes, sometimes hidden) - Choices. Talk to people in paradis in the last battle, you'll see. It was good to talk to Liviana, Giuliana, Caemon etc... before the final confrontation. - Companions. Marius, surprisingly. And Yatzli. I LOVE Yatzli !!!!!!!!!! Oooooh and in the last part of the game, you don't need to choose your companions, they all come to fight on your side, with some unexpected friends (that ogre ? hey welcome) - Bright colours - Diversity - Easy to rebuild and to respec. You can be anyone. Anytime. Excellent for combat What I didn't like : - Too many questmarkers, don't help me that much, I'll manage. And fail. y'know, as a player I have the almighty power. Lödwyn and even Woedica won't eve compete : I can LOAD a previous game before my mistake. Let me search and fail. And explore - Too many treasures, really, in the end that's meaningless, even those shiny uniques. Come on, when that sexy Spiritmender armour appears in late game, I'm already lvl 29, my build is done, I don't need it - Bright colours, diversity. It gives splendid lighting, mushrooms, flowers, and again... amazing landscapes. But those people, those love stories : not very subtle, not very meaningful, diversity as a rule is really just a rule, in the end. Imagine yourselves as diversity Lödwyns : nor funny anymore, he ? - Easy to rebuild and to respec. You can be anyone, anytime, whatever, no one cares. Terrible for roleplay! - Music. It was such an fundamental part of PoE. Here I can't remember any part of it In the end... I played a good ice mage. Next time I'll try to incarnate an ugly evil dual mace wielder. Y'know, it's a good sign when players come twice, or more. Loved the story and the landscapes, I'll have to explore again

Struggled to get invested. The universe and characters aren't all that interesting, and the gameplay a bit lackluster. The game is very pretty though.

I like to think that because my ADHD runs rampant, im never able to gain satisfaction from high end games. i bore too easily, i forget about games(even the ones i like), and i always pick apart pieces that i don't like. "DuHZ It PlAY LiKe sKYrIM?!" yes and no. if you're expecting skyrim, just go play skyrim... it's not rocket science. clearly thats the game you want. what it does similar to skyrim: -Open world RPG -first person action -choices matter(moreso in this game than skyrim tbh) some of the things i've noticed people failing the game because skyrim does it: -so you can't pick everything up. it's all static. that fork? can't pick it up. -no... it's not skyrim, so you can't pull arrows out of a tree(fr, this game got ♥♥♥♥ on for this) -NPCs don't really react when you take their things. i like to think its because im the Envoy... so try it.try to stop me, i have diplomatic immunity! - companions... even though skyrim had like 12 companions(not including mods) and only 2 of them were memorable to me Things i love about this game: it's not skyrim. if it was skyrim, it would be skyrim. Dialogue options are good and hold weight. The combat is the special sauce that skyrim forgot to add. slapping people feels so damn good. A DODGE MECHANIC!!! this is what skyrim should've had, in my opinion. Skyrim on it's own is mid, but high tier mid. it really only shines with mods. While i can put in a dodge mod... it's way better when it's implemented into the game, rather than me having to organize files like im a freaking developer. Skyrim cant be all THAT great when people have to modify it to fit their fancy... just sayin. did i mention the combat? bro... slapping people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SLAPS. the spell work , visuals, and sound effects are so well done, that i crave the next battle. shield bashing someone is so satisfying. THE WORLD!!! dear god, this is a beautiful world. lush forests that follow a specific fantasy trope: large shrooms, trees with visible ley lines shown, rolling hills with a sexy green, sprawling towers and camps... and the cities!!!! oh lord the cities feel like cities. not a two street town that winds into a stair case, no... streets everywhere! houses, alleyways, roof tops, sewers... this game has so much level design and verticality that you could spend hours in each town just exploring. The lore is on par with Elder scrolls. the PoE games laid the foundation and it's deep and mysterious at the same time.every major landmark has some deep backdrop behind it. the local level design of the wilderness... so good. i don't need a mount. there's so much to see and do, that even having to walk feels fun. even gun play!!! this game has shoot outs!! nuff said the companions are a little dull, but i feel like it's because of burn out with similar games. all of them are trying to paint everyone's picture, and it only resonates with a few people. i personally like the companions, but there have been times where im not in the mood to listen to their life's story. this isn't Baldur's Gate, after all... nothing they say changes an outcome in the grand scheme of things... at least not from what i've experienced so far. overall a solid 8/10 not sure what it is... but sometimes it feels like theres something thats missing. i can never quite put my finger on it... but every once in a while i feel something... lacking. WONDERFUL game, though.

Fantastic game :)

A sloppy game with unremarkable characters, clunky combat and boring story. yet another game i wish i hadn't bought.