Avowed Review

Avowed has left me torn. On one hand, it’s fun, as the moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying, and I found myself getting drawn in deeply to parts of the game. The lore and world design are utterly fantastic, and exploring The Living Lands was wonderful. On the other hand, however, I constantly found myself disappointed with different aspects. The quest design is inconsistent, the sheer lack of player freedom in the world makes me wish I was playing any other RPG, and the dialogue and writing often felt so incredibly pretentious that I struggled to take it seriously. Avowed is an action-RPG, but its RPG systems left me feeling unfulfilled, and the action felt like it played all its cards within the first five hours.

My first impressions were pretty strong: the character creation is deep and has some interesting details, such as the Godlike (a being touched by a God before their birth) features. These are additional quirks — such as plant growths and roots — that you can add to your character due to their nature as Godlike. Once you’ve passed this, you get a relatively interesting opening cinematic that provides some basic setup and world-building. You’re then thrust into The Living Lands after a shipwreck strands you near Fort Northreach, just outside the town of Paradis. For all intents and purposes, this is the prologue for Avowed, and I think it sets up the majority of the game pretty well.

The disease you were sent to investigate, the Dreamscourge, has ravaged the members of the Fort, driving them insane and leading to infighting. Fort Northreach is nicely open and has a few branching paths that help showcase the quality of the world design and exploration. You’ll stumble across Ilora, a prisoner, who informs you of the events that transpired and offers assistance to get back to the mainland in exchange for her freedom. While your partner Garryck doesn’t agree with the idea, you’re given the option to free her or not. She’ll stay true to her word, fighting with you through the rest of the fort and helping you defeat the commander, the first boss. Upon his defeat, you’ll be able to proceed onwards towards Paradis, and then the game truly opens up.

Fort Northreach showcases the majority of the systems you’ll need to get used to in Avowed: the combat, exploration, platforming, and the occasional room for player choice to alter future events. It also does a fantastic job of setting up the mystery of the Dreamscourge and the player's place in the events. Most Godlike know which God they’re involved with, but you don’t, and you’ve also begun hearing a mysterious voice sometimes. The player is given enough tools to try each main weapon archetype here too: Swords, Shields, Wands, Guns, Grimoires, and more. The combat in the early game is incredibly average, but it does pick up a little as you progress. Magic gives you the most options early on and is, therefore, my personal favourite for the early game, as Grimoires give you a variety of spells to cast right out of the gate, oftentimes playing into different elements. Melee, however, I’m not the biggest fan of. There’s a severe lack of impact behind most of the melee attacks, and while bigger, heavier weapons are slower and deal more stun damage to the enemy (leading to a big follow-up strike once they’re stunned), the actual hits don’t feel too impactful. Games like Dying Light have an incredibly tactile-feeling melee system, with enemies oftentimes recoiling or even getting heavily rag-dolled when hit with big melee strikes, and it’s hard not to want to make the comparisons here. While it’s somewhat a nitpick, it was something that did impact my want to re-engage with a lot of the different weapon types. That’s not to say that melee is awful, though; there’s a nice bob-and-weave flow to the melee combat, with the dodging, blocking, and attacking all feeling responsive and fluid.

Most of my playthrough, however, was spent focussing on somewhat of a Ranger build with dual-wielding pistols, and I did enjoy this. As you progress and level up, you’ll earn talent points, which you can place in three different skill trees: Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard. There’s also the Godlike tree and the Companion tree, but they’re progressed separately. The skills within the main three trees all focus on a set archetype of weapons, along with some active abilities that typically focus on the playstyle of their related weapons. They’re nothing special; most of these feel pretty standard in terms of RPG skill trees, and there’s a severe lack of depth, meaning they rarely feel impactful. You’re able to mix and match skills from all three without any prior stat requirements, which does allow for some interesting interplay between archetypes. This form of progression, however, really loses its charm around level 10, as that’s the point where I’d gotten all the skills I wanted, and so many of them are just raw stat increases, which aren’t ever exciting. The Godlike tree progresses as you complete certain parts of the story and find hidden memories around the world, while the Companion tree allows you to unlock new abilities for the companions you’ll find as you progress.

Gear progression is another mixed bag; you’re able to level up your gear using resources you find, and with this system, you could technically take a weapon you found in Fort Northreach, take it to the end of the game, and it would be completely viable. It’s nice; a lot of RPGs give you fantastic gear that falls off within a couple of hours of play and ends up either being sold or thrown in a stash, never to be seen again. Unique gear can also be enchanted, giving you a choice between two upgrades to its innate abilities. It’s solid but very rarely exciting. Most gear isn’t particularly powerful or even unique, so it’s hard to get excited about new weapons or armour that are no better than your currently equipped options. This, along with the underwhelming skill progression, makes the midgame feel incredibly stagnant and makes character progression feel less like exciting growth for your character and more like a stat boost to help enemies stop feeling so spongey.

The world design and environments are where Avowed shines, and it shines bright. Exploring the areas across The Living Lands is incredibly satisfying, and while the zones aren’t massive, they’re densely packed with enemies, secrets, and points of interest. There’s rarely any downtime during exploration but not in an overwhelming way: you’ll always have something to do, somewhere to explore, or something to fight. What sets Avowed apart from other RPGs is the immaculate art design and the verticality of a lot of the world. The locations look utterly breathtaking and helped motivate me to keep exploring and taking in the sights. However, the performance does leave a little to be desired; while not awful, I did have a lot of notable frame drops. You’re able to climb a lot of cliffs, towers, and hills using the parkour mechanics, which are simple (practically just a ledge mantle) but effective. Despite the exploration being fantastic, though, so much of this world just feels absolutely lifeless. Practically everything you do and see is scripted, which makes the world lack any feeling of life. You can steal food, money, and items right in front of people’s eyes, and nobody reacts, which feels especially egregious in the second area, where people are constantly complaining about needing to ration. It’s by no means a huge problem, but it made it so hard to get deeply immersed in a game where I felt like less of a character and more of a plot device.

I’ve got no experience with the Pillars of Eternity universe (which is where Avowed is set), but I am invested in the lore of it thanks to Avowed. There are a lot of really interesting things within the world as a whole, such as its pantheon, magic systems, and political climate, but the story I quickly lost interest beyond the introduction. It does a good job setting up the Dreamscourge initially, but then it begins to feel pretentious. People are constantly talking in riddles, giving you very few answers, and it wears pretty thin incredibly quickly. As someone without experience, I do appreciate the dialogue history tab, which explains a lot of keywords that you may not know, helping to minimise exposition.

A lot of the characters are also not all that interesting, and their vocal performances and writing don’t help much, either. Kai is the first companion you’ll find, and while he isn’t unlikeable, he’s just uninteresting. There’s rarely even an ounce of emotion in his lines, and I just never found myself caring about him. The same can be said for most of the characters you meet across the story. It isn’t all bad because there are some genuinely great moments across the story. It’s just a shame that it’s all strung together by a lot of mediocrity.

Quests are, once again, inconsistent. A lot of quests ended up just being a back-and-forth journey to different people, without a lot of depth or complexity, along with some pretty black-and-white decisions; some did stand out. One that stuck out for me was Dawntreader. I won’t spoil specifics, but there were a variety of options, which had me thinking about the world and the nature of certain events. There are a few quests like this, but sadly, it isn’t the majority. The biggest thing to note with the quests is that a lot of them have tangible results in the world. It doesn’t force the consequences of your decisions on you, but as you progress you’ll begin seeing the results of your actions for a lot of quests, whether good or bad.

As a whole, I had fun with Avowed, and I’d be lying if I said that the general beat-by-beat gameplay isn’t enjoyable. There’s just so much that frustrated me and made the experience so underwhelming. It’s hard to recommend at the AAA price point, but it’s worth giving a go through Xbox Game Pass.