Avowed

From the acclaimed developers at Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds), Avowed presents itself as a promising first-person RPG set in a vivid fantasy world known as the Living Lands. The game boasts impressive visuals, with rich textures and fluid animations that reflect current-generation capabilities. Initially, the world-building is engaging, with interesting lore and a solid pace during the first quarter. Unfortunately, that momentum doesn't last.

Gameplay is where Avowed shines. Combat is fast, fluid, and varied, giving players plenty of freedom and avoiding the usual pitfalls of stat-heavy RPG mechanics. The progression system feels balanced, letting your weapons and skills grow naturally as you advance. That said, this strength becomes a weakness later on: weapon upgrades become almost mandatory to proceed, and the dependence on gear progression begins to overshadow skill.

The experience starts to unravel in other areas. Conversations with NPCs begin promisingly but devolve into repetitive and shallow exchanges. Many characters feel lifeless - more like set pieces than personalities - which hurts immersion. Enemy encounters suffer a similar fate. Initially diverse, foes later become repetitive, and the challenge turns into a numbers game, with difficulty ramping up through sheer quantity rather than thoughtful design.

Narratively, the game struggles. While side quests and lore exploration help elevate a weak premise, the central plot involving gods and an internal entity becomes muddled halfway through. Too many concepts are poorly explained, and by the time the finale arrives, it's underwhelming and anticlimactic - a missed opportunity for a story that had potential.

Overall, Avowed delivers exciting gameplay mechanics in a beautifully crafted world. But for a title with such high narrative ambitions, its weak story, forgettable characters, and uneven pacing ultimately hold it back. Still, it's worth trying if you're looking for a fresh combat experience in an RPG setting.

Rating: 7.5/10.

This is everything I had wanted Elder Scrolls Online to be (with the exception of multiplayer mode). I just felt compelled to give this a good review, because of how wonderful of an adventure these last several days of playing Avowed have been.

I love many of the characters. The scenery is gorgeous. The voice acting is excellent. Music is lovely. The towns and areas are stimulating of my curiosity continuously compelling me to explore more and more. I feel like a treasure hunter helping people out around the realm.

I had quit ESO a few years ago, because I found the bad guys that attacked me when I was just trying to get from point a to b, to be just irksome and annoying. In this game though, as was the case for me in Zelda Breath of the Wild; I am actually enjoying the little battles between. Also, very important for me, is that I can run away from the baddies that are in the path of my journey, if I don't want to fight them. In ESO, that one fact that I couldn't get around those skirmishes, was probably the main reason I quit.

Although I did like many things about ESO. In fact, this game has many of the positive aspects, in my opinion in a more well done sort of way.

Another thing to note is that you always have a couple companions at your side. Really makes this game feel less empty than other games. Like you're traveling with a couple of friends.

Can't recommend this enough. Usually I am only into pvp. For a single player game to have grasped my attention for so many days in a row...this is only the second time this has happened despite the many solo games I've tried. The first was botwzelda.

As a big fan of RPGs such as Fable and Dragon Age Origins, this game came out of nowhere as a very pleasant surprise.

• Beautiful atmospheric world.

• So much fun to discover.

• Good gameplay with a lot of variety in weapons and abilities.

• Swap between 1st and 3rd perspective with the push of a button.

• Intriguing story with interesting characters.

• Lots of freedom in choices with dialogues and events.

• Atmospheric music and very good audio.

Especially the combat is one of the best I've encountered in a RPG. Speaking about the 1st person pov. But game is also very playable in 3rd person. I loved switching between pov on certain locations and situations.

Tried it on Gamepass and after a few hours I bought the premium edition by my local store.

Truly one of my favourite new game since Lies of P.

Seems like the ones who build this world and the ones who filled it with these characters and bad dialogue are two different teams. It feels like the potential of the beautifully created world is not met due to bland dialogue and corpo lunchtalk npcs.

Some levels are pretty nicely designed while most of the side missions are empty and generic.

The graphics are really spot on, the cities feel good but are lacking flair. It's a world that can be filled with major updates in the future hopefully.

For a game that was at first designed to be live-Service - it should've probably stayed on that path.

The game is technically and mechanically good, it plays well and it does not have irritating mechanics like stamina loss while exploring or weapon decay that makes them need repair.

... but the writing, oh god the writing and storytelling!

The absurd amount of made up words that we have to memorize to just keep track of what's being talked about is appalling!

Then sometimes different words spoken by different people have the same meaning and we are supposed to keep track of all this convoluted internal structure just because a character one time said that word.

The amount of interruption in the game just to spit a meaningless dialogue in our face is also absurd. After a few hours I just stopped even reading and skipped everything because it was just time lost, it amounted to nothing.

Mind you, I have the suspicion that all the interactions with "the voice" will decide the ending of the game, but they irritated me so much that at this point I'm more eager to get it over with than to care for how the game end.

EDIT: After finishing the game I have to say the writing is even worse than I thought just because it has no actual influence on what happens, it's literally hours of mindnumbing armchair psychology that does nothing but change the slideshow at the game's epilogue.

There are 5 or 6 choices that have minor gameplay consequences, the rest of the dialogue can be skipped and the player would see no difference.