Companion System Criticisms

[Mungrul]

First off, while this is a complaint post, I am otherwise absolutely loving the game!

Having reached Galawain's Tusks, I feel confident in criticising how companions work in Avowed.
All of them are interesting characters, and the narrative encourages you to frequently swap them out. But in practice, two of the companions play suboptimally, especially in late game, for a couple of reasons.

Kai and Marius effectively have to take a back-seat once you have Giatta and Yatzli if you don't want to be playing suboptimally.

Of the two ladies, Yatzli is less essential, but still has a feature that requires you take her with you if you don't have prior knowledge of the maps. Her "Special" ability to reveal illusions is the only special ability that the player character has no equivalent of.

But Giatta, being the only healer, quickly becomes essential, especially if playing on the higher difficulties.

If you're not playing with Giatta, you will be spending more on consumables to keep you alive, which will in turn eat into your ability to upgrade your equipment.

The other characters do have various control-like side effects, but none of these can compete with Giatta's healing abilities.

If you're playing to enjoy the story while also experiencing challenging combat, this adversely affects enjoyment; for example, narratively, it makes sense that Marius should be in your team almost constantly when you get to Galawain's Tusks. But mechanically, both Yatzli and Giatta trump him, as he simply can't offer the same tools that they do.

Avowed shares a lot in common with Veilguard's companion system, but there they handily avoided the Giatta problem by ensuring that everyone was capable of healing if required. I'm not saying it should be the same in Avowed, but the control options offered by the other companions should at least be equivalent to the benefits offered by Giatta's heals. Either that, or Giatta's healing is nerfed to bring her more in line with the other characters.

I know balancing healers is a perrenial issue in RPGs, but it's not impossible.

 

The other thing that annoys me and rips me out of the game is companions commenting on the mission or dungeon you've just completed as though they were in the party when they weren't. It may seem a minor quibble to a lot of people, but from a narrative continuity perpective, it's really jarring.

 

And on the minor side of things (but a broader perspective), the lack of companion gear and the relative simplicity of companion builds compared to player ones is also annoying. Not as bad as the issues outlined above, but still enough to make companions feel more like extra skills on a hotbar rather than fully fledged individuals.

 

Please note that none of these issues are enough to ruin the game for me!
I'm having a blast, and think that it's a more than worthwhile addition to Obsidian's Eora universe. Some things even work better in this action-RPG format than in the CRPG one, such as consumables and grenades.
But they do tarnish the experience and seem like things that are relatively easy to fix.

[saeran]

I'd like if there was a system that let you send companions to camp so that you can play the game solo, at least the parts that don't require a companion for a quest.

I find their quips and lines often immersion breaking, because the triggers are not well done. For example my character just defeated an enemy, and then walks over to loot them, and then Kai gives advice on how to approach this enemy... That is just annoying. And most of the interesting talk takes place at camp anyway. 

[HellbillyBob]

The biggest criticism I have is that the companions are complete idiots. Why would you design companions that just rush straight ahead through every trap in every room as you're trying to disarm them? They keep getting hit requiring me to burn through resources to either heal them or myself because I've been hit thanks to the fact they just ran through 3 or 4 tripwires in a row setting off every trap in the entire room because their A.I is atrocious. I'm sick of it. The companion system is utterly atrocious, stupid companions and no way to tell them to stand still or set them to my control only. This needs to be fixed ASAP. I'm over it. 

[masterty66]

I don't find Giatta necessary. Granted, I was only playing on hard, and maybe potd ups the difficulty enough that my opinion would change, but I had an absurd amount of consumables for most of the game. By the end I think I had like 100 heal pots and 100 essence pots and I wasn't even buying them at stores.

I do agree that Yatzli being necessary is unfortunate. Though having said that I don't recall any "must have" gear being gated behind those illusions you needed her to break. It was all standard loot so if you weren't bringing her along you might miss out on a few upgrade mats but I doubt it's that big a deal at the end of the day. And you can always swap her in if you remember where the illusion was you needed to dispel.