Avowed wasnt bad. It wasn't exactly 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.

Why can't we parry while dual wielding?

Enough with the unclimbable magic walls. If terrain looks like we should be able to climb it, not letting us climb it with invisble walls is super frustrating. I get that the devs or the engine couldn't quite handle actual open terrain and we're still basically navigating a maze of corridors disguised as open terrain but still. If we aren't supposed to go somewhere, don't make it look like it should be climbable.

Getting stuck on things: (this is hardly only Avowed's issue but) can we please just automatically step over obstructions shorter than knee high on the character?

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.

I tried a greatsword warrior and a dual dagger ranger (again the game mocked me for thinking stealth was a supported playstyle). And.. the Lords of Nevermiss made the melee attempts feel obnoxiously unfun. It may well be a skill issue on my part but I don't find it fun to drink 1 healing potion for every 2 kills just to stay alive as a melee build.

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 versatility ends up making everything feel samey, and thus the urge to replay it on a different character is weak.

So, all in all, not a bad game. Not a great one either. Extremely mid.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by Matthew Cox
typo fix