Avernum 6 Reviews

I love all of the games in this series. The look does exactly what it needs to do, they play very smoothly for what they are trying to accomplish, and the stories are actually pretty damn good. I've spent a good amount of time playing these games and I will time and time again. They are classics, but beyond that, they are gems. If you like isometric RPG games, this is a must.

Recommend if you like isometric, loot-heavy, dungeon grinds and power politics. There's a book's worth of reading. The setting is unique. Great game.

The Avernum series is a great lineage of games by a little company. They're quite lengthy and tell a great tale of the course of several games. I started with the second one and went from there. There's a whole world to explore and the difficulty is pretty high, one wrong step into a tunnel and you'll become food for some unkown horror. There's magic, priesty heals, ranged stuff and of course good old melee combat. All the characters are very well defined and the lore is solid. Be warned though, if you don't like reading, this probably isn't for you. There's a lot of text. So that's just a matter of taste. If you don't want to play the super old ones but still want something like this without feeling left out of the story; go play Geneforge. Same company, same engine, different story. It's definatly a solid buy.

A continuation of one of the most fascinating and creative RPGs I’ve ever experienced. The mind that made this game is awesome. If you enjoy a wonderful story that you get to be the centerpiece of this is the game for you.

Quite a classic, maybe not so notoriously known as it would deserve. Quite an underdog. Yet, since I played Exile, then Avernum series, these games become one of my favs. Unique engine, story, gameplay and totally original RPG system. I applaud to the life-long works of Spiderweb Software.

I remember playing Avernum as a kid and have fond memories of it, now it appears that very little has changed. If you want a nostaligia trip this is definately a game for you, however it's grindy as hell and hasn't aged all that well compared to other games of the genre. The fact that not much has changed isn't exactly a bad thing, if it ain't broke don't fix it. The only problem I have is how clunky the UI is, in the fact that you could carve it onto a stone and it would still be intuative. It works, it's just not very nice to look at for longer than half an hour at a time. Still enjoy it though. 6/10

I'm sorry but being a player who originated from The Exile Trilogy I can't justify completing this game compared to Exile 3 Ruined World

Summary: This is pretty fun BUT it's basically a beta for the Avernum 1-2-3 remakes, and kinda falls apart in the last third. I know its somewhat unfair to judge a game due to lacking the features and balance changes that were introduced in later sequels, but having played Escape from the Pit / Crystal Souls first, I wound up missing a lot of basic quality of life features. For instance, if you want to make an attack with a ranged weapon and you're too far away to do so, the game won't just run your character forward, but will instead tell you that you can't attack. A lot of annoying little things that alternate between that and outright balance changes: *You basically get into combat the second you see an enemy, so you never have time to buff before a fight - you either run through the overworld with buffs constantly on, or give up on them entirely. * Clerics get their first area of effect spell very late, and it's a fire spell that rolls around just when you're fighting mostly fire-resistant enemies. * Fire-resistant enemies that love to block melee attacks. I never really felt my party was in danger past the early game unless I stumbled into a sidequest combat without being prepared for it, but a lot of the unavoidable maingame combat was horribly sloggy, with the enemies being way more tanky than necessary. * The game is kinda balanced so that you get a lot of challenge out of optional sidequests on normal difficulty while unavoidable maingame content is quite a bit easier (if sloggy). Not sure if I approve of that, and the very notion of going through the sidequest combat on a higher difficulty is frightening. * Game kinda falls apart in the end. You kill the ostensible main bad guys, and are then left retreading the same ground for a few hours, cleaning up loose ends and doing fairly unimpressive quests until you're allowed to access the endgame battle. An endgame which doesn't even have named enemies. With all that in mind, I had a great deal of fun fighting and exploring for about two-thirds of the game, and was invested enough to slog through the remaining third, poor balance and annoying interface issues and all. Not quite the epic sendoff the series deserved, but probably worth your time nonetheless.

I bought Avernum VI on a sale. I knew what to expect but had never played any of Spiderweb’s games before. After finishing, I thoroughly recommend it, with minor reservations. The graphics are simple but effective; actually, the sprites can be quite charming. I’ve played Dwarf Fortress and a number of rogue-likes so the graphics didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of Avernum. The only complaint I have about them is that it was quite a challenge to target enemies and move a tile when there were many characters around you during combat, especially in cramped corridors and rooms. The UI is also a bit unfriendly. There are a few issues with combat, imho. It works fine, but it can be very grindy towards the end of the game. I played in the normal difficulty and some of the fights dragged for too long, with enemies that were hit sponges, could hit multiple times, and could summon, all in the same round. I imagine that it must be complicated to balance the challenges in a RPG such as Avernum. I also understand that good games don’t take the player by the hand. That said, after 100 game-hours combat fatigue started to weight me down to the point that I saw myself rushing to finish and avoiding combat (or combat side-quests) whenever I could. Where the game truly shines is in its story. Jeff Vogel (the creator of the game) is a gifted writer. He managed to present the land and its people very convincingly, sometimes in just a few strokes. Although you encounter most NPCs only briefly, their descriptions usually convey them as fleshed, three dimensional characters with a strong sense of their emotions and previous history. I suspect that some of them (and the places) are survivors from previous Avernum games and it must have been thrilling for veteran players of the series to re-encounter them again. I also enjoyed that Jeff avoided the simplistic moral narratives or Manichean accounts of “good x evil” that are quite common in fantasy RPGs. In summary, I’d give the game 8/10 and would recommend it for anyone who likes “old school” RPGs (however you define such an open-ended term). I bought his first installment in the revamped series (Escape from the Pit) and I’m looking forward to play it in the future. Keep up the good work, Jeff!

Maybe the best all around Avernum on steam (or at least until Avernum 2 and 3 show up in some form). If you've never played an Avernum it might be best to start with "Escape From the Pit," but Avernum 6 is probably a stronger game overall. Like EFTP it's very open world (although a few areas are closed off at the start), but it's biggest advantage is in its stat system, which uses the older skill based system that EFTP abandons in favor of a more simplistic skill tree model. Plus, unlike Avernums 4 and 5 (which had trouble justifying their existences plot wise), the writing is great, setting the game in a sprawling kingdom in decline and exploring some darker themes like drug addiction, famine, and terrorism. A great end to the series.