Avadon 2: The Corruption Reviews

I've been a fan of Spiderweb Games for decades. I played the first Exile RPGs back in the mind-90s. This is just too difficult. I don't know why, but the creatures are too tough and the gameplay therefore isn't fun. Even on easy mode, the shade in The Corruption wiped me out. Maybe I'm supposed to do something different. Maybe I need to grind somehow — although as soon as you clear an area, the monsters never come back. Maybe I should use different equipment or something. But as someone who has been playing RPGs all my life, I feel qualified to say that if I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, maybe the problem isn't me.

The first 10 hours of Avadon 2 brought me back to the old days circa Ultima IV, suggesting a sprawling world full of ethically ambiguous side-quests and NPC’s. Although the full game doesn’t quite live up to its initial promise, it’s still a solid CRPG experience overall. The graphics are like something straight out of the early ‘90s, and you’ll either find that charming or off-putting depending on your taste. I lean a little more toward the former, and although I did miss the ability to rotate my camera view a few times, overall the low-fi look didn’t detract from my enjoyment at all. What did put me off the game a bit is how the story arc kind of fizzles out not even halfway through. What starts out feeling like an interesting thicket of subplots and opportunities for interesting decisions ends up really boiling down to one grand choice of “taking sides,” expressed over and over again in pretty much the same way. The game is also quite long, and although the tactical combat isn’t terrible, it’s not quite rich or varied enough to stay fresh through 60-70 hrs of gameplay. The last third of the game was a bit of a slog, and although the battles were ramped up both in scale and difficulty, they felt more tedious than climactic. Still, it’s a solid game, and though I don’t see myself playing through it again, I might come back in a few months to check out something from Spiderweb’s back catalog.

Sorry this review requires going off on a tangent, but I feel I have a theory to prove. Also this is long and rambling. I enjoyed the first Avadon well enough. But that's because it was a fresh IP. Spiderweb's last totally new IP was Geneforge. I loved the first game, despite its flaws, and hoped the sequel would be even better. Well, the sequel added a few new monsters to shape, but didn't do anything significant with the rest of it. He (Jeff Vogel) doesn't improve his games as he makes sequels. This is definitely true of Avadon. He added a new class without touching the others. So that sounds like purely a dig at Spiderweb's ability to make sequels. Other games get away with worse, sure (Dynasty Warriors, any sports game). So how about just talking about this game? Well, other reviews here are talking about some "80 hours" of gameplay. Many RPG's achieve higher numbers like these with things like down time (managing items, houses, crafting, etc.) and repawns/random encounters. Here he does it with backtracking and reading. And this is the kind of backtracking that involves checking EVERY NPC who gives quests just to see if new ones pop up. And reading is fine, obviously, and even having reading that covers narration instead of just dialogue is good, too. But I feel it's too much. He uses it in place of visuals to too high of a degree. I once read a description of an NPC I was talking to that described her as an old woman in rags. The NPC looked like a male blacksmith to me. This complaint sounds a little odd when talking about an RPG, but video games are a visual medium. And there is clearly room for some visuals in this game engine, like having the NPC's walk around or having things look more like their description so they don't ALWAYS have to be described. Simple things! Anything! More! On that note, the writing has gotten weird. It has this cynical tone to it. And not a "this is a gritty place where every one tries to screw you" tone, but a "I'm tired of making video games" tone. The combat has a delightful number of scripted encounters (interesting boss fights and not-necessarily-a-boss fights), but the difficulty of combat overall is wonky. I pushed up the difficulty a notch from "normal" because I remembered the first Avadon feeling easy. This did... something. Who knows. Most of the time is spent auto-attacking trash. Until you get areas with enemies that are inexplicably way stronger because they are color-swapped. The tanking abilities do nothing, so I use the terrain to trick them into fighting the tank. Sometimes this can't be done fully and my teammates would get manhandled. Then I would just chip them away slowly on my lonely tank. There's no telling what level things are, so my tank can go from being unstoppable to burning through health pots between areas. Much of this is also due to tanking being reliant on avoidance rather than mitigation. So sometimes he dodges everything, sometimes he'd dodge nothing. I suspect using a shaman and tinkermage and filling the screen with summons is a better plan. But I made myself a blademaster, so bleh. After 40 hours I was just too bored to continue, so that's when I had to give up and stop forcing myself to play. P.S. Why is there housing in a game where you have a home? Avadon. Avadon is your home. And it's better than the houses you can buy by a million percent.

One of Spiderweb Software's weaker offerings. The combat feels like a slog, with too many fights that seem to only pad out the game, and too many gimmicks in the more serious fights. The plot is not particularly engaging, and I could not really bring myself to care about the things going on. Finally, the ending was anticlimactic. Play one of the Avernum or Geneforge games instead.

classic RPG. Rainy day outside, get a coffee, some junk food, turn the heater on and get lost in this for some old school fun.

$10 for 80 hours of content on a single playthrough should be enough for you to run and buy this game. Jeff Vogel and company continue to produce a quality product that satisfies my desire for world exploration, solid story telling and turn based party combat.

A good follow-up to the first Avadon and another fine entry in the Spiderweb Software catalogue. The graphics are bad, the sound is terrible, and the presentation leaves a lot to be desired... but the writing is great, the story and setting are interesting, and the game is a fun old-school RPG. I suggest listening to some good instrumental music and playing this with all the sound off. There's a lot of reading. Recommended, if you can get over the bad aesthetics and are looking for an old-school RPG.

Alright. [i]Avadon 2: The Corruption[/i] is done and dusted. This is a loose sequel to Avadon: The Black Fortress and is comparable in length at about +/- 55 to 60 hours. I liked this one better than the first game. I will note that you don't really need to play the first game to enjoy this one, and only one of the endings from the first game can be considered canon regardless. Which I think is where there is a bit of an illusion of choice evident by the developer's own choice. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3346665834 This one begins a few years after the events of the first game, and assumes you accepted the easier of the two main endings as your path. However, where did your character from the first game go afterwards? No idea. You will be starting anew in this one with a new character. This time around, you do have the option of selecting male or female for whichever character class you choose, and there is a new character class added. The Tinkermage. And so that is what I went with. Harmon the Tinkermage. Initially, you begin as a scout in the Contested Lands, but after certain events unfold, you are sent to the Black Fortress and are conscripted as a new Hand of Avadon, and as with the previous game, you answer to Redbeard and one of his Hearts (the Hands responsible for running day to day operations for Redbeard). And so begins your career as a Hand and the story of Avadon 2 overall. You will have the opportunity to travel to new areas unavailable in the first game, although the Black Fortress itself remain unchanged outside of the damage it took in the first game. There are new and old NPCs stationed there. The survivors of the first game and the replacements for those who didn't make it. The most interesting new area in this game is The Corruption itself, a blasted and blighted land that seems to be slowly spreading to consume more of its neighboring lands. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3346567675 Currently, the rebellion against the Pact and Avadon has gained momentum, and you are largely tasked with uncovering their specific plans and trying to stop the rebellion before it becomes a full-fledged war. Additionally, one of the conspirators from the last game is one the primary antagonists in this game, and you will expend quite a bit of effort trying to find and stop said person. You will be faced with quite a few morality decisions throughout. Some will have a direct impact on your playthrough, others will simply be notes added to the ending based on what happened. Gameplay is the same as the first game, with a few tweaks. It is still a turned based isometric CRPG, and most of the mechanics remain unchanged from the first game. However, Tinkermages have the ability to summon a small variety of turrets to help with combat in this one. And there are a couple new abilities added to accommodate the new class (along with some crossover skills from other classes). I think the main thing is the controls are simply cleaned up a little bit. Overall though, it is more of the same. And more of the same can also be said of the graphics and audio. Which by and large are maybe cleaned up a little from the first game as well but are largely more of the same. The intro music track is a little bit different, foregoing the slight discordance in favor of adding a bit of chanting. And some of the areas are different, but for the most part, this is familiar Spiderweb Software stuff. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3343749073 The writing and the story in general is quite engaging, and if you somehow did skip the first game and simply haven't played a game by this developer previously, the thing to be aware of is this is a reading-centric experience. All dialogue and everything else presented is presented in written form. And that is all done in excellent fashion. Actually, I was thinking about how these games all sort of mirror how you might run a series of shorter tabletop campaigns, where you wrap up one campaign, and the next campaign takes place in the same world and has been impacted by the previous campaign. Anyway, this is what the game is all about. Excellent storytelling and world building. Pathfinding is still an issue in this game, and most annoying is when a character will get stuck on an object. Which you might be unaware of until the rest of your party runs into an enemy, triggering turn-based combat, and you realize you are short a party member who is somewhere else on the map. And since there is no pausing during the real time overland travel, even if you do become aware of it before triggering combat, it can be a hassle to try to stop everyone else because you need to actually find the appropriate part of of the map, and one aspect of this game is constantly scrolling the map looking for landmarks to investigate and such, meaning you aren't always following your party's specific movements across a map. Real time pause for the non-combat movement is the kind of QoL addition you'd hope to see, but it is absent here. Also, while most of the puzzles are intuitive, Miranda's battle and the combat puzzle you need to solve in order to defeat her was far too trial and error IMO. In fact, had I not done something counter intuitive on a hunch, I think I would still be duking it out with her even now. And just as a separate note, I think Mr Vogel heard the complaints people had with the final battle in The Black Fortress (for the combat ending option) and made some adjustments here as a result. Which also did make sense from a story perspective as well. The result is that should you choose the combat ending, it won't be even close to as frustrating as it was in the last game. By my mind, this was a mostly stellar way to present the next addition in the Avadon series and I thought it was a lot of fun. I'll be interested to see how the series wraps up in Warborn. And if you have played The Black Fortress, I definitely highly recommend playing The Corruption as well. It's a worthwhile title and an excellent old school CRPG in general. Give it a look. 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Pros: -Good writing in general -Quite open though it's a linear game -Good Combat system -Interesting story -With more than 50h gametime quite big Cons: -very basic graphics -no background music -A couple of quests are badly executed -Some Balance issues making the game too easy -clumsy interface All in all a good game if you can accept the graphics and lack of music, especially considering the base price is below 10 bucks already. German video review at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU-AlsDCxwQ

Avadon 2 very much takes the "more of the same" approach to sequel writing. It has everything the first game had, only bigger areas, more side quests, new classes, and more companions. Unfortunately, I've never really liked the Avadons as much as I have some of Spiderweb's other games and I think I've finally worked out why: they are games about politics where there's really not a whole lot at stake that's interesting. This point sticks out more than it otherwise might given that Spiderweb has already done politics heavy RPGs so superbly in the Geneforge games. In the Geneforges, each political faction was modeled around answers to central ethical and philosophical questions about the nature of personhood, human rights, eugenics, and power. This makes each of the factions not only easily identifiable, but immediately engaging as the issues at stake are so emotionally charged and relevant to our own world. The brilliant thing about the Geneforges is that they use their faction systems to rigorously dissect these issues from a variety of different angles, continually muddying and graying them so that you often find yourself taking ethical positions that you'd never thought you'd take a few hours (or games) earlier. In contrast to the Geneforges, though, Avadon's political squabbles tend to be over much more dry and mundane things like land and political rule and the moral and ethical stakes are never as clear or well defined. While the games do delve into the question of how much freedom citizens should be willing to give up in exchange for safety, the issue is never really tackled with much rigor or emotional resonance. Likewise, the various political groups themselves are not as philosophically distinct and tend to blur together as a consequence. Which ultimately makes it hard to choose sides, not because of the presence of any moral ambiguity, but because of the absence of any reason to care. It's very hard to get invested in a plot that is, ultimately, about nothing more than squabbles over who gets to control digital land in a digital fantasy world. All that said, when it comes to being not as good as the Geneforge series, many, many, RPGs fall short. So I don't mean to suggest that Avadon 2 is a bad game. I enjoyed it a great deal and if you like turn based, party focused, RPGs you probably will too. It's just disappointing as I know Spiderweb is capable of doing way better.