Avowed Steam Charts & Stats

First if all, this game doesn't deserve a lot of weird criticism I've seen. There's a lot of quality here. Exploring is fun, the zones of the world are detailed, immersive, and unique. The characters are good. It all feels like a lighthearted fantasy action game that includes some emotional beats. I enjoyed this game through two "chapters", but the third chapter turned me off. The combat became samey, and all the enemies were recycled from previous acts (although some re-skinned). The combat is fine after you get used to it, but most of the time you are wearing down HP sponges while dodging telegraphed attacks. The only thing that makes you change your approach, ever, is that sometimes there is a healer that will heal all of the enemies in the group back to full health. When these are present you have to hunt down that healer and kill it immediately. And I want to stress, that is it. That is the only variety I ever saw in the combat or the enemies. Not only was I so tired of killing the same skeleton enemies over and over again, but at the end of chapter 3 you get forced into an absurd trolley problem that makes no sense. You are forced to make a stupid choice, and then you have multiple dialogues with multiple characters scolding you for your choice -- no matter what you pick. It includes extremely boring gamer philosophy in the vein of "kill a small number of people to save a larger number of people." And of course, in the story, your character bears full responsibility for the consequences despite the choices being fully the agenda of two other NPCs. There's even a dialogue option of "both of these suck I don't want to" and the NPCs essentially break the fourth wall and talk directly to the player "no you must choose one of these". It's all so dumb so I stopped playing.

[h1]Pros:[/h1] + Works + Doesn't crash to desktop [h1]Cons:[/h1] - Weak graphics for 2025 - Totally average story - Overly wordy and boring dialogues - Wooden combat - NPCs stuck to the ground - No life in settlements - Useless items from chests - Useless items from crafting - Overall boredom and mediocrity [h1]Overall rating - 3/10[/h1]

Just explore the world, delve dungeons and ruins, and engage in fun frantic combat. Not a lot of super complex mechanics going on here which can be a great thing if you're like me and sometimes just want a game that's easy to pick up and play after a long day at work when your brain is already tired.

I have just finished my first play through, taking 94 hours to do so. I like to look all over the place and so was not rushing to the ending but taking my time, during the many hours i have found interesting places and items, beautiful grafics and landscapes to explore, the writing is superb and entertaining. The combat and magic systems are well put together and fun to use, making you feel powerful and in control during your explorations. Upgrading items as you progress is essential to stay current if you have a specific item you like, but there are always new items to collect and finding them if half the fun. Exploration and climbing, parkouring all over the place make it fun to reach new and, at first areas that seem unreachable, likewise the use of elemental spells and items to open door and stop traps is well thought out and implemented. Your companions are varied and useful as more than just additional meat shields or bland bots, they get better as you progress and depending on you discussions and actions change over the course of the game. Though it doesn't seem like it, choices matter, some more than others, leading to the final options, depending on your earlier decisions. In closing, I highly recommend this game if you liked Skyrim or the Mass effect series of games. Well worth the time and money........time for a 2nd play through...

Look man, I like it. The combat is fun, the level/arena design is AMAZING, the characters are endearing (even Marius grew on me), the story is alright. I don't know what else to say, I like it. Goodbye

I bought this game on Steam for $70, DO NOT DO THIS. Avowed is not worth the $70, towards the beginning it was super fun but towards the end I felt repetitive, fighting the same type of mob, there is no variety of enemy's. The only time this game is worth is if you buy it on sale for $30 or you get from Xbox Games Pass. The optimization is ass, killed my frames when I have above the recommended specs. You should just spend $60 on Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Xbox Game Pass is the only thing that saves this game. 5.5/10

I want to support Obsidian and Avowed but, in this case, I'm afraid I just can't. You and I have already played this game many times over, it just had a different name every time. There's nothing really new here. The presentation of the combat is slicker than other entries in this genre but it doesn't feel any more complicated or fundamentally different than playing Morrowind twenty years ago. The hits are punchy, the spells are sexy, switching around between things is radial, but there's no iteration on this formula. You get a quest, you go around to the map markers and kill things, you select a few dialogue options and move onto the next thing. I really wanted to like and support this game and studio, but paying 70USD for this game was pretty difficult. I'm sorry, Garrus from Mass Effect, but this just is not the kind of game where I'm interested in talking to you "back at camp." I don't want to talk to you at all. You're just going to ask me questions about the lore of a world I don't know anything about, and I'll give you lofty answers about saving and helping all living things only to then go kill a million bears 40 yards away. I guess I was hoping for a thoughtful and slower paced game where I learned about a new world and universe. Maybe I just wish it were 2002 and I could play Morrowind for the first time again.

This game is the definition of mediocrity. It is not a horrible game, but it could have and should have been so much more given the amount of time in development and the price tag of $70. The world looks and feels great, for about 3 hours. Then you start to realize you're fighting the same 4 or 5 types of enemies in every zone. Build diversity is there but no really plausible given the amount of resources in the game versus how much it takes to keep just a few items up to par with the level of the mobs from zone to zone. Once you start upgrading a weapon you better stick with it or you wont max out anything. Thats a minor annoyance though really, the truely disapointing aspect of this game is the absence of any meaningful activities outside of the main story. Every side quest in the game is a one liner with zero depth. "I lost my friend can you find them.. the end. 95% of the npcs in this game might as well be decrative rocks, they dont move or talk. Where is the thieves guild, the dark brother hood, or the dawngaurd. There is not a single thing to do except gather your crafting matts and do the story. The story and the characters that actually take a part in it are completely forgetable. The dialog is so annoyingly babble that at some point I just stopped careing. The "God" in your head is completely incoherent and it's really hard not to just smash the skip button anytime you have dialog with them. By the end of the game, I'd say the last few hours, I found my self just rushing through to get to the end so I could say I finished it and then close it forever. Btw there is no free roam once you beat the game. Not really sure what you would do if there was but it would still be better than not having it at all.

The trailers and marketing were already showing me red flags, but being a huge fan of Obsidian games and Pillars of Eternity in general, I decided to give the game a go. Having completed it, Avowed is not a good game in my opinion, it is at best a mediocre game made even worse by the fact that it has groundwork for a great game that is simply wasted, and even worse by the fact that it takes place in the world of the Pillars games and messes with its already amazing lore. First problem, the story. The Pillars world has amazing lore and worldbuilding behind it, some of the best in RPGs in general in my opinion. Pillars 1 and 2 are filled with world changing events, especially the end of Pillars 2, however, all of that is ignored here except when it is convenient to do a little callback in a poor attempt at fan service. Worst example of this being the fact that the main villain is a completely irrelevant NPC from Deadfire where she dies in the single cutscene she appears in, but is now somehow back. The writers take a borderline fanfiction approach to explaining why things happen here and now in a poor attempt to completely ignore the greater lore of the Pillars world and everything that happened in those games. The same fanfiction approach can be seen in how everything about the Living Lands and this new godlike entity is special and never before seen and unique compared to everything we got before. This game could have taken place in literally any other setting and worked just as fine, the Pillars setting is only used here for brand recognition. As for the story itself, you do get to make some choices but the majority of them does not really matter. End of act choices come back later in one or two places, and there are a few big choices in the last 45 minutes, but other than that the vast majority of choices simply alter your quest reward and are never mentioned again. Apart from the achievements for using certain choices X amount of times, the great disposition system from the Pillars game has been removed, butchering your ability to roleplay and build a reputation with the world. Companions, a staple of the Pillars games, feel extremely underdeveloped. Except for Kai, who has an actual character arc and a proper companion quest, the remaining companions have some things happen to them, either as part of the main quest when you recruit them or as a very small mini quest, but their personality stays the same even when you'd expect them to change. They each come with four skills that you can optionally modify with one of the handful of skill points you get for them throughout the game. As for the gameplay part of the game, everything feels underbaked and rushed out. Many have mentioned exploration, and while parkour and world design are quite good, it all falls apart because 95% of the times the chest you find contains crafting materials and 30 gold. The game has an extremely limited and borderline unacceptable loot pool, made even worse by the fact that all items outside uniques are completely useless. Every weapon or armor type you find has the exact same stats, rendering loot useless. Even uniques have the exact same stats as the base item type, but come with two magic effects, which renders all other non-unique loot pointless. And because you have to keep upgrading your gear to keep up with the enemy levels, you will likely find yourself constantly breaking down everything you find in an attempt to keep up. Depending on your chosen build, it is very likely that you will find a weapon or armor in act 1 and then just keep upgrading it all the way to the end of the game because there will simply be nothing better for you in the meantime. For a game that "encourages combat experimentation", this kind of upgrade system completely shuts down any notion of such experimentation as after the very start of the game, you simply do not have enough upgrade materials to keep more than two or three weapons in line with enemy levels. Especially because even in later acts of the game, you will keep finding the most basic act 1 gear which at that point of the game isn't even worth breaking down for components. Character progression is extremely barebones. Unless you play a mage, almost all of your upgrades are pure stat boosts, which means that you will simply find yourself casting the same 1 or 2 abilities while endlessly attacking an enemy. Sure, you can try to mix and match mage plus something else, but an action RPG where you have "a wide array of combat options" but you have to be a mage to have fun just isn't designed well. Also, I have heard the excuse that we couldn't have paladin or priest abilities because of "lore reasons with the end of Pillars 2", well good thing nobody told that to the enemy factions cause they are quite packed with Priests who heal their fellow enemies, and we even have a Paladin as the main villain. We couldn't have druids because it is hard to animate wildshape, and yet you will fight probably a hundred fully animated bears that could have easily served as a wildshape ability. We couldn't have any other playable races except human and elf because of all the other extra animations, and yet other races are fully animated as enemies. The game has only one finisher animation regardless of who you are finishing so that surely couldn't have been an issue for letting other races be playable. I have heard the excuse that this is a AA game and should be treated that way. Even as a AA game, this is a bad game. Bound by Flame, an actual AA game from ten years ago, had the feature that your body changes depending on whether or not you accept or refuse power from a godlike entity. That is not present here. Pillars 1 and 2, actual AA games, had more loot variety and more complex crafting and more intricate dialogue systems/character progression. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has just come out, was developed faster, for less money, and is much bigger and more mechanically and narratively complex. And finally, if this is a AA game, why does it cost 70$/90$? For a AAA price, you better deliver a AAA product. We need to stop giving Obsidian excuses. This game has probably had a troubled development, things were cut, scrapped, rebooted, whatever. That isn't great, but also, Obsidian is no longer a small AA company. They are owned by Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world. They had all the time and budget to make a game right for once, with no cut corners or lack of funds for all the features. They had the amazing worldbuilding, class design and loot design of the Pillars games. If they actually fully developed a proper loot system, more robust skill trees, proper roleplaying elements, a good story actually taking full advantage of the existing lore... even with this map size, that game would have probably been one of the greatest RPGs of all time. And yet this one time they are free from financial limits, they make their arguably worst and laziest game to date, with the most basic barebones features and fanfiction level writing. This isn't even a case of wide as an ocean, shallow as a pool. This game is barely bigger than a pond, and yet is as shallow as puddle. For making it until the end of this review, I award you 30 gold, 2 softwood branches and 1 iron chunk.

Avowed is a game with relatively simple design choices. If you're interested, it's best to manage your expectations. Here is what the game doesn't have: - Avowed does not have a deep progression system, especially for fighters or rangers. On my first playthrough as a pure swordsman, I had a grand total of three active abilities by the end of the game, and the rest of my points went into very standard passives (more damage, greater critical chance, etc). You'll have a lot more options if you choose to use magic, which has decent variety but nothing as complex as what you'd get in the original Pillars of Eternity games (no Cipher spells here). Similarly for equipment, you won't get the vast array of customization options from the Pillars games. Unique weapons are limited to one of two enchantment options, and spellbooks have four preset spells each; there's no way to make your own custom weapon or spellbooks for a completely personalized approach. - Avowed does not have fancy animations or cutscenes. Many of its major events are left up to your imagination; for example, in the opening sequence, you get shipwrecked, but the only thing the game shows you is a moment of stormy seas, some cannonfire in the distance, then it cuts to black and you wake up on a beach. And that sets the tone for the entire game; you're not going to find glorious cinematics, or attack skills that make you look like a wushu master performing Final Fantasy Limit Breaks. In the instances where something extremely significant happens, you usually don't get to watch the actual incident at all, you're just told that it occurred and then you see a minor change in scenery reflecting what happened. This is a game where you're going to have to let your imagination fill in the blanks for the greatest impact. - As many critics have pointed out, Avowed does not have immersive realism. The most oft-cited example is that you can loot whatever you want, wherever you want, and aside from a few snide remarks by your companions, no one bats an eye. But as a result, you get to focus on exploration, to take pleasure in discovering all the hidden paths and finding all the tricky nooks and crannies that hold the world's secrets. Now, here is what the game -does- have: - Avowed has incredibly beautiful environments. This is one of those experiences where you can't help but shift the camera around every time you're about to save, so that you can gaze at your gorgeous thumbnails later. It's also nifty how they enabled you to make an attractive character in spite of the story-centric mutation on your character's face. (or you can be ugly as sin, it's your choice) - Avowed has very satisfying combat. Your heavier strikes will fling enemies around like ragdolls with gratifying heft; there's an option to turn on a cool time dilation effect whenever you dodge or parry at just the right moment; and chaining powerful spells makes you feel like all of nature's wrath is at your fingertips. Combat is Avowed's primary gameplay loop, a pretty simple one that's done very well. - Avowed has a coherent story. The main plot can be summarized in a few sentences, with a simple premise, understandable and reasonable plot developments, and a clear ending. - Avowed has a dense and incredibly fun world to explore. As mentioned earlier, there's no penalty to breaking into people's houses and rooting through anything that's not nailed down, and this is why they designed it that way. You never get tired of going down a new route, hearing the faint tinkling that indicates there's a nearby treasure, then searching until you spot the hidden path and maneuver your way to what previously appeared to be an inaccessible treasure chest. And even after dozens of hours of playtime, I would sometimes return to an earlier area and stumble across another piece of valuable loot that I'd missed when I was first there, keeping alive that sense of mystery and quiet excitement. - Avowed has solid writing. There were plenty of dialogues that made me laugh aloud, and all of the characters you speak to feel appropriately fleshed out. Unfortunately, the writers were constrained by the aforementioned lack of animations. It's difficult, for example, to write a grief-stricken character when the character has to remain standing upright in every single scene with a very limited repertoire of arm motions to express their sorrow. Thus, in the most serious moments of the game, everything is somber yet never feels appropriately climactic or dramatic. While not inherently a bad thing, it meant that the characters struggled to really tug on my heartstrings throughout their personal arcs - and there are definite arcs, with well-written character growth, at least on paper. It's just that, again, the impact on players is rather stifled. (If Avowed were a book or isometric RPG, the writers could describe scenes in much greater depth and detail, but since the characters are stuck in full view in front of the camera... the writers were forced to make do with deep conversations and little to no physical expression to accompany it, which feels very restricting in spite of mostly excellent voice acting and believable dialogue.) At the end of the day, Avowed is an Obsidian title, and they should be proud of it. I can't say I'm happy about the price point, yet I have no regrets over my first-week purchase. The devs selectively focused on making a few things excellent and were careful about where they sacrificed time and effort in order to make it work, and the final product is an enjoyable, unique, and memorable experience that I found to be very much worth my time. If you're curious enough to try it, I hope you find the same.