Avowed Steam Charts & Stats

Yes, the bugs are there. The game crashes once every 2-3 hours of play, and occasionally forgets to load some of its data, which results in pieces of terrain lacking collisions, missing items and enemies etc. It's not like that makes it unplayable, though. Sure, they need to fix it, but really the worst that happens is you sometimes need to reload. The main reason I'm giving it a thumbs up is that, apart from the crashes, this game never gave a reason to be mad at it (except that one time, more on that later). Its contents are, for lack of a better word, inoffensive and agreeable. Smoothed out, even. Combat mechanics are decent: I ended up using different maneuvers and spells, switching between weapons etc. Just keep in mind this isn't one of those games where you're supposed to specialise. My character had at least a few points in each skill tree, for example. There are some Morrowind vibes to it all, and for a time I was even inclined to say this is the kind of game you make when you miss Morrowind and try to remake it better than Bethesda would. This vibe eventually fizzles, because the game has trouble finding its soul. The first and second chapter are interesting, but the third and fourth feel very strained and uninspired. The writing is uneven, too. Some characters are well written and nuanced, while others are just containers for words. Only one of the four companions feels like the kind of character you're going to remember a year from now, and of course it's the one that joins you last. Avowed attempts to have a mature (as in: grown-up) story, and only partially succeeds at this. One of its story plots is colonialism and imperial opression, but it's not very well executed. The main villain representing this part of the story is extremely onenote, and the game ends up not having anything interesting to say about the whole thing. There's a big missed opportunity there, because that same game sets you up as a member of a ruling elite, but never lets you feel either the privilege nor the limitations of that position. Another big theme is responsibility, particularly responsibility for one's own failures, and the corresponding choice between forgiveness and vengeance. This part works much better, and it's a pity the game didn't focus on it more consistently. Overall, though, the narrative design is the weakest link, because most quests just aren't very well written. The part where I nearly rage quit is at the end of the third chapter; the game suddenly pulls a trolley problem on you, as if deliberately forcing you to feel bad about yourself. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work. If you want to drag the player into a morally dubious situation, you need to do it gradually, over the course of many choices. All in all, it's exactly the kind of game you could expect from Microsoft: perfectly serviceable (except for the bugs), consistenly enjoyable, kind of bland, and ultimately forgettable. It's a good way to spend a few dozen hours, but I won't be waiting for a sequel.

played and completed. Here are my observations: 1) the obsidian magic is kinda gone unfortunately 2) if you don't know Pillars of Eternity, there is a lot of reading and catching up to do. it gets heavy 3) characters are often forgettable 4) combat is fun, but the system is very simplistic 5) the major positive point is that the locations of the game are STUNNING, they are well made and full of hidden gems and secrets to reveal

Honestly, I have had this game for a few months and I barely have gotten into it. I was excited, paid $70 for it on launch, and loaded it up day 1. The combat felt incredibly basic, the voice acting was okay but nothing special, and the quests also seemed pretty basic. The map was beautiful, but not very complex. The main thing that keeps me from playing it is the combat. I have tried melee and magic, both seem just SO basic I really have not been having fun. Outer Worlds was more fun than this game (at least in the first few hours) and that game was only $30. Why is this game $70 but it feels hollow and incomplete. If you are someone that enjoys this game, I am glad you found some value in it. Unfortunately for me, in the first few hours of the game, I just could not stick with it. Maybe for 50% off it would be worth it, but for full price I just feel let down.

Cool game. It was crashing too much for me, but have since adjusted graphics using the "Auto Detect" capability in settings. I was never very smart. Anyway, on second playthru as we speak. Beautiful environment, cool story, at times hilarious dialog with excellent voice acting. I use 3rd-person mode and have nearly zero complaints. Good old-fashioned single-player RPG that will happily eat many many tens of hours of your time.

After intro video and did first move to pickup a health potion and game crashed and did that like all the time. Did normal fix attempts but no go. Kinda wondering why this game was named UE- Alabama game on crash windows?? :D Cant really recommend this . Refunded.

I am used to playing games with sharp image and all possible 'blurs' disabled - motion blur, depth of field and, most importantly, AA. Imagine my disgust when I was immersed into the muddy image of Avowed. Forced Temporal anti-aliasing, can't disable it in options, community did not find a way either, only some image 'upgrades' without addressing the main issue itself. No idea how people actually bear this, I find it unplayable. Until either the developer or community presents a way to completely disable this blur, I am staying away.

I LOVED this games PROLOGUE, but as soon as it ended the game started crashing constantly and became unplayable

game was very good until latest patch 1.5 now stutters hangs up very slow in places

I'm in the 3rd area at time of review, and my experience so far has been mixed to negative. The level up system feels disappointing. I played as mage, and nearly every time I leveled up I wouldn't know where to put a skill point cause nothing felt like it really mattered. None of the skills really have much impact. Exploration is fun, but the loot you get from it isn't. Nearly all loot is upgrade materials which quickly become boring. Combat in the early game is difficult since there is no baseline regeneration; so would eat everything in sight like a kid about to be sucked up the chocolate pipe; but once you hit mid game the healing potions don't have a cool down period so all fights lose their difficulty. The NPCs all have an awkwardness to them. Mouths that don't move quite right, stiff body posture; generally hard to get immersed. Most quests unfortunately follow the "Hey, I just met you. Could you get my mail?" format of lazy NPCs. The gear system is lacking. Only the chest armor and weapons have stats, or can be upgraded. So all the upgrade materials feel like over kill. It also means there isn't much to making a build; just get the best weapons for your style and hit stuff. Not to mention there are no different types of wands for mages. TLDR Overall it's ok if you enjoy skyrim; but falls short for a modern RPG. Try BG3 if you want good story, or elden ring if you want good combat.

8/10. Definitely buy it on sale. I bought this 3 weeks ago and finished it today. First, this is not a sandbox first person rpg. If you come in this game expecting open world shenanigans, then you're in for a disappointment. I'd like to address 3 criticisms that I saw frequently online: being limited to human/elf race, comparisons to Skyrim, and wokeness. I'll mention these at the end of my review. Avowed is set in the same world as Pillars of Eternity, taking place after the events of the 2nd game. However, you can come into this game not knowing anything just fine. What's nice is during npc dialog, anytime a lore-heavy word/name/concept is mentioned, you can press a button to see what that means. Honestly, I wish more games did this. You can build your character however you want and reset your stats/skills at any time. In my opinion, games should really just embrace allowing us to respec on the fly. You got your 3 main skill trees - Fighter, Ranger, Wizard. There's no reason to focus on just one tree. Unlike traditional rpgs where Str = melee, Dex = ranged, Avowed is more streamlined. Might = damage, Dexterity = action speed, etc. So stats wise, you can smack with a hammer and sling spells. There are 12 weapon types to choose plus shield and grimiore. Feel free to mix and match. I ended up with a pistol/grimiore combo. I played in 3rd person mode the entire time. It's best to just look for videos that show combat. Combat pretty much stays the same the entire game. Here's where respec on the fly comes in. Bored with a sword? Switch to a wand. As mentioned above, the skill tree only represents Fighter, Ranger, Wizard. Pillars of Eternity has lots more classes including Druid, Priest, Chanter, Cipher Paladin, Rogue, Barbarian, Monk (though the Fighter tree has a passive for unarmed strikes). We do encounter enemies with those other classes. I guess they didn't have the resources to implement more classes. Game play loop is simple. Follow the main quest, grab side quests along the way, and kill stuff. Make a decision at the end of a major quest line. Rinse and repeat. You run, jump, crawl and climb to get to places. Jump puzzles here is not like those games where you have to perfectly time a running jump as close to the edge as you possible can, just to make it to the other side. The other type of puzzle involves using fire/frost/shock to clear obstacles. Exploration is very straightforward. Just make sure you've revealed the whole map, and it's hard to miss anything. You can go to the settings and adjust what shows up on your radar. Lootable corpses, chests, and collectibles all show up on the radar. Story and writing. The only bad writing I can't forgive are plot inconsistencies or npcs acting way out of character for no reason other than it's the writer's way of forcing tension and drama. I don't see that in Avowed. [b] One thing I would say though, a certain outcome at the end of act 2 has never made me more furious about a fictional group of people in a game before in my life. I wanted nothing more than to kill them all on sight and I did. In every negotiation dialog with them after that point I picked "yeah no, go die (attack)". [/b] Companion quests. They feel very personal and give you a lot of insight about who they are. But at the same time, companion quests are not its own mini story arc. One thing I found absurd about a certain other action rpg I played is how the it's almost literally the end of the world, but sure let's put saving the world on hold for your existential crisis. Next, is the voice acting. Even though I say voice acting, I'm putting this under writing. You gotta appreciate that the various characters portray a different accent and dialect depending on which region of Eora (the world of Pillars) they're from. This is where the lore-explanation button during dialog comes in handy. Someone from Aedyr would have different idioms and curse words (none of which are plain english) than someone from Vailia. For me, the main highlight of writing are the conversations with the mysterious force. One example is when your character is talking to the mysterious force about their past life, the force then asks you what happened. You have a choice between a storm, or a volcano, or a tsunami wiped the land. In most games, regardless of what you pick, the dialog afterwards will probably go on just saying "natural disaster" to keep it generic. But here, the dialog goes on to talk about specifically whichever disaster you picked. Now did that little detail actually affect the story? Nope not at all. But being there, present in the moment of the conversation, it really felt like you were steering the conversation. On the grander scheme of things, these conversations with the mysterious force is kinda like a parent teaching a toddler how to act/react to certain situations. So it doesn't matter what you say happened. What matters is what do you say about how you feel after it. And that part has consequence towards the end of the game. Now onto the 3 criticisms starting with race. If you've never played Pillars, then this is a non-issue. There is a minor story reason why the player character, the Envoy, is only either Human or Elf. The Envoy comes from Aedyr which is a human/elf empire. Their enemy empire is Rauatai which is an aumauan empire. So that crosses out aumaua Envoy. Orlans and Dwarves are less common outside of their regons. Why must the Envoy be from Aedyr in the first place? Well, part of that deals with Aedyr's main god is Woedica, who's been playing an important role since Pillars 1. "Skyrim is better" One thing people need to realize is, this game is not Skyrim. Avowed keeps getting compared to how Skyrim was so much better, with somehow being able to murderhobo npcs as the main example that keeps popping up. Being a first person rpg is where the similarities end. Avowed is not a sandbox rpg. You can't kill random npcs. You can't fill a room with cheese. If you want to spend countless hours exploring every nook and cranny of the wilderness, you won't find that here. What Avowed is, is you have quests and side quests to do and monsters to kill. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, that is still pretty standard for an rpg. Avowed is quite straight forward without feeling like a corridor rpg. But the story does follow a fixed path. Finally, the ever controversial woke. Honestly, I found maybe 4 things that come across as woke. 1) Choosing a pronoun at character creation. - No one calls you by your pronoun. You are "the Envoy". Just like how in Dragon Age Origins, you were always called the Warden. The game does not in any way make any distinction towards your gender. No romances. No gender locked equipment. No gender based dialog reactivity. Nothing. 2) One companion, Kai, is gay. Except, the only reason you can tell he's gay is because Kai says he loved this other guy. Loved. As in past tense, because the guy is dead. So don't ever actually see Kai with another guy. If we never heard him say "love", you would think he was talking about a best friend. 3) The mysterious force talking in your head is genderless. Plus they're the only npc that is very clearly referred to as they/them. Minor spoilers I guess: For the record, mysterious force didn't choose a pronoun. It's a force of nature born out of the concentrated essence of the people living on that island. What gender would it have? When you don't know someone's gender, you say they/them. Simple as that. 4) One of the other companions have pink hair. Okay, I'm stretching here because I really couldn't find anything else woke. At first I thought, she's an Orlan with pink fur. But then we see one of her past lives was a human with also pink hair. WOKE! /jk lol. All in all, if you enjoy a straight forward rpg, pick this game up on sale.