Avowed Review
A Godlike Adventure or a Hollow World
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Title: Avowed
Release: February 18, 2025
Platform: PC Xbox X|S
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Genre: RPG First Person
ESRB: M
Reviewed on: PC
Time Played: 24 Hours
Intro:
What if you were born with the touch of the divine, yet the world around you felt anything but extraordinary? Avowed drops you into the Living Lands as a Godlike warrior, promising deep roleplaying choices, fluid combat, and an immersive world filled with mystery. But does it truly deliver an epic adventure, or does it fall short of its ambitions? In this review, I’ll break down the gameplay, combat mechanics, world design, and story to help you decide if Avowed is worth your time—or if it’s best left forgotten in the Living Lands.
Where it starts
You were born as a Godlike, a being blessed by a god before birth, showing some aspects of divinity in your appearance, provided you choose them during character creation. As a peculiar outsider, growing up was difficult; however, the emperor recognized the greatness within you and offered you a position. Under the emperor’s command, you are sent to the distant Living Lands to investigate the recent outbreak of a plague, where you’ll fight to survive and discover secrets of the land and perhaps yourself.
Can the kids watch
You can expect a fair amount of violence between the vicious lizard people and the dastardly bandits who inhabit the Living Lands and really don’t like you there. There was some blood splatter from the attacks and dead bodies scattered around. I wouldn’t say it was intended solely for a mature audience; however, there were a few F-bombs, likely the reason for the M rating.
Selecting a style
There are three fighting styles to choose from in combat. You can fully commit to one style or mix and match according to your preference. Melee focuses on swords and maces, possibly a shield, allowing you to get up close and personal with your enemies. Ranged consists of bows and guns, enabling quick dodges and maintaining distance. Lastly, magic involves wielding wands and books to unleash elemental attacks that inflict ailments on your foes, bringing them down.
Food & Drink
If you start to lose too much health in combat or essence from magic use, you can down a couple of different potions to quickly refill your bars. If potions aren’t an option or you don’t need to regenerate quickly, the next best choice would be food or drinks. You can find a variety of food in the wild, sometimes even complete meals. Food can provide increased stats for a limited time or replenish specific resources. You can also overeat; any excess food will remain until you need to refill the bar a little more.
The Skill Tree
Your skill tree provides enhancements for one of the three fighting styles, making whichever you choose much more effective in combat. You can slow down time when aiming a bow, increase your health, or learn magic spells so you won’t need to read them from a book. As you level up, different tiers unlock, giving you more options to choose from, or you can invest points in lower abilities to enhance their power. The great thing about your skill tree is that nothing is permanent; for a small fee, depending on your level, you can remove all your points and redistribute them as you wish. Providing a great opportunity to explore everything and discover what works best for you.
Equipment
As you explore you’ll find all sorts of equipment to wear. Armor and weapons of differing aspects, helpful with some fighting styles while hampering with others. As well as a pair of gloves and boots. The gloves and boots don’t provide any defense, however, they will give you benefits of a sort, like more stamina or dodge distance. Weapons and armor will have different levels, starting at common. You can fight materials in a zone the can be used to upgrade to higher levels. You will eventually come across Unique equipment, gear with a special name and effect. Very helpful in combat when used correctly.
Your Team
You won’t be exploring the Living Lands alone. You’ll have a companion or two by your side. As you progress through the story, you’ll encounter new characters who will join you in your exploration. Each one has their own specialties, but you can decide how to allocate their skill points and command them in battle to use their abilities at your discretion. Between major missions, they’ll want to talk with you about what’s happening, indicated by a small marker on the screen, giving you their thoughts on the current situation.
Helping the locals
There will always be a main quest to follow, but in between the major points, you’ll encounter many people in need of assistance. It’s crucial to seek out and help everyone you can, since enemies don’t respawn, and there are limited ways to gain experience to level up and acquire new skills. This also offers you a better insight into the world and what life is like in the Living Lands.
Land Exploration
Avowed isn’t an open-world game; instead, it’s divided into different zones for you to explore. The zones are big, requiring a lot of time to discover everything and collect every treasure. As you reveal the map, you will encounter campsites and fast travel points, enabling you to quickly move across the map if you prefer not to traverse the same empty paths repeatedly. As you progress through the game, the zones will provide higher-level materials for upgrading your gear, requiring you to return to earlier zones if you want to upgrade a common weapon to your current level. Or you could get lucky and find one in a chest or at a store.
The Camp
After a long adventure collecting materials and completing quests, it’s nice to stop by a campsite. There, you can access your storage chest, filled with all the gear you may have sent there while exploring, upgrade your equipment, chat with your companions, and even cook some helpful meals to support your travels. You will also have a place to put any artifacts you find, giving special benefits to your stats.
Final thoughts & ratings
I would love to hear any thoughts or questions you have about the game or my review, so leave me a message in the comments below. While you do that, let’s move on to my final thoughts and ratings.
Avowed was an enjoyable game with several interesting mechanics, but overall, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The characters and story lacked depth. I’ve never played any game in the Pillars of Eternity universe, which may have influenced my perception of the game. Perhaps the developers expect players to have a deeper understanding of the world. There were notes and books to read that expanded on the story, but they didn’t compel me to read everything available. When characters spoke, it often felt like they were trying too hard to deliver badass one-liners, giving the impression that they were to cool for a normal response. I enjoy well-developed characters as much as anyone, but when everyone behaves this way and constantly delivers quote cool remarks, it loses its appeal. That said, there were moments when the characters had excellent timing and delivered some fantastic lines.
I really liked how the combat was designed; with the ability to swap between two weapon sets on the fly, I could navigate battles and react to enemies accordingly. It was fun to experiment with multiple fighting styles and weapons, but I found the level progression to be slow. I never reached a high enough level to allocate my skill points across various styles. While exploring, the enemies didn’t respawn after being defeated, and with the limited quests available, there seemed to be a finite amount of experience points I could earn, which made skill progression feel sluggish. However, having the option to respec whenever I wanted was excellent; it just cost a little money and time.
I found it odd that a carrying capacity was implemented in the game when only weapons and armor contributed to the weight of my bag. I could carry an infinite amount of food, potions, and various items, just not a lot of weapons and armor. If I ended up carrying too much equipment, I could instantly destroy it for materials or send it directly to my camp. At that point, it felt like an unnecessary action to take. I would think everything should add weight, or nothing at all.
There were choices to make and different outcomes in some situations in the game. However, most of the game felt as though there were no consequences for my actions. I befriended someone and then accidentally blew up their friend with an exploding barrel, yet there was no reaction. During conversations, I had multiple response options, ranging from mean to nice, but the NPC responses seemed to be consistent regardless of my choice. This made my decisions feel more like a roleplaying aspect rather than having an impactful effect on the game. Overall, it just seemed that the world was not very responsive to my actions.
With that, let me compile my final thoughts into numbers and give this game a rating to decide where it belongs on my shelves.
The visuals were good; the cutscenes far outshined the in-game graphics, but it still looked smooth and clear. I’m giving it a 3.
The story didn’t grab me. Obviously, I played a special character, but the coolness felt forced, not natural. It’s getting a 2.
The gameplay was great. My favorite part of the whole game was quickly adapting to different fighting styles; it was very well done, earning it a 4.
Very low replayability. There are different story paths that could be taken, provided you actually finish the game and want to see everything. For this, it’s a 1.
I had fun, but it didn’t last. If it weren’t for the slow pace of leveling, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Nevertheless, I’m giving this game a 3.
Giving Avowed an average score of 2.6 out of five, earning it a place on my midshelf. I liked the game; however, it wasn’t compelling enough for me to keep playing after 24 hours. I had the luxury of trying it on Xbox Game Pass, and I would definitely recommend checking it out if you have access to that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t say it’s worth the current asking price.