Avowed: My Review After Finishing The Game

NO SPOILERS! There are absolutely no spoilers within this review of mine. This is simply my thoughts on the game, how I felt the game played, what I liked or possibly didn't like.

Avowed is an action role-playing game in the same way Skyrim is an action role-playing game: a first-person (though there is the option of a third-person view) swashbuckling spell-flinger where you run around picking up apples and wedges of cheese. But the similarities stop there. Far from being a sandbox, Avowed is a more authored kind of game where characters and their associated stories are deliberately placed to direct you around the world. It’s also an experience where the few companions you meet aren’t optional and aren’t romanceable, which feels delightfully novel these days. They’ll fight alongside you in battle (two at a time) and weigh in on decisions you make, both in the moment and when you’re back at camp.

The adventure itself takes place in an island region called the Living Lands, a mysterious new addition to the world of Eora, which is the setting of Obsidian’s acclaimed Pillars of Eternity games. It’s a standalone area so you don’t need to have played those games to understand this one, but there’s an undeniable thrill for returning players in seeing this previously isometric world through the eyes of a character who lives there. There are also several nods to characters and events from previous Pillars games. It’s nice to be back.

With all of that information out of the way, this is my review and my thoughts on the game since I have completed it already. I did so yesterday morning after starting it on Sunday, just two before it was released publicly on February 18th. It took me 39 hours and 40 minutes to complete the game and that was with doing all of the side quests in all but the last two sections. If I had done all of the side quests in those last two sections, though the last section was super small and really didn’t have many side quests, I believe I would have been right around the 46 – 48 hour mark.

Lockpicks: No Mini Game Involved

Most games now days seem to have some kind of mini game if you will tied to lockpicking chests, doors and similar other items. Avowed doesn’t do that, thankfully. When you want or need to lockpick a chest or a door, you simply hold the button for 3 seconds or so and you’re done. Chest/Door is open and you enter or take your loot. It’s really that simple and to me, that’s how it should be. You don’t need special abilities or even to level up an ability to get better at lockpicking. You just pick and go.

You get lockpicks from loot off of dead enemies, out of chests, floor loot and can purchase them from vendors. They are super cheap, usually either 15 or 17 gold pieces each and you can hold hundreds of them. I had 250+ lockpicks when I finished the game.

Exploring The Open World

This game lets you go anywhere at any time. Sure, you have quests you need to do and need to go to certain places to do them, but you can literally explore the open world in any way at any time. If you wish to spend 2 hours exploring instead of doing quests, then go and do it. There is always stuff to explore, find and discover. It’s a great way to to gain loot outside of the quests and killing enemies. Though while you’re exploring, you’re going to have to fight enemies. No way around this as that’s just part of how it works.

There are caves, small buildings, larger buildings, cities and so much more. Plus you can swim and dive underwater to find loot at the bottom of lakes, rivers and even the ocean itself. There are islands to explore, lighthouses and so much more. The exploring is almost endless in Avowed, and that’s what I absolutely love about it.

Let’s Talk About Combat

The combat is likely pretty much what you would expect from an Elder Scrolls/Obsidian game, but in my opinion, it’s much better. It’s so fluid and so easy to fight in Avowed, and it’s not clunky, no weird camera angles or anything like that. It simply just works and works really well. You can fight with a one-handed sword, a dagger in each hand, a pistol in one hand while having a grimoire in the other hand. You have two-handed weapons, shields, maces, spears and more. You can come up with most any combination you want which makes this game so much fun in the fact that you have your own build and can build it the way you want when it comes to the abilities.

Boss encounters are smart enough so that if you kill them while roaming the world, and you find a quest later asking you to kill that same thing… you just get to autocomplete the quest and get the rewards. A great example of this is that very early on in the game you fight Nacib the giant spider. Yet there is a bounty on the first bounty board, once you get to that point, for Nacib and since you’ve already killed him, you simply pick up the bounty and then auto complete it, turn it in and claim your rewards. This is exactly how it should be.

I wasn’t much for magic right at first, but later in the game once I got my last companion unlocked, I started using it a bit more, though not too much. Magic seems to work really well and does exactly what you ask and want it to do, again, without being clunky or hard to use. Click a button and BOOM, missiles come falling down on your enemy. Your companions use it quite a bit as they do many different things, and again, it just works.

You can let the companions do their own things when it comes to magic and such, or you can command them to do things you need or want them to do such as heal you, shoot things or similar. It would likely be a pretty fun experience to play as a magic wielder in Avowed, but I chose to hack and slash everything with a sword, a fire-sword to be exact!

There are also a number of grenades that you can carry around in your inventory allowing you to perform the same action so that you are never in a situation where you brought the wrong companion for the wrong mission. Not to mention depending on the weapons you have in your inventory, you can often burn things or even freeze things as needed.

Weapons, Armor And Upgrading Them Along The Way

One of the things that I find particularly cool is that essentially you can upgrade every weapon you find all the way to the maximum stats it can possibly have for its base item type. This means that as you start to find Unique weapons, it does not matter if you find it at the start of the game… it can be upgraded indefinitely and made useful all the way through the game. I found a flaming sword called the Last Light of Day and I took it from about 10 -12 hours into the game all the way to the end with me. I upgraded it every step of the way as I could and it was what I used to kill the final boss.

Boots, Gloves, Rings, and Amulets are just stat sticks and are as useful at level 1 as they are at whatever the maximum level of the game happens to be. You don’t ever have to upgrade boots, gloves, rings, amulets or trinkets. Their stats remain the same at all times.

One Minor Complaint

Overall, Avowed was a ton of fun and I really didn’t have any issues. At least not like some of my friends have such as missions being bugged where they can’t complete them or even a bounty or two being bugged where they can’t turn them in to claim their rewards. I did experience crashes a bit too often, but I learned early on to save the game manually very often to prevent having to go back through fights or long conversations with my companions while at the camp site.

But one thing that really drove me crazy is after you get done fighting a lot of enemies, finding their corpse, which is often just a pile of dust, on the ground to loot it can be difficult. Yes, there is an X on the mini map and there is a slight little light coming up from it at times, but it can be very difficult to see or navigate to and actually loot. I feel Obsidian needs to make this a bit more clear and easier to find, especially when an enemy dies in a bush or in the water. Definitely something minor, but it was something that was part of the game from the start to the end.

Final Thoughts

I had been waiting for Avowed for a couple of years or so, and this game came through exactly like I was hoping it would. It had some hype to it and to me, it lived up to that hype. Almost 40 hours of game play was well worth it, though I did get to play the game for only $35 instead of $90, which is what you would have had to pay to play 5 days early. I got it through PC Game Pass and paid an upgrade price to play a few days early as I didn’t know I could do this until the 16th I think it was. Regardless, 100% worth it and now I’m stuck waiting on Outer Worlds 2 to release some time in October I believe it is.

Are you playing or have you played Avowed? If so, please comment below and tell me your thoughts on the game, what you liked, what you loved, what you didn't like or anything else you'd like to share!