Obsidian Entertainment’s newest and shiniest RPG Avowed becomes playable today for anybody who opted for the early access, while everyone else has to wait until the 18th of this month. But is it worth paying extra to play? Well, the reviews seem to indicate that it might be.
The review embargo has been lifted, and based on over 90 critic reviews the game is currently holding a fairly impressive score of 81 on Opencritic. That would put it at roughly the 9th highest reviewed game of the year so far, with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 currently reigning supreme at the top of the list with a score of 89.
Robert Purchese handled the review for Eurogamer, awarding Avowed a score of 4 out of 5. He talks of a game that shows a surprisingly tight budget in places, can be clunky and sometimes feels like an Xbox 360 title. And yet, it obviously manages to overcome some of those issues: “This isn’t the triple-A Microsoft-funded showcase I once believed it would be. It’s closer in spirit, perhaps, to the double-A games that had their heyday in the 360 era, which I promise you isn’t meant to disparage. Rather, it’s to invoke the spirit of that age and how many of those games overcame their limitations to become classics, with a clarity of vision and a sense of fun that resonated with audiences. Avowed has been more generous than I thought it would be – in length, in heart, in depth – and it never loses sight of being a game, of being an adventure, of taking you places you would never normally go, or of simply providing a few dozen hours of unabashed escapism. I think it’s one of this year’s most pleasant surprises.”
Travis Northhup was in charge of the IGN review, giving the game a 7 out of 10. amusingly, he describes the game as having abundance of bears, “Even when it really doesn’t make sense.“That probably explains his bear pun in the closing section of the review where he wrote: “With awesome worldbuilding and stellar character writing, Avowed reminds me why I fell in love with Obsidian’s RPGs in the first place. However, the bigger picture is that it plays it quite safe, with a by-the-numbers fantasy adventure that’s more familiar than evolutionary, and there’s bear-ly any enemy variety to keep its swords-and-sorcery battles interesting for long. “
Over on VGC, it was Chris Scullion on keyboard duty, tapping out a review score of 4 out of 5. He was impressed with the game, and I very pleased when he stated that you can wield a grimoire in one hand and a mace in the other. That means I can cast a magic spell, and then also cast my favourite magic spell known as blunt force trauma. Anyway, here’s how he cosed out his review: “However you decide it’s best to play Avowed, we’d certainly recommend you play it regardless. It may not reinvent The Wheel – trust me, you’ll soon discover that’s a great reference – but very little about it is presented to anything other than a high standard. Whether it takes you 25 hours or 100 hours to reach the credits, as they roll you’ll agree it was time well spent.”
Youtuber ACG was someone else who noted the game’s weird focus on bears. He doesn’t usual the traditional ranking system, instead using his own unique scale. In this case, Avowed got a “Wait for a sale” rating. Here’s what he had to say: “I personally had a great time with this. The actual fun factor of this game was higher than I expected. I did not actually think I was going to enjoy the gameplay and I didn’t think the world was going to be this expansive. Now, at the same time, that’s because really monsters are in a particular place. They’ve made that quite clear for months, where they’ve been saying that a lot of these enemies are not procedurally placed or in any way random, they’re hand placed so it’s an event-driven style game and in that way, those events are pretty goddamn, well, eventful.”
To my surprise, there were no low review scores, with almost all of the critics agreeing that it was in the 7-8 range. But in an effort to balance things out I did browse the reviews to find a lower one. Stacey Henley was the voice of The Gamer for this one, writing a review in which she describes the game as “unfinished on a deeper, and unfortunately far less fixable, level than simply needing a couple of weeks to work out the kinks.”
She did still score Avowed a 3 out of 5, though. She noted a general lack of choice, simple side-quests and that “Every avenue you explore in Avowed feels like a dead end.” In the end, it’s he varied approaches to combat and game’s charm that helps balance out the score. As she writes in her conclusion: “Avowed is a valiant attempt at fantasy you can play your way, but while it delivers well enough with combat, the narrative just isn’t there. Too ambitious in what it wants to do, it falls way short. It’s a very mediocre version of the masterpiece it tries to be, but it’s also a solid version of Just Another Video Game. The story goes nowhere and all ends the same way, but maybe the journey is just about worth it.”
And finally, I’d recommend the excellent Mr. Matty on Youtube. Despite being a self-confessed lover of Obsidian, he was left “bummed out” by Avowed.
If you don’t want to watch the whole video, here’s his summary from the closing minutes: “Unfortunately, Avowed left me pretty bummed out by the end of it all. I was like, ‘yeah, it was alright but that’s not the Obsidian I know.’ “
He goes on to say he’s still very hopeful for The Outer Worlds 2 from Obsidian as that is being handled by a different internal team. And he also states that he’s okay with Avowed just being okay given how much of Obsidian’s past work he has loved. After all, in his words “the drop-off had to happen somewhere.”