Avowed Review
Accepting the title of Envoy, you journey to an island on the frontier known as the Living Lands. In Avowed your task is to be the emperor’s representative and help put this island under empire rule, but this island is not what it appears. There is a strange disease that seems to be ravaging not only the wildlife but people as well called the Dreamscourge. As you try to get to the root cause of this strange disease all that you think you know will come into question, so will the involvement of an organization set up by The Emperor known as the Steel Garrote.
Graphically, this game is stunning, and the different environments you’ll get to navigate through will pull you in. Technically, there are 5 completely different areas that you’ll have to traverse, and each of those areas will have its own look, feel, and races that inhabit them. The one graphical hiccup that appears CONSTANTLY throughout the game is the terrible lip-synching that you’ll have to bear with every time you have a close up conversation with different individuals. I found myself just looking slightly off to the side or reading the subtitles so that I didn’t have to suffer through the interactions. I will also point out that I felt like the balance between light and shadow was a little too severe in areas and I had to either make sure my room was as dark as possible while I played the game, or I had to tweak the Gamma settings in order to see.
This is a game where you’re definitely going to need to learn timing, if you’re going to survive many fights. I personally had a shield and one handed weapon build out, as well as a bow and arrow build out. When it came to melee combat you couldn’t just try to spam the attack button over and over again, for better or for worse you were at the mercy of your character’s stamina. You also have to learn how to either dodge or block, otherwise you’re going to find death quickly and/or an inventory constantly devoid of healing items. I have to say that once I had two party members to help keep enemies off me I felt much more in control of the battle while I wielded my bow.
Speaking of combat, I did find it a little bit odd that certain battles were a breeze, while other battles had me gasping for breath. These feelings extended to boss battles. There were a couple of boss battles where the enemies I faced beforehand were giving me everything I could handle and then when I faced the boss I wiped the floor with them. It may have been the weapon choices I made, but I don’t think that can completely be the old factor. That being said, there was one point in my gaming that I had to take a break from playing, and it did take a little bit of time for me to get back into the rhythm and flow of combat.
This game will definitely confront you with big time, moral, dilemmas that you’ll have to choose the outcome of, and of course any choice will influence the rest of the game. There are going to be times where you’ll be faced with letting someone go, or killing them. There will also be decisions that you’ll have to make with your party members that will influence your relationship with them, and how their story will continue. There is ONE small thing that seems to make me scratch my head about the morality in the game, and that is that you can rob a city or person blind of all the possessions that are in their house/store/camp, and they don’t care at all. It really left me with a weird taste in my mouth.
I really enjoyed this game. Do I hate myself for some of the decisions I was forced to make? Yes, but in the end I enjoyed the game. This is definitely a game you’re going to have to invest some serious time into. I personally put in over 60 hours to complete the game, and that was with most of the quest having been completed. So I guess the question then becomes, should you get this game? Short answer: if you play the types of games I play, then YES.