Is Avowed good? Yes. Is it a masterpiece? No. Obsidian's reputation as the Western-RPG GOAT sets a really high bar. Avowed will miss that mark for many people, myself included. The story is bland, the dialogue is boring, and the characters aren't memorable. This is not Skyrim 2, Witcher 4, or New Vegas 2. So why the recommendation? This is a bug-free game. The graphics are gorgeous. The framerates are high (even on lower-end machines). The exploration is rewarding. The setting is intriguing. The world is unique. The character leveling is deep (it seems shallow at first but opens up the more you experiment and level up). And finally the combat is amazing. For me the combat was worth the entry fee alone. There hasn't been a first-person melee combat game that's felt this good since Dying Light 1, and thankfully, there's a lot of interesting enemies to fight and fun bosses to challenge. Remember what playing Ground Zeroes and PT felt like in 2014? Amazing tech demos with super fun gameplay? That's what playing Avowed feels like. Except for RPGs and 10 times longer and actually it's a full game and not a tech demo. Avowed has me excited for the future- something deeply needed in 2025. I'm excited to see what Obsidian's next games hold, and how the studio builds on this really solid foundation. If any other developer released this game it would be a slam-dunk but as an Obsidian release it's missing that special sauce.

Junk Food RPG 10ish enemy types - humans(Kith), zombies, skeletons,bears, mushrooms, elementals, lizardpeople, and a splash of ogres and mechanical walkers. Combat is fun but shallow. Voice lines are very emotion focused sometime which is cool if your into talking about your feelings every time you want to upgrade your wand. Upgrade system is 2 dimensional. Story's ending is largely based upon 3 choices made in the last hour of the game. That being said it was fun. Like a roller coaster you spent 6 hours waiting in line for. Dialogue felt impactful and important to what was going on in the gameplay/ immediate story. Lesser of two evil choices throughout the entire thing. I wish I could have spent an extra couple of hours or resources to make all the npcs happy but its just not possible. Easy to digest and definitely tasty but not nutritious. *edit* not worth $70 there you happy

Am i having fun? Yes. Does it just make me want to play POE? Also yes. Would I pay full price for this game again? No. Wait for it to go on sale and dont expect too much but a good time.

[h2] tl;dr wait for a sale, or play it on Game Pass. [/h2] Avowed is an imperfect but very fun game. It does not have the same level of freedom you'd get in games like Elder Scrolls or Fallout, but it still mostly hits the mark despite this. [h3] Things I enjoyed: [/h3] -Exploration is very fun and rewarding, even if most of the treasure chests are just crafting materials -Wizard combat is a blast and I find myself chanting the little incantations when doing menial chores around my home -Lots and lots of unique items to play around with -You can reset your skills and stats at any time for a very low amount of gold -Moment-to-moment gameplay feels good [h3] Things I did not enjoy: [/h3] -Most dialogue choices don't really matter, and multiple "options" often lead to the same response from the NPC you're talking to -Marius. He got interesting in Act 4 but good grief that's a long way into the game -The characters cannot agree on how to pronounce "envoy" -You can't really 100% the game on a single character without a large amount of back-tracking -Spoilers for the last boss: [spoiler] If you have 15 points allocated in certain stats, you can gaslight the last boss into dying on the spot. Kinda funny when other games do it, but for some reason this made me mad in the moment lol [/spoiler] Overall, fun game, and I do not regret the time I spent playing it. I don't see myself playing again to get 100% completion.

FYI for anyone playing on the steam deck or other handhelds! ray tracing is enabled by default so be sure to disable it (i missed it in the options and was like why is the game running so bad) it also seems to turn itself back on sometimes after a cutscene. would also like to mention the performance issues in towns. i have no clue why they are so taxing despite all the NPCs being static. outside of towns the FPS is fine tho. games still good hope they fix that in the future

As others have said, Patch 1.5 has broken the game. There were always engine stutters, but now these stutters bring the game to a complete halt every few minutes. Not sure how this made it past the QA process..

20 hours in and i'm feeling insulted. I believed Obsidian when they told they wanted to do an smaller rpg in scope because "quality over quantity" but i'm still searching for the quality. Except for the fact that the world is quite beautiful (even though it does feel a bit plastic and generic) , this game is absolutely not an RPG. This game feels like i'm the last player of an abandonned MMO that never came out of early access. No reputation system, No Faction, NPCS in town are lifeless, and the few that are moving they do so at 20 fps. You will literally sometimes have fights in the city and npcs will do absolutely nothing, theres no interactions. Regarding the story : Yes indeed you will have a few choices to make but I also did notice that if you play the same moment with a different background and character you will actually get almost the same choices just written differently. I personally think the story is quite dull, everyone will tell you their problems right from the start and therefore you never care enough , you never feel engaged or connected to those people. There's nothing immersive about this game and i feel like for something that claims to be an "rpg" in 2025 thats inacceptable. Exploration could be fun ... if there were something else to find other than loot chests. Combat is pretty well done... but after a while it gets quite repetitive because the variety of monsters is quite low and on top of that they are sponges. Even the way they are placed in the world feels like an mmo. THIS GAME FEELS SOULLESS / LIFELESS and has no business being called an rpg.

Alright, I've played enough to update my review. TL;DR: Lackluster and shallow, absolutely not worth the price. If you really love Pillars of Eternity and want very badly to be diappointed, wait for a big sale. The fact such a "meh" game costs 70 bucks is also ludicrous. If you don't care about Eora and stuff, just go play something better. 1. Optimization is GREAT. There are so many poorly optimized games coming out, so it needs to be said. It runs pretty smoothly even if you have the minimum recommended hardware. 2. Combat is fluid and fun if you know what you're doing, at first. Eventually it becomes repetitive, since you can't control your companions and the skill tree is lackluster to say the least, so probably you'll get one strategy and stick with it, rinse and repeat. 3. Companions are few and not well developed. In my first few hours I even believed the dialogue was written by AI since it was so generic. Team banter is dull, catchphrases are repetitive. Also, your companions don't give a shit about what you do or say, so their backstories essentially means nothing. Dialogue is boring and personal quests seem rushed. You can't control them, can't change their builds or wait for them to do anything cool. They are merely acessories and sometimes they will just annoy you. I believe this game wouldn't have any companions and they were added much later, just to follow a trend of what an RPG should be or something. This is one of the main reasons I say this game needed more development time and certainly more love. A badly implemented feature is worse than just not having it. 4. There are only three classes, and none of the original flavor from the PoE series. You can theoretically mix and match between ranger/rogue, wizard and fighter - but there is no chance to be truly creative with builds since the skill trees are so poor. 5. There are plenty of background options in the beginning, but it's just for some slightly different dialogue options, that won't change anything in game. To be honest, those dialogue options most of the time don't even make NPCs react any differently. It's useless, like almost every choice in this game. Is it good? Nah. It's... okay. Okay-ish. I finished the game and I was just happy it was over. A huge disappointment.

Save your money because the game will go on sale within 6 months. This game is good but it feels like it has 2 teams who made it. Some aspects like level design and combat feel great, but then the details in between feel shallow and surface level. The story and lore is obviously already set up due to pillars, and that aspect is great but then the dialogue is passable and in some cases just bad. The main story is interesting enough but the companions so far are so bland and dull. Overall I am really enjoying the game despite all my cons, if the game was 80 dollars or less on launch id be singing its praises a lot more but AAA price comes with AAA expectations ( not that AAA games are good these days). Also pillars 1 and 2 far trumps this game, in every aspect - go play those.

First if all, this game doesn't deserve a lot of weird criticism I've seen. There's a lot of quality here. Exploring is fun, the zones of the world are detailed, immersive, and unique. The characters are good. It all feels like a lighthearted fantasy action game that includes some emotional beats. I enjoyed this game through two "chapters", but the third chapter turned me off. The combat became samey, and all the enemies were recycled from previous acts (although some re-skinned). The combat is fine after you get used to it, but most of the time you are wearing down HP sponges while dodging telegraphed attacks. The only thing that makes you change your approach, ever, is that sometimes there is a healer that will heal all of the enemies in the group back to full health. When these are present you have to hunt down that healer and kill it immediately. And I want to stress, that is it. That is the only variety I ever saw in the combat or the enemies. Not only was I so tired of killing the same skeleton enemies over and over again, but at the end of chapter 3 you get forced into an absurd trolley problem that makes no sense. You are forced to make a stupid choice, and then you have multiple dialogues with multiple characters scolding you for your choice -- no matter what you pick. It includes extremely boring gamer philosophy in the vein of "kill a small number of people to save a larger number of people." And of course, in the story, your character bears full responsibility for the consequences despite the choices being fully the agenda of two other NPCs. There's even a dialogue option of "both of these suck I don't want to" and the NPCs essentially break the fourth wall and talk directly to the player "no you must choose one of these". It's all so dumb so I stopped playing.