Avowed Review Summary

Engaging and fun combat: The combat system is described as tight, fun, and enjoyable, with a variety of weapons and enemies. Players find it satisfying, fluid, and responsive, adding to the overall enjoyment of the game.

Immersive exploration: The game offers an immersive world with purposeful and engaging exploration. Players enjoy the freedom to explore various locations and uncover secrets, making the exploration experience enjoyable and rewarding.

Stunning visuals and art: The game features beautiful and visually appealing graphics, with vibrant and colorful environments that are artistically designed. Players appreciate the high fidelity visuals and the immersive world details.

Rich worldbuilding and lore: The game features a rich and vibrant world with excellent worldbuilding and lore. Players appreciate the unique fantasy world and the detailed environmental design.

Captivating story and quests: The story is engaging and well-made, with interesting and compelling narratives. Players find the quests and storyline captivating, adding depth to the game's experience.

Combat is repetitive: The combat system is criticized for being repetitive and boring. It lacks variety and depth, making fights feel monotonous and uninteresting.

Performance and optimization issues: The game suffers from poor optimization, leading to constant stuttering, low frame rates, and frequent freezing. These performance issues significantly impact the gameplay experience.

Limited enemy variety: The game suffers from a lack of variety in enemy types, leading to repetitive encounters. This lack of diversity makes combat feel monotonous.

Frequent crashes: The game is plagued by frequent crashes, especially on PC. This instability significantly impacts the gameplay experience and can be very frustrating.

NPCs lack depth: NPCs in the game are often described as uninteresting and lacking vitality. They do not respond to actions and lack complex routines, making them feel stiff and lifeless.

Immersive exploration mechanics: The game offers an immersive exploration experience with beautiful environments and hidden paths, enhancing the overall gameplay.

Engaging combat system: The combat system is dynamic and satisfying, offering a variety of weapons, magic, and abilities that make fighting enjoyable and replayable.

First-person action RPG: The game combines first-person action with RPG elements, offering a unique blend of combat and exploration.

Character progression and customization: Players can customize and develop their characters with skill trees, abilities, and progression systems, enhancing replayability.

Meaningful player choices: The game includes choices that significantly impact the story and endings, providing a choice-driven narrative with lasting consequences.

Performance and optimization issues: Many players report poor optimization, constant lagging, framerate issues, and stuttering. Some players experience smooth performance, but these reports are less frequent.

Frequent game crashes: Players encounter frequent crashes, including fatal errors on launch and crashes during gameplay. Some crashes are related to specific settings like ray tracing.

FPS drops and stuttering: Players experience significant FPS drops and stuttering, especially in combat and after certain updates. These issues are widespread and affect gameplay.

Technical issues and bugs: Players encounter various technical issues, including bugs, achievements not working, and fatal errors. Some players report no technical problems.

Graphical and visual issues: Players report various graphical bugs, blurry graphics, and visual issues, particularly on AMD cards and without upscaling.

Wait for a sale: Many reviewers suggest waiting for a sale or discount before purchasing the game, indicating that it may not be worth the full price.

Mixed general recommendations: The game receives mixed recommendations, with some reviewers highly recommending it while others do not.

Recommended for Pillars of Eternity fans: This game is highly recommended for fans of the Pillars of Eternity series who are looking for a simpler RPG experience within the same universe.

Solid bet for Skyrim likers: Fans of Skyrim are likely to enjoy this game, though it is noted to be different and not a clone.

Use maps for efficient collection: Reviewers recommend using interactive maps from specific websites to efficiently collect items in the game.

Community fair range: $20.00 - $30.00.

Game completion: 60.0h.

Story completion: 40.0h.

Session length: 2.0h.

Endgame: 20.0h.

The game's progression system is well-balanced in terms of resource collection and weapon leveling, but the slow progression of abilities can be a friction point for early fun. The flexibility in character builds and the rewarding feeling of unlocking new abilities are key conditions that increase fun.

Reported time to anchor: 30h.

Casual RPG Enthusiast: Explores the game world and engages with the story, appreciates the game's similarities to other popular RPGs. Motivation: Enjoyment of the game's story and immersion. Stance: sale.

Obsidian Loyalist: Compares Avowed to other Obsidian games, has high expectations based on previous titles. Motivation: Appreciation for Obsidian's game universe and lore. Stance: deep sale.

Combat Critic: Focuses on combat mechanics and movement, compares combat to other games. Motivation: Quality and feel of the combat system. Stance: deep sale.

Steam Deck: The analysis of user feedback reveals several critical issues with the game's performance on the Steam Deck. Key themes include false advertising regarding the 'Steam Deck Verified' status, poor visual quality, performance issues, inadequate controller support, and frequent crashes. These issues collectively contribute to a subpar user experience, particularly on the Steam Deck, despite some positive feedback on high-end PCs.

Monetization: The game has significant issues related to its monetization strategy, particularly concerning the perception of Day-1 DLC and being overpriced. Many players feel that the game is not worth its current price point and that additional content should not be sold separately as DLC. These factors contribute to a negative user experience and suggest a predatory monetization approach.

Mod reliance: The game has notable performance issues and stability problems that require community-created mods and patches to improve. Users frequently turn to NexusMods for fixes and enhancements, indicating that the vanilla game experience may not be optimal without these modifications.

External guides: The analysis of user feedback reveals several key themes. Users are significantly impacted by bugs and the need to rely on external resources for fixes, which is a high-severity issue. Additionally, there is a notable mention of the need to read in-game encyclopedia entries and the presence of extensive references, indicating a medium-severity issue related to instructional data. On a positive note, users appreciate the exploration aspect and the vast amount of content available in the game.

Political feedback detected: This appears to be a non-constructive comment related to politics rather than gameplay feedback.