A Next-Gen RPG - Avowed Review

Emir Kemal Ceylan
Aug 23
4 min read

Updated: Sep 18

Introduction

Larian Studio’s wreaking havoc and getting a “Game of the Year” award with Baldur’s Gate 3 proved to everyone that the role-play genre was on the rise again. During this trend, Avowed came onto the scene with ambitious promises such as "it will overshadow the Elder Scrolls series." However, it's not fair to say that Avowed even comes close to overshadowing The Elder Scrolls, because in my opinion, the two games actually have completely different characteristics. I think this difference is caused by Avowed being a "next generation roleplaying game." But let's take a look at the story first.

The Story

Avowed takes place in the same universe as Obsidian's “Pillars of Eternity” series, which comes to mind when it comes to role-playing games. But this time we are embarking on a journey to a different region, a place called The Living Lands.

Our character is an envoy sent to these lands by the Aedyr Emperor to investigate and find a cure for a dangerous disease called the “Dreamscourge”. Our character is a special being called a “godlike”. To become a godlike, which some a blessing and others a curse, one of Eora's gods need to touch us before we are born. Those who are touched develop noticeable facial abnormalities. his is one reason why people call it a "curse". Normally, every godlike individual knows the god who touched them is and what realm they rule in. But this information remains a mystery for our character.

Therefore, our hero must try to solve the mystery of their own identity while trying to find a cure for this dangerous disease. We search for answers to these two big questions with the help of main quests, side stories and teammates we meet along the way.

Mechanics

We start Avowed in a familiar way, by selecting a class. But this choice only matters at the beginning of the game, as we can reset our skill tree or stats very cheaply. The build and class diversity is truly impressive. We can switch from ranged combat and using rifles to melee combat and focus on beating our enemies to the ground at any time.

I played as a wizard and had lots of fun. The wizard class has 2 main weapons which are the Grimoire (a spell book) and the wand. The wand works kind of like a gun: It doesn’t do anything other than shooting and has infinite ammo like every other ranged weapon in the game. As someone who loves to loot and dungeon crawl, this feature saved me a lot of time. The hit feedback was way above my expectations. It makes you feel like you're actually hitting the enemy, and being able to use the character's abilities as you wish provides great satisfaction. The spellbook is mechanically very complex, so I dont want to go into too much detail about it. But to summarize, thanks to the spellbooks we collect, we can obtain different spells and use them faster depending on their rarity.

Another key element of the mechanics is the party system. We can use the abilities of our party members by assigning them to specific keys or by slowing down time to near stop and opening the skill wheel and selecting from there. This feature is initially fun and makes the game somewhat turn-based. However, after completing a few main missions, it becomes repetitive because partner abilities are limited and are often used automatically.

In addition, our character can climb and jump in the environment as if we were playing a parkour game. This feature adds a serious dynamism to the game and strengthens Avowed’s “next-gen” feel.

Instead of the classic level mechanics, symbols appear on our enemies according to the power scale. The same system applies to missions. This way, you can predict how difficult a mission will be beforehand.

As for the choices given to you, Obsidian has done a good job as usual. It's not extraordinary, but it's enough to make you feel like you're playing an RPG. You can solve some situations via violence or by talking. You can see the results of some choices in the following sections. Although the impact of them in the main missions is obvious, I did not encounter any results other than minor changes in the side missions.

In my opinion, the enemy variety at the beginning of the game started to die down towards the end of the game. It also annoyed me a bit that the powerful creatures we encountered in the previous sections appeared as normal enemies in the following ones. Still, this situation is not at a level where I can call it incredibly bad, but I can say that it is slightly below average.

Final Thoughts

In short, Avowed was one of the surprises of 2025 for me. It was quite entertaining with its fighting mechanics and parkour features at times. It also offers intriguing scenes in terms of story. If you're tired of the clunky nature of classic RPGs but still want the choices you make to impact the outcome of the game, Avowed should be at the top of your list.

Pros