Avowed is set in Eora, the same fantasy world as Obsidian's other games, Pillars of Eternity. You play as a member of the Aedyr Empire, one of the Emperor's most loyal servants, who is sent to the wild frontier of the Living Lands. It is being plagued by the Dreamscourge, a fungal illness that causes its victims to enter a dreamlike state. The Dreamscourge isn't your only reason for venturing to the lands. You are also a Godlike, who's been ordained at birth by one of the deities of the world. Your deity is an unknown and has never bothered to contact you, but something about the Living Lands calls to your character. As the Emperor's envoy and a godless Godlike, you must discover the secrets of the Living Lands and what it means for your own life and the future of Eora.

I genuinely enjoyed the plot and characters in Avowed. The story is mostly on rails, but it's a fun role play. Every dialogue option allows you to build up your character, their beliefs and their personality in such a way that you don't feel shoehorned into one role. Do you want to be a loyal emperor's servant or a dorky nerd who just wants to study magic? Do you have a lover at home? Did you love your family, or were they unpleasant? As you progress, you gradually build up your character and their history, and it was pleasant when the game remembered something I'd said and referred to it.

If there's one problem, things can occasionally be too safe. Your various companions are already friends or know one another, so there's very little sense of a diverse group getting along. The game also plays it too safe with the fact that you're a Godlike. Despite warnings about your visage being hideous, most people rarely comment on it, and there were times I forgot my character was supposed to look abnormal. I enjoyed the unusual atmosphere and seeing the oddities of the Living Lands.

Avowed falls into the middle ground between a traditionally linear game and an open-world game. Rather than one big open world, you're given a dense chunk of land to explore. None of the areas are particularly huge, but they are heavily populated with lots of secrets, hidden areas, and vertical areas to explore. Most of the areas are based around a single large town (itself located on a separate screen from the rest of the world) and its surrounding caves, hamlets, ruins and so on.

An emphasis in the game is its verticality and exploration. At times, it is more of a first-person platformer than anything else. Pretty much every area can go up or down, and frequently, a lot of the coolest stuff is located at the top of a platforming puzzle or other challenge. While the areas are fairly small, there are a lot of options for exploration. The game is a tad heavy on the invisible walls, especially in some mountain areas that have only one path, but if you're willing to stick to the rules, it can be fun to explore.

The world contains a number of different options for interacting while exploring. Vines can be burned, machines can be activated with electric bolts, water (or other liquids) can be frozen so you can walk across them, and weak walls can be busted open with explosives. Usually, if you're tasked with getting into a place, there are multiple different ways inside, ranging from finding underground waterways or hidden skylights to lockpicking. Sometimes the game even rewards you, such as allowing you to avoid a difficult fight if you find a way to sneak into an area instead of killing your way through.

That said, Avowed's world feels weirdly hollow at times. The world is rather inconsistent about what you can and can't interact with, with many items sitting on desks or on walls and being untouchable. You can usually grab a weapon sitting on the ground or a piece of food on the counter, but it doesn't happen all the time. Tied to this is also that the game doesn't really seem to have any sort of ownership or thievery mechanics. You can walk into a guardhouse and grab every weapon and item you see, and nobody cares. On more than one occasion, I saw people arguing over the limited food they had in front of them, and I was able to walk up, grab it and walk away without a comment.

Likewise, you're not able to harm or interact with NPCs unless they've been specifically aggro'd toward you, which can feel extremely weird in combat. For example, in the third area of the game, I had a job hunting down two bandits for a bounty. Despite seeing them clearly in the distance, I couldn't snipe them or launch a preemptive attack. I had to approach them and trigger a conversation, which turned into a fight. I don't mind the world being a place to exist in instead of interactivity like Baldur's Gate 3, but it would've been nice if this were consistent throughout. Even when you can interact with the world, it isn't a sure thing. When you can pick a lock  is basically up to chance.

Speaking of which, combat in Avowed is straightforward. It's a first-person action-RPG in the vein of something like Skyrim or Fallout, but with more flexibility. You can equip up to two sets of weapons. Some weapons, like swords or pistols, use one hand while others use two. One-handed weapons can be wielded alongside shields or spellbooks.

Spells in Avowed are interesting. Rather than learning them as you level, spells are tied to Grimoires. Each Grimoire has four different spells available, and when they are equipped, you can cast the spells by spending  Essence, the game's version of MP. However, if you have a Grimoire with a spell in it, you can choose to learn that spell using skill points, so you can cast the spell without the Grimoire equipped. If you combine the two, you'll get a bonus: Any spell you cast from a Grimoire that you've previously learned is cast one rank higher. This allows you to build a healthy dose of different spells while selecting a few as favorites.

Perhaps the most distinct element of Avowed is that you're not locked into a specific kind of weapon or build. Functionally, you can equip any weapon or gear at any point and use any combination. Rather than directly impacting the power of weapons, each stat gives a passive bonus to critical hits, essence regeneration, range and more.

Want to have a two-handed broadsword in an inventory slot and then a magic spellbook and pistol in the other? Go for it, and you're just as effective at each. The game does reward you for specialization. There are skills that specifically power up certain weapon or attack types, so you're going to end up being better with a bow if you invest in all ranged bonus options. Even then, you can still fight effectively with a sword and board, if you decide that you need to get up close and personal.

This also applies to the skills in Avowed. You have ranger, warrior and wizard skill trees, but you're free to cross-class them as you like. You can play as a warrior and dip into the ranger tree to get a skill that lets you knock over enemies while sliding or primarily play wizard but level up your pistol abilities so you can use a beefy handgun instead of a wimpy wand. For example, I primarily played as a long-distance fighter but grabbed the warrior's Charge ability to knock over enemies and smash through walls instead of the ranger's Tangle ability because it seemed cooler to be able to run through walls like the Kool-Aid man.

A major balancing factor between weapons and skills is how they vary between Damage and Stun. Stun is a meter that fills up on an enemy as you deal damage, and once it is full, the enemy is stunned and open to a cinematic attack that does a ton of damage. Other moves, like parries, can also increase stun. Some weapons are great at dealing damage but terrible at building stun, while others build stun well but are bad about dealing damage. Wands never impressed with their DPS, but their charged attacks build stun really well. A bullet to the face usually killed non-boss foes long before their stun meter would fill.

You can also bring two companions into the field, and they feel straightforward. Each companion has a distinct role to fill with a distinct set of skills. Kai, your first companion, is a tank who draws aggro, Giatta is the healer, Marius is the ranged fighter, and Yatzli is the mage. Each companion has a combination of active skills, passive skills, and a special utility skill for exploration. They can be used freely but have a cooldown between each action. Should a companion go down, they can be revived on the spot, and they generally serve a useful combination of extra DPS and extra durability.

I was a tad frustrated by the companion system because their usefulness varied. Kai can set things on fire so you can get past, but this skill ends up being almost worthless because the game has tons of options for getting free or low-cost fire damage, and they all have the same impact. In comparison, Marius has a skill that highlights objects in the environment, which is great for sussing out the locations of hidden chests or items, so he felt much more useful.

Avowed does a good job of trying to encourage players to use different skills and abilities, but ultimately, combat in Avowed is functional but repetitive. Despite having different skins, most enemies fall into a few categories and can be fought in basically the same way. There's absolutely fun to be had, especially once you get some good skills under your belt, but around the midpoint of the game, I felt like things were becoming incredibly repetitive. It doesn't help that the game's AI wasn't the best. I had a regular situation where I'd start backing away from an approaching enemy, and they would just stand there and not respond while I repeatedly shot them in the face.

Outside of straightforward combat, nothing felt very satisfying. Stealth feels oddly implemented. You can execute both close and distance stealth kills, but it feels awkward, and frequently even one-shotting a foe wouldn't stop everyone from getting alerted. On the other hand, you get an incredibly short cooldown stealth ability that lets you do backstabs on anyone (even mid-combat). It's a lot of fun but doesn't really feel stealthy. Likewise, trying to play around with the environment, such as using electric spells on water pools, is a neat bonus but rarely felt integrated enough to be reliable. It was cool when it was included, such as a mine that's full of so many explosive barrels that bold attacks can make you blow yourself up.

Avowed eschews standard level scaling in favor of an equipment-based scaling method. Each enemy has an icon indicating the rarity of their equipment, from Standard to Legendary. If you're on the same tier as they are, you'll be able to fight them on equal levels, but if your equipment is a tier or more below the enemy's, you'll be doing reduced damage and taking increased damage, separate from the actual numbers of your gear. Any piece of gear you find in the game can be upgraded from the lower tier to higher tiers using items in the environment. Each tier has three levels, and once you've leveled it up three times, you can upgrade it to the next tier. This is specifically for your main armor and weapons. Accessories, boots and gloves serve as passive modifiers to your gear rather than independent items.

Also of particular note are unique weapons and equipment; as you might gather, these items have special, unique attributes. You might find a gun that shoots electric bolts or boots that let you dodge farther. You can mix and match these freely to create the optimal character build. Unique weapons can be further enchanted. For example, my mainstay weapon was a pistol that did electric-type damage. I could amplify it so that damage was done in an AoE around my target or modify the enchantment so when I kill an enemy, it gave me a free cast of a chain lightning spells. Every unique weapon can be customized in this way.

Unfortunately, I really disliked Avowed's equipment system. The core problem is that it sucked a lot of the fun out of getting new gear. If I found a cool unique item and it wasn't at least on the level of what I was facing, there will be a tedious grind to build it up to the current level. Instead of being able to swap gear that actually fit my build, I felt obligated to stick with whatever I was currently leveling. It also meant that if I fell behind a tier, I'd frequently find myself facing enemies who were between two tiers. I'd either have to spend time grinding to upgrade gear or deal with my party members constantly telling me that my armor and weapon "wouldn't work in this area." It's a shame because I like the rest of the gear system, but apparently, I'd rather have standard level scaling.

It should be noted that the game isn't quite difficult enough to demand this while played on the standard difficulty level. You suffer a penalty, but the core combat system isn't punishing enough that you're forced to follow through. It means you have to deal with fights taking longer and a constant barrage of complaints from your party members every time your attack does reduced damage. It's more of an annoyance than a barrier, but it's enough to be a significant drag on the game.

Avowed looks fantastic. The environments are beautiful and are absolutely dripping with flavor and detail. Each zone you explore contains tons of lovely little details or genuinely breathtaking sights. The animations and character models largely look good, but the fur on certain characters (particularly the Orlan) looked rather awkward. The voice acting is largely excellent, and while there are a few NPCs with inexplicably awful voice work, they're few and far between.

Avowed is a game full of fun exploration, an interesting story tied to lackluster combat, and an annoying equipment system that keeps it from reaching its full potential. When I was engaged in Avowed, I would spend hours wandering around, talking to NPCs, and completing quests. However, when the game wasn't firing on all cylinders, I was frustrated and frequently bored. It's a game of high highs and low lows, but the highs were enough to keep me engaged despite the flaws.

Score: 7.8/10