Avowed Review — Safe, but Impressive

Avowed enters the market as Obsidian Entertainment’s newest RPG. True to form, the developers showcase their penchant for excellent worldbuilding and solid writing, delivering some surprisingly great, albeit familiar, gameplay alongside it. While Avowed is certainly a good time, the game overall feels too safe and lacks areas that could significantly boost its replayability, reducing the potential of an otherwise impressive title.

If you’re familiar with The Outer Worlds or Fallout: New Vegas, you already know that Obsidian Entertainment has earned a reputation for their RPG titles. The company particularly excels at phenomenal worldbuilding and great writing, delivering worlds that feel utterly fleshed out and full of characters you want to engage with, alongside real consequences for your actions. Avowed is no different, building upon the established lore of the Pillars of Eternity franchise via the Living Lands and the threat that lies therein.

There is no way to start a review of Avowed without first acknowledging that, yes, the story is pretty dang good and one that is worth at least one full playthrough. Discovering the secrets behind your origin as a Godlike and the mysterious soul plague known as the Dreamscourge is an experience I wouldn’t want to rob anyone of. Obsidian, of course, does a great job of spoon-feeding you information about the world in a way that is digestible and natural, rarely if ever feeling like exposition. The game also gives you plenty of wiggle room to create a character that feels like they’ve actually lived a real life in the world around you. One way the game does this is through unique dialogue tied to your attributes and background. The decisions you make also have real, tangible effects on the world around you and can shift conversations in new directions.

There are, of course, areas in the worldbuilding and storytelling that I wasn’t super fond of. Your character being a Godlike and personal envoy of the emperor can make you feel somewhat untouchable at times, which took me out of the experience whenever I was given the option to do a side quest. Why would I, essentially the acting voice of the emperor with an incredibly important mission that could decide the life or death of the world itself, stop to help random villagers with their problems?

The concept of “evil fungus” also started to grow on me—a trope I’ve seen in a few recent fantasy titles. Avowed handles it in a way that’s pretty interesting, so I can’t complain about it too much.

I also found myself to be a big fan of the game’s characters. However, much like The Outer Worlds, I found myself really only interested in one or two of the game’s companions (out of a large pool of four available, in fairness), with those two being Yatzli and Kai. I suspect these will be the more popular picks among players as well. Like in The Outer Worlds, you can have two companions at once, and unfortunately, also like the previous Obsidian game, you cannot romance your companions—something I learned late in my playthrough of The Outer Worlds, which, for some reason, led me to put the game down altogether.

Beyond the writing, Avowed really stands out for its fluid, fun combat mechanics and the game’s overall stability.

I mean this in the best way possible: playing Avowed feels like a very highly modded Skyrim, minus the constant crashes and frame drops. The game looks and runs great, and I can’t remember a single bug or glitch throughout my playthrough, which isn’t something you can say about modern RPG titles (or, in my case, pre-launch versions).

At its core, the combat system is pretty simple. If you understood my Skyrim comparison earlier, you have a pretty clear idea of what to expect. You attack, power attack, and block with a stamina bar, just like you did in the classic 2011 RPG, with a handy dodge feature thrown in as well. Avowed shows that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; however, with the inclusion of skills, great animations, and some absolutely phenomenal feedback, the combat feels as fresh, fast, and exciting as you would expect from a game in 2025, without actually changing much from its predecessors. It simply feels great, with every hit and dodge being oh-so-satisfying. When you toss in an exciting magic system (you can use honest-to-god spellbooks in this game) and a very generous movement system, you get a game that is a joy to play.

That being said, this is, once again, no reinvention of the wheel. Avowed’s mechanics are certainly fun, but at the end of the day, they are quite derivative and don’t really venture into new territory, which can leave the game with a great first impression, but not much of a lasting one.

While the game world looks gorgeous, it can quickly start to feel empty as enemies don’t respawn. This saves you the hassle of fighting the same foes over and over again but makes trekking through old ground a bit boring and tedious. The game also features a lack of enemy variety, with the enemies you do face feeling pretty generic for the fantasy genre—something I found disappointing for a game that otherwise has some great worldbuilding. I also felt that the game didn’t lean hard enough into the fantasy element of things. Something simply pulled me out of my immersion when I’d walk around this beautiful, fantastical environment, only to see someone dressed in some fairly mundane clothes.

The game allows you to build a pretty unique character with its skills system, and your attributes and background unlocking new dialogue options alongside branching paths and different endings can definitely give you something to play again for. However, for me, Avowed made a fantastic first impression, showing off some great writing and satisfying gameplay, but otherwise felt pretty devoid of unique ideas to keep me hooked.

While the worldbuilding was great and the mechanics satisfying, it is hard to say that Avowed really stood out, remaining true to some well-written albeit generic fantasy writing tropes and designs and failing to really branch out and do its own thing where it needed to. I can certainly tell you that Avowed is a fun game to play, but as for its lasting impact, who’s to say?

TryHardGuides received a review code for Avowed on PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Avowed is available on Steam, Battle.net, and Xbox.