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With over 100 hours in the game, we review Avowed, a solid RPG with rich lore & exploration but lacks depth.
Set in the world of Eora, Avowed is a First-Person role-playing game from the Pillars of Eternity franchise. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, fans of Fallout: New Vegas and the Outer Worlds will recognize familiar moral decisions, world-building, and vibrant, colorful characters. Following a traditional RPG theme, Avowed sets players on a journey to discover a mystery overtaking the local region. This story teaches you about the history, lore, and gods influencing the world, leading to many impactful player-driven choices.
What initially stuck out to me was how similar the bright colors of the world resembled the Outer Worlds. The beach is flooded with blues and greens, making the world come alive. Even at the outset, the game mechanics were familiar enough to pick it up quickly but different enough to give it a unique feel. As a Reviewer, I received a game code and played for 100 hours, but I was not compensated for this review. I’m a big fan of Obsidian Entertainment, but I will do my best to explain the pros and cons of this game. I hope you walk away from this article knowing precisely what you can expect from Avowed and if it’s right for you.
Let’s get started, but first, below are some details about my Avowed review:
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S / PC / Cloud
- Reviewed: PC
- PC Specs
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS
- RAM: 16 GB
- OS: Windows 11 Home
- Release Date: February 18, 2025
- Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
- Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
- Gametime: 100 hours
What is the Avowed Game About?
Avowed is a First Person RPG where you are sent as the envoy for Aedyr to a distant land to investigate a mysterious plague. The game is open world with four different areas to traverse throughout the Living Lands. Each region feels unique in terms of environment, NPCs, and story. Moreover, you can revisit previous locations to bounce back and forth, discovering new secrets, quests, and NPC.
The main draw or attraction to the Avowed RPG for me was decision-making. With the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, players expect a lot from their RPG, and that’s where Avowed shines. Unlike other developers, Obsidian Entertainment is known for its morally grey decision-making. This means these choices aren’t purely black and white (good or bad). Similar to real life, you must go with your “gut,” and sometimes those decisions have unforeseen consequences.
I’m one of the gamers who, within 1-2 hours, either love or despise the game. For me, Avowed was in the love category, waking up early to get started before my family woke up or staying up another 30-60 minutes to get another session in. It felt counter to my experience with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which was more hardcore, frustrating, and time-consuming. Nope, with Avowed, you learn the premise of the main story, start exploring right away, and have the freedom to scour the Living Lands for treasure, monsters, and hidden gems.
Exploration
The exploration in Avowed is its main strength. What sticks out immediately is the Parkour system. The game incentives and practically begs you to climb, jump, and explore endlessly. I’m not the typical gamer who finds every hidden collectible, but somehow, Avowed makes this fun. Specifically, you use grenades and spells to destroy doors, find hidden caves, and use the minimap while exploring rewards you with treasure.
Then, the game gets vertical, challenging you to think big when exploring. You then start climbing trees and jumping rooftops, making every square foot of the game world drastically bigger when you factor in up and down in three dimensions.
Unlike games like Destiny 2, the Parkour jumping system in Avowed feels fun and fresh rather than punishing. If I miss a jump, this doesn’t result in me dying typically or my entire raid team waiting 10 minutes for me to figure it out. Nope, it’s a challenging and refreshing take on exploration.
The added benefit is that many collectibles and treasures like totems, memory fragments, and treasure maps exist. While these discovered and hidden secrets increase your overall power, they all tie back to the main story, giving an overarching narrative and performance reason to search every inch of the zone.
The only downside to the exploration of playing for many hours is it can start to feel repetitive, especially if playing many playthroughs. However, the average player will enjoy the jump, exploration, and hidden gems.
Worldbuilding
Another strength of the world in Avowed is that it has a rich history to draw from, as shown in the Pillars of Eternity series. Therefore, the game’s setting is in an expansive universe with tons of lore. From the outset, the world feels alive both visually and mechanically. Every small inch crawls with crafting materials to harvest, chests to loot, and enemies to kill. After you get your second companion, Marius, he activates a treasure detector similar to other games, giving a slight red outline for items you haven’t looted yet.
Once I unlocked this, I rediscovered tons of missing chests, herbs, and secrets because I wasn’t thinking vertically, and it reinforced the fun of just thinking outside of the box.
Story & Lore
When it comes to the game’s main story (no spoilers), it was slowly spoon-fed to you over time. Something that Avowed does is have a dialogue and history button. Therefore, if the NPCs discuss a term you don’t remember, simply mouse over it. Or, if you space bar spam too quickly and miss something important, you can look at the entire conversation before making a decision. This was a nice addition to RPGs, where I tend to speed through and miss critical dialogue.
At the outset of the game, you are unraveling this mystery. You start to learn about the world, lore, gods, and your overall objective. However, you don’t know if the Gods are for you or against you. They offer you powers, making you stronger, and it felt like a direct comparison to the Emperor Mind Flayer in Baldur’s Gate 3. The lingering sense of unease makes every quest much more intriguing to unravel their true intent, which I won’t spoil for you!
Decision Making
My favorite aspect of the story in Avowed is the decision-making portion, which isn’t perfect but nuanced. Throughout the game, you are encountered with critical branching dialogue decisions to make. However, Obsidian Entertainment presents you with no “good” solution. For example, you must stop a portion of the plague from spreading, but ultimately, it will cost lives. Do you sacrifice x village or keep y town alive? One means might be more ethical, but ultimately, it replicates leaders’ tough decisions, which will be arm-chaired and quarterbacked forever.
The major downside to the decision-making in Avowed is it requires multiple (if not many) playthroughs to see the ramifications of early choices. On your initial playthrough, you won’t be able to tell if an earlier choice influenced your current quest. Avowed expects you to play many times through, not just once. For some players, this is frustrating, as they want to pick up the game, buzz through it, and see all the outcomes. For others, like those who love BG3, this will reward you with endless game time just seeing how one micro change can shape an entirely new campaign.
Companions
Companions are another essential element to the story, as well as combat and gameplay. Companions are similar to both Dragon Age and Baldur’s Gate 3. Like Dragon Age, they have a dumbed-down skill tree with fewer choices. Kai is your tank, Marius your ranged DPS, Giatta a healer, and Yatzli DPS spellcaster. Like BG3, you return to a camp to rest, craft, and hear companions talk. Interestingly, though, the companions carry on conversations with themselves and you. This allows for organic interaction, which is reminiscent of my favorite RPG series, Mass Effect.
While adventuring, you can select two companions to help you in combat. Thus, the game incentivizes you to play the “holy trinity” healer, tank, and DPS roles. Companions can be controlled manually or automatically and help you in combat significantly. However, they don’t have armor and much beyond story elements and minor combat gameplay to optimize.
Companions have side quests that can be explored and even permanent bonuses to your character. However, it feels like some of the companions’ stories, like Marius’s, fail compared to Kai’s, who has the same voice actor as Garius from Mass Effect. Therefore, you’ll likely use the same companions for every playthrough just for their sheer depth of story and appeal.
Romance
The biggest flaw with Companions I found when reviewing Avowed was the lack of romance. There was minimal opportunity to flirt, romance, or strike up a relationship beyond commander and follower. While many gamers don’t play RPGs for romance, it’s vital to some of us, and this element of companionship is lacking compared to BG3 and even Mass Effect. However, the companion’s interactions, story, and voice acting are excellent, making them a worthy addition to a strong RPG.
Gameplay & Mechanics
When reviewing Avowed’s Combat, it’s similar to many other RPGs. You gain levels, unlock new skills, passive, and abilities, and pick from three trees to create a build. The system is designed for seamlessly swapping builds and weapon types depending on your playstyle. However, it lacks the complexity of other RPG games, but it does allow some decision-making.
One of the strengths of the system in Avowed is it doesn’t force you to choose one specific tree or not. Therefore, you are incentivised to mix skills from trees and not be penalized for your selections.
The game also features many weapons, similar to New World, with magical grimoires for spell casting, two-handed weapons for warriors, and even guns, bows, and pistols for range. Like the skills system, Avowed wants you to experiment with different weapon types. You can bar swap going from a Longbow to a two-handed weapon or double pistole to sword and shield.
While experimenting with different weapon types was fun, they didn’t feel that impactful unless you adjusted your passives. Therefore, you can make a “pistole” or gun build, but it doesn’t have the same depth as other RPGs.
Loop and Replay
The core gameplay loop in Avowed is starting in a new zone, exploring, completing the quest, and progressing the main story. As you make progress, you make choices that influence the next zone and the ending. The game’s completion can take anywhere from 20-40 hours, depending on how thorough you are exploring and collecting. However, Avowed wants you to complete the game multiple times with different characters selecting different choices.
What will keep players coming back is experimenting with different weapons and skills while exploring different dialogue choices and companions. Think BG3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or insert your favorite branching narrative RPG. This is why you play over and over to see how the world unfolds differently, and Avowed will give you that.
Graphics
Visually, Avowed is a stunning combination of blue, greens, and purples. It’s precisely what I loved about the Outer Worlds, the color motif seemed so different than other games. While this is a fantasy RPG, it has that hue reminiscent of Sci-Fi giving Avowed a distinct look and feel. Unlike Act 2 of BG3, it doesn’t have that sense of dread and doom until you get into instanced-based areas.
I didn’t experience many crashes when I was playing, but I got bugged out on some jumps. Avowed was developed with the Xbox in mind, so it’s not likely to have the graphic fidelity of the latest Battlefront Game, but it’s good enough to run smoothly on my 4070 Laptop. The colors are the main attraction and what you’ll either love or hate in this game.
Sound & Performance
When it comes to sound, I found Avowed similar to other RPGs. The Voice Acting, especially with Kai, is fantastic. The soundtrack is excellent, with a good fantasy RPG feel set on exploration. However, I didn’t find it to have the micro details like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, where my every footstep sounded different depending on the terrain.
I won’t spend too much time on the sound, but it’s what you expect in a modern RPG and good enough to add to the game’s overall appeal.
Avowed Compared to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
After logging in 100 hours, Avowed feels like an excellent RPG in 2025. Having recently reviewed Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, these games are two polar opposites. Avowed wants you to explore, jump, die, and experiment, but 10x less punishing. Meanwhile, KCD2 wants you to feel the pain of dying or making a bad choice. Avowed has quick, fast travel, saves, and familiar RPG mechanics, while KCD2 has you doing laundry.
Putting it plainly, I found KCD2 gametime inflated by infuriating choirs and busy work, while Avowed every moment felt like I was making progress. If you’re looking for an IRL sim in medieval times, you will not find it in Avowed, so be aware.
Who Should Play Avowed?
That brings us to the major question: who should play Avowed? If you’re an RPG gamer who wants something emphasizing exploration and critical decision-making, you’ll love Avowed. Avowed is for you if you enjoy companions and collectibles like Hogwarts Legacy, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. Or, if you want something simple, easy to follow along that’s not pushing, play Avowed.
However, if you want a hardcore experience similar to KCD2, Avowed will disappoint you. Moreover, if you enjoy the romance that RPGs have, then Avowed might not be for you. Lastly, if you are looking for some earth-shattering new RPG mechanic, Avowed won’t be for you.
Avowed is for the RPGer looking to sink their teeth into a fun, vibrant RPG with familiar mechanics, systems, and stories. Avowed lets you replay over and over with slight variants and experience the same game in new ways, and that’s its strength.
Score – Avowed Review
I’d give Avowed a 9 out of 10 score because of its exploration, fun factor, and vibrant world. The story is easy to pick up, the replayability is high if you like narrative stories, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a good RPG. The downsides are a lackluster companion romance, a weak build system, and nothing overall changing the landscape of RPGs. However, not all RPGs need to be masterpieces to be great. With Avowed, this is precisely what I expect and enjoy from RPGs and I hope this review helped you.
Avowed Pros
- Amazing exploration
- Vibrant world with lore and history
- Great story that’s easy to follow incentiviing multiple playthrough
- Overall what you expect from an RPG
Avowed Cons
- Lower depth
- Companions Romance
- Must play multiple playthroughs
- Nothing ground breaking
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