Downloaded this on goy pass last night to give it a shot and form my own opinion.
Went in expecting it to be total dogshit.
Played for a few hours and these are the stand outs:
- Dialogue is really bad. I read better in my college creative writing class. It's like Oneyplays doing a cringe bit, but it isn't a bit and the characters are serious
- Combat is pretty ok. The dash mechanic makes the shield useless, so I just run a sword in one hand and a grimoire in the other. Pretty fun spell slinging and sword slashing. I will echo what other people have said: The combat is missing "weight" to it, but is infinitely more engaging than something like Skyrim
- For the love of all that is Holy, turn off at least 50% of the HUD. IDK why a melee focused game thinks it needs hit markers, but you can turn that shit off along with the rest of the HUD. I would recommend minimal HUD for maximum enjoyment
- Graphics are GOOD, BUT the DLSS or whatever fake frame bullshit they are pulling have that gross half see thru half grainy effect on everything. All of the bushes look like a total fucking mess and everything looks like it was rendered out of mud unless you get close to it and DON'T MOVE. If anyone knows how to make this graphical nightmare stop, let me know.
- The game feels unpolished. Every aspect of this game SCREAMS that it needed more time in the oven. I think pushing the development time further would not have helped this game, so they pretty much just had to ship it as is.
- This is a focused experience. There are a lot of things missing from the typical RPG experience (guards, stealing, lockpicking, non-combat skill trees) but honestly its for the better. They didn't waste time on mechanics that were outside of scope and I think that's pretty neat. They only made the game they needed to make and stopped there. I'd much rather the NPC's stay in one place than scope creep turn the game into something else entirely.
So far, its been a pretty enjoyable experience. I wouldn't recommend PAYING for this game, but if you have it on goy pass, I think its worth a shot. There's been nothing so far that has been aggressively woke to the point where I want to turn the game off.
The first side quest taught me that I should never do the side quests. It's about a woman elf who lets these monsters into her home because she's losing her mind and thinks that one of the lizard creatures is her spiritual twin. Silly concept, but they don't do ANYTHING with it. Just go to her house, kill lizards, see a mural of her holding hands with the lizards. When you ask her about it she says that one of them is her "soul twin" and that's it. You ask her what she's gonna do about it and she says "lol idk"
And that's the end of the quest. A good quest would have given you a choice to encourage her to seek out her soul twin or tell her to forget the whole thing, with consequences playing out based on your choice. Avowed, however, just says: "yea that's the quest. Pretty wacky, huh?" which is a massive missed opportunity and goes back to what I was saying about the game being unfinished.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the game so far. I went in expecting to absolutely hate it and shit all over it for being woke slop. While I did find cringe dialogue, I also found a half decent game as well. Definitely glad I went in to experience the game for myself and form my own opinion. This game feels like a very focused, story driven game, which is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. No bullshit branching paths, no garbage open world with nothing in it. Just focused single player story. Hard to find these days. I will playing more later tonight and will report back with my findings.
