Avowed

Avowed is a 5/10 game by it's own merit. As an addition to the Pillars Universe it's a 3/10. I really don't think it's bad at all and I initially wanted an Avowed 2 but I've since soured on that idea. This game is not at all worth it's launch price or it's current price. It is at most a 30$ game. As a part of the POE universe it's especially disappointing, It's narratively and mechanically neutered. I know you can't translate the entirety of a CRPG into an ARPG but there's so much of the CRPGs play options that aren't in this. Worst still is that the Narrative quality is also dipped down pretty significantly and repeats a lot of story beats from the first two games. POE was never a too complex narrative, but that's just what makes it more noticeable. Godlikes, which you are forced to play as, have been made generalized and pretty generic. The various kinds of Godlike in previous games were interesting in their design and their nature and were filled to the brim with Nine "Sub-Races" that each had their own slight variations. The version you play as does have some neat appearance options but the customization is ultimately really limited, clips into most of the hair and doesn't really fit some heads. This is all made so much worse when you meet an old style Godlike and see how neat he looks compared to you. I think it says something that you have the option to just outright hide it entirely, though the narrative will still pretend it's there. The customization options also spoil the big reveal pretty easily once the concept of a Godlike is explained to you. Pillars of Eternity 1 featured 11 unique classes, Pillars 2 had the same but also featured Multi Classing. None of my personally favorite classes that I spent the prior 2 games on are in Avowed. Avowed features 3 classes, Fighter, Ranger, and Wizard. Fighter for the most part is straight forward but also possesses tiny pieces of Barbarian and Monk featured within it but as a result you just feel like you're playing a very broken version of the original classes. Ranger is similar, Ranger has been heavily neutered and is honestly more of a Rogue based class than anything else. It also features a functionally infinite Invisibility spell and in late game I was literally just walking past all the combat encounters. Wizard is there but it's drastically reduced from it's original form in the first two games and has largely been reduced into various colors of magic Missile spam. Enemy variety is comically limited, my biggest gripe would probably be the Bears, there are no Wolves or anything adjacent to Wolves so you'll be fighting packs of Bears and when human enemies have tamed animal allies they have, bears. The Rangers ultimate ability is summoning a Bear for 30 seconds. I don't think I've ever seen an RPG forget to implement a Wolf equivalent like this. Even the world doesn't feel alive, there's not really any Simulation to it at all. If something isn't meant to do combat it's actually just a static object that talks to you, as such you can freely ransack the city on a theft spree or toss one of your hundreds of grenades you will accumulate where-ever you wish. Even if somebody walks up to you and literally threatens your life if they didn't attack you, tough, just gotta wait for the ambush they literally promised to your face. Unlike previous games you also can't modify your companions. You can unlock 4 abilities each 4 them and level them up and if you pay, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 25$, you can dress them up in 2 unique cosmetics skins for each of them. This also means that very early on your inventory will fill up with Legendary Unique's with a storied history that the game will encourage you to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ break apart because there's nothing else to do with them. Avowed really comes off as a shallow experience, It does nothing of note and what it does well was already done better by it's own prior games. If this particular genre didn't have so many entries this would be a standout but compared to so many contemporaries it's pretty underwhelming and just seems like it's doing things everybody else has done. I can't believe this is an Obsidian product. It feels like something a new company put out. Even your first companion is just a copy of Garrus from Mass Effect, voiced by the same guy with a personality that's so similar I kept having to do a double take when I looked at him and didn't see a Turian. To some slight credit, they did later come back and try to touch up the classes and add new abilities but some of them are so pointless there's no reason to use them. Obsidians biggest contribution since release was adding the Premium Pre-Order content, two pieces of armor and 8 companion skins, for 25$. An incredibly overt greedy attempt at squeezing money out of us one last time before they ran out the door. The reaction to this was so bad they had to adjust the price.