What Avowed lacks in gloss it makes up for with charm, depth and a playful heart. It's one of this year's most pleasant surprises.It took me a while to warm to Avowed. There's a feeling early on that it's all rather old-fashioned, a bit stiff and a bit wooden. It's there in the ambition of the game too: it doesn't seem to be doing anything grand or headline-grabbing. This is a big new role-playing adventure from a renowned first-party Xbox studio, but I just seem to be running around whacking lizard people. Where are the bold new ideas? Sometimes it feels like playing a game from the Xbox 360 era, albeit one with ray tracing and DLSS 3.Avowed reviewDeveloper: Obsidian EntertainmentPublisher: Microsoft Game StudiosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out on 18th February on PC (Steam, Microsoft Store, Battle.net) and Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass. Cross-buy on PC and Xbox by linking your Xbox and Battle.net accounts.But as I stuck with it, that cynicism melted away, its Xbox 360-ness feeling more like a strength than a weakness. Unlike so many po-faced RPGs of today, Avowed feels blissfully unburdened by complication. It's an adventure in the warm sea air of a strange and fantastical island, and it never loses sight of that - of being an adventure. It's a game about climbing around on treasure hunts, striking out into the unknown, and revelling in the absurdity of its super-powered combat. It's a game that enjoys being a game - and I don't think we say that enough.Avowed is an action role-playing game in the same way Skyrim is an action role-playing game: a first-person (though there is the option of a third-person view) swashbuckling spell-flinger where you run around picking up apples and wedges of cheese. But the similarities stop there. Far from being a sandbox, Avowed is a more authored kind of game where characters and their associated stories are deliberately placed to direct you around the world. It's also an experience where the few companions you meet aren't optional and aren't romanceable, which feels delightfully novel these days. They'll fight alongside you in battle (two at a time) and weigh in on decisions you make, both in the moment and when you're back at camp.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Watch on YouTubeThe adventure itself takes place in an island region called the Living Lands, a mysterious new addition to the world of Eora, which is the setting of Obsidian's acclaimed Pillars of Eternity games. It's a standalone area so you don't need to have played those games to understand this one, but there's an undeniable thrill for returning players in seeing this previously isometric world through the eyes of a character who lives there. There are also several nods to characters and events from previous Pillars games. It's nice to be back.Whether you know the world or not, though, one thing is inescapable: this setting is a very pleasant place to be. Warm sun, clear water bays, busy jetties and ramshackle towns: this is a tropical getaway. But it's a getaway with a problem: a plague of sorts - a fungi-powered exuberance that twists trees and saturates everything in kaleidoscopic colour. I can't think of a game that's used a palette of pinks, purples and oranges quite like this before. It's as though the world is going to an undersea, coral-themed ball, and it's brazenly unique because of it. There's no moody realism here: this is maximalist fantasy and I'm here for it. It's beautiful. And it's into this set-up you arrive as an envoy of an overseas Emperor to find out what's going on, and stop it. You are also a Godlike, a chosen one of a deity who left their mark upon you at birth - a gaudy facial feature chosen during character creation. The only problem is, you don't know who your god is. But as you arrive on the island, a voice starts to sound in your head.It's an intriguing set-up, but it's unfortunate how long it takes for anything intriguing to actually happen. There's an overabundance of names and factions at the start that won't mean anything to you initially, and it arguably puts too much focus on establishing the world's fraught political landscape. Eventually, it does all start to sink in many hours later, but it's too much too soon, for sure. The genericness of running around a town collecting quests from exclamation mark-denoted NPCs, as well as bounties from a notice board, also does nothing to alleviate this. In these opening moments, Avowed feels distinctly uninspired. At every turn, the game screams adventure, and the scenery can be spectacular. | Image credit: Eurogamer / ObsidianBut the game is saved early on - and propelled for many hours after - by its very moreish combat, which, funnily enough, was an area of concern in trailers prior to release. As a spectator, Avowed's fights don't look particularly special and the enemies seem hesitant. But it's less about what they do to you that matters, and more about what you do to them - in short: sending them flying. It's the way enemies ragdoll with the velocity of your gunshots, axe blows, or explosive spells when they die that makes it so enjoyable. Combat is all about movement, dodging and dashing, and there's a snap and responsiveness immediately apparent when fighting that makes it satisfying to do.The free-form approach to combat is also one of the game's major draws, and it's fun to toy around with. There are skill trees associated with Ranger, Fighter and Wizard archetypes, but you're free to mix and match abilities from whichever build you want. It's perfectly feasible to be an armoured mage, for example, and switch between wand-and-spellbook and two-handed hammer. I was a hybrid Fighter-Ranger, broadly, but because respeccing can be done any time for a small fee, I changed around a lot within that idea, at times more like a heavily armoured fighter, and others a nimble archer. My favourite build involved starting with power-shots from my rifle (arquebus), then charging into melee with my mace and shield. There are some wonderful abilities to go with this, too, such as spinning attacks, that aforementioned Charge, and a rapid Flurry of Blows.At the heart of your build is your equipment, which determines - alongside your level - what you're capable of in the game. Equipment is separated into tiers (with three upgradeable steps in between them) and if you fight enemies considered a higher tier than you, you'll incur significant penalties to damaging them, whereas they'll gain significant bonuses in damaging you. Being underquipped for battle, then, is a bad idea, so upgrading your equipment is crucial. You'll know if your gear isn't good enough, incidentally, because your companions will incessantly nag you to upgrade it. A glipse at the game's brilliantly-named equipment and pervasive crafting system. Note the different tiers. You can also enchant unique items to add one of two special abilities to them, which, if you're so inclined, you can match with your character build. | Image credit: Eurogamer / ObsidianEach major area of the game is based around an equipment tier, so the repeated loop becomes 'struggle for a bit in a new area, then gradually gather enough resources (or new items) there such that you upgrade to being powerful enough to conquer all of it'. It's a nice enough system - you can upgrade pieces of equipment and use them all the way through the game if you want, though you will constantly be finding unique gear that challenges your loyalty to them. I'm a sucker for a named and storied piece of equipment, and Avowed is full of them - my One Last Trick rifle and Star of Unbending mace being particular favourites.This gear-tier idea does a good job of slowing you down and making you explore the entirety of a region to get the most from it, though you can break this rhythm if you don't mind taking on a significant challenge. (On this point: Avowed has a brilliant second-wind-style idea whereby you come back to life, once, in a surge of fist-clenched determination after you've been knocked down. I'm a big fan). This cyclical rhythm of stripping a new region to its bones does start to wear thin by the time you reach the third or fourth area, but the charm of Avowed lies in the ways Obsidian finds to constantly placate any feelings of restlessness. It's here where the playfulness of the studio and game really come to the fore. Each of its zones are more like oversized playgrounds than sandboxes, filled as they are with jumping puzzles and unexplored caves and hidden treasures. It's rare to go anywhere in the world and not feel rewarded for it, be it by one of the many chests squirrelled away, emitting a faint tinkling sound when you're near, or by the dramatic climbs that await you leading to spectacular scenery, or the bizarre pockets of story you'll find. Everywhere you go, something has been hand-placed to entertain you. Obsidian is relentlessly witty in Avowed - it's ever present in whichever situation you find yourself in. Also highlighted here: high-up ledges deliberately placed above pools of water so you'll be tempted to jump into them. I did, every single time. | Image credit: Eurogamer / ObsidianIn the early stages of the game, I was waiting for this Obsidian-ness to shine through - this wit, this imagination - because this is a studio renowned for making games like these. Thankfully, like water cracking and eventually rupturing a dam, it absolutely comes through. Even during its slow start when it's swamping you in mechanically uninteresting tasks and pages of conversation, it's still able to raise a smile. What's more, it also has the confidence to dangle RPG tropes in front of you before deftly subverting them, toying with your expectations as a player.This being an Obsidian game, there's also a lot of weighty choice-and-consequence stuff here, with significant events written into each act that carry huge stakes for the story and the people you meet. There's never a correct outcome, which I like - never a general consensus. Someone will always disagree and then confront you about it, pushing you to explain, to reflect, to justify. There's always a conversation to be had, and there's so much more to the companions than I thought there would be. There are some really touching, tender moments, too, where they reveal hidden sides of themselves and ask for advice.Avowed accessibility optionsScalable text and subtitle size, subtitles on/off, chatter subtitles on/off, scalable subtitle background opacity and display duration, auto-continue conversations on/off, interaction icons on/off, loot shimmer on/off, optionable third-person view, head bobbing on/off and scalable intensity levels of it, scalable local/world camera shake strength, scalable camera sway strength, scalable animated camera strength, toggle or push-to-hold crouch and sprint modes, incoming attack warnings on/off, three hit flash modes, hits move towards target on/off, aim assist on/off and scalable magnetism gauge.However, it doesn't always come together. There are moments where systems and story jar with each other. Food plays a key mechanical role in the game by healing or buffing you, for example, so you'll often be carrying pies and ales and a larder's worth of grub with you, but in the second area of the game, which is suffering a famine, you never offer any of it, and it feels odd. Similarly, I can have blistering rows with someone, only for them to offer me a key to their personal belongings a moment later. It isn't just incidental things either: there are major decisions towards the end of the game for which the ramifications start to raise their head before disappearing a moment later, as though everything is suddenly forgotten. I'm still scratching my head about the missing consequences of one of my biggest end-of-game decisions. Clearly a lot of your actions and decisions are tracked, but some never seem to amount to anything and blow away on the breeze. It leads to a feeling that much of Avowed's story is fixed and you're merely choosing the context in which key events happen, rather than their actual outcomes.You can feel the limitations Obsidian was working with, the places where a modest budget couldn't quite stretch to match an ideal, despite some heroic effort. This isn't the triple-A Microsoft-funded showcase I once believed it would be. It's closer in spirit, perhaps, to the double-A games that had their heyday in the 360 era, which I promise you isn't meant to disparage. Rather, it's to invoke the spirit of that age and how many of those games overcame their limitations to become classics, with a clarity of vision and a sense of fun that resonated with audiences. Avowed has been more generous than I thought it would be - in length, in heart, in depth - and it never loses sight of being a game, of being an adventure, of taking you places you would never normally go, or of simply providing a few dozen hours of unabashed escapism. I think it's one of this year's most pleasant surprises.A copy of Avowed was provided for review by Microsoft Game Studios.