Review: AVOWED is My GOTY So Far

A massive bear with floral-like growths raises their paw to attack with mouth gaping the player character holding a shining blade and magical tome.

Avowed is the first big game from Xbox Game Studios for 2025. It is developed by Obsidian Entertainment and is a first-person fantasy RPG (although you can make it third-person). The Xbox team was kind enough to give me early access to the game for the purposes of this review, but all thoughts below are my own. You can play it now on Xbox Series X|S and PC whether you purchase it or access it through Xbox Game Pass.

Explore the weird and wonderful Living Lands, the mysterious island filled with adventure and danger. As an envoy of Aedyr, you are sent to investigate rumors of a spreading plague with a secret that threatens to destroy everything.

Mix and match swords, guns, spells, and shields to fight your way as you explore many different environments and landscapes, each with their own unique ecosystem.

Fight alongside companions from a spread of species, who all have their own unique set of abilities. Can you save the island and your soul from the forces threatening to tear them apart?

All of my time with Avowed has been on the Xbox Series X and it’s run pretty well. I played around with switching between the different graphical settings, but barely noticed any real performance differences.

I then checked out the Digital Foundry video specifically talking about Xbox performance and have since kept it on Quality with no regrets. It’s not 60fps, but it is about 40fps and more consistent while just looking nice.

Before going too much of the pros and cons, I do want to now talk about the basic premise of the game. You take on the role of a godlike, a very rare instance of a person who has basically been touched by one of the gods and is special.

Because godlike are very rare, you are kind of a big deal and naturally different NPCs will have different reactions to you going around. It’s also important to note that you are an envoy for the Aedyr empire on the Living Lands, full of people who were trying to escape Aedyr which also impacts your relationships.

When you create your character, you have some choices to make. Obviously, you can adjust things like your character’s appearance (including interesting godlike features), but you also need to select a background for your character which will essentially determine their playstyle.

The backgrounds not only open up flavor and dialogue options; they also determine your starting stats and equipment. For example, the Court Augur (my choice) gives you a mace (I found this an interesting choice) and the following boosts: +3 Perception, +3 Intellect, +2 Dexterity, +2 Resolve, +0 Might, +0 Constitution. Meanwhile, the War Hero gets a Spear with +3 Might, +3 Resolve, +2 Constitution, +1 Dexterity, +1 Perception, +0 Intellect.

That’s enough dressing the table. Let’s knock this game down a couple of pegs! I’ll be honest, there’s not much that I dislike about Avowed. My biggest gripe is a little situational. You can toggle the game to be in 3rd person, something that I really like and wish was available in any game that lets you customize your character (looking at you Cyberpunk 2077).

At first, this was a lot of fun, but then I realized a problem. The jumping and falling felt so floaty that I had to go back to the first-person view which made me a little sad, but definitely not a dealbreaker.

Another negative about Avowed is just a weird choice. You can go to the settings and adjust the icons that appear in your minimap with all but one of them turned on by default. The one turned off by default is related to Totems, a type of item that can give you various bonuses based on which one you set up at your party camp.

Like I said, you can easily toggle this on, but it is annoying that it is off by default. Speaking of the minimap, I will admit that it’s not my favorite and I do wish that it gave a bit more information about the terrain. It feels very nitpicky though.

My third and final complaint that I feel I can’t sneak in somewhere else is that I don’t like the equipment interface. You can equip weapons using the triggers to determine which hand is using it and I have accidentally unequipped weapons a number of times and did not realize it until a combat started. It’s a little annoying if I’m honest.

Now let’s talk about the pros for Avowed. I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a sucker for an Obsidian RPG. I’ve played a handful over the years and I think my least favorite has been Fallout: New Vegas because it was the most different from the others I played.

Avowed feels right at home with other titles though like The Outer Worlds. You gather companions as you play and while I’ve only recruited two of them so far, they are great. I especially love Kai who is voiced by Brandon Keener who many gamers will know as Garrus Vakerian from the Mass Effect series and in all honesty, Kai reminds me a lot of Garrus and I love it.

The way you respond to different circumstances will have different impacts on your conversations with the party members and you won’t be able to please everyone. One thing that is taking some adjustment for me is how little I really get to control what the companions do.

I can’t tell them where to go or who to attack with the exception of having them use specific skills in specific contexts (such as Kai burning spider webs) or using some combat skills on a target of your choice in range. I wish I had a bit more control of them, or could at least adjust their gear (you can only determine what skills they learn).

Another aspect I found interesting was what felt like a different approach to leveling. As you play Avowed, you gain experience and levels that let you put points into abilities and attributes to make your character stronger.

This is important, but in many ways it feels like a lesser focus compared to upgrading equipment. Sure, you can level up and dump points into Might to boost damage, but I think it would be a smarter investment to instead upgrade your weapon of choice one or two levels.

Of course, this means you also run into the problem where instead of grinding for experience you’re grinding for upgrade materials (my kingdom for more softwood branches) and everyone will have opinions on whether this is better or worse. In my opinion, I don’t know that it’s necessarily better, but I do like it and I like how it feels different.

My complaint here is that I feel like the material requirements could be balanced a little better by either adjusting the numbers, changing what some items require (such as switching a pelt requirement for an iron requirement), or making some materials a bit easier to find.

In terms of graphics, I’m no expert, but I think Avowed looks gorgeous. The environment looks great. The characters and monsters are phenomenally designed and realized. There hasn’t been a moment where I thought that the game looked bad.

I’m going to talk about combat now. You have two hands so about two weapons at a time and you can have two weapon sets equipped at a time. Each weapon has a variety of things to consider such as damage, blocking, and stamina use. If you want to use grimoires, this basically just changes to an essence cost modifier, damage modifier, and the spells available change.

Meanwhile, armor has a few stats such as percentage of damage blocked, additional damage reduction, and modifiers for stamina and essence. This all doesn’t take into account unique items with additional bonuses and such. I also kind of like the fact that boots and gloves typically don’t give you bonuses to damage reduction but will often offer other bonuses such as parry efficiency, parkour speed, stamina, etc..

Honestly, the combat took some getting used to because enemies felt so aggressive and melee oriented and I was trying to be more ranged as a spellcaster, but it was really easy to get into the flow of things.

One final thing about Avowed that I love that is a small detail is your stealth kill. First, I always love having a good stealth kill in any game. In Avowed, your stealth kill is essentially a built-in energy sword from Halo and I love it. It’s a small detail, but I like it a lot.

In case you could not tell, I really like Avowed. It is just a lot of fun to play and it looks great. Running around the Living Lands is nice and pretty. Sure, there are some finer details that I wish got adjusted. However, at this point in time (and yes, I’m aware it’s only February and Metroid Prime: Beyond is coming later this year) I think Avowed is my pick for Game of the Year.