Avowed is a trademark Obsidian RPG and the perfect distraction until Elder Scrolls VI

Avowed, one of the more anticipated games of 2025 for RPG fans, is finally here. Beloved game developer Obsidian Entertainment's latest game has all the trappings fans know and love from the studio — the good and the bad.

An incredibly deep game with tons of lore and characters, Avowed will keep you glued until the end if you get sucked into its world. If you don't, you can skip the heavy dialog scenes and enjoy the challenging, engaging combat and deep leveling systems. There's something here for every type of RPG fan.

Avowed review: The Basics

• What is it? Avowed is the latest open-world fantasy RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. Published by Xbox Game Studios, it features deep, challenging combat and a story packed with entertaining characters. The world is filled with offputting plant life contrasted with vibrant colors.
• Who is it for? This is for people who like an RPG with a lot of depth that won't always hold your hand. Forget about enemies that scale with you — walk into the wrong zone, and you will get killed. If you played other recent Obsidian RPGs, you'll already know if this game is for you.
• What's the price? The standard edition of Avowed costs $69. There's also a premium version with digital extras for $89. As extras go, this one is pretty underwhelming. You get Premium Skin Packs, two sets of bonus skins for each companion, a digital artbook and a digital soundtrack.
• What other games has the developer made? Obsidian Entertainment has a long track record in the RPG space. It created The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas. It also made Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2 and South Park: The Stick of Truth.
• What games is this similar to? Avowed is similar to other first-person RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series, though it's much smaller in scale at closer to 25-30 hours. It has a similar feel to Outer Worlds but with sci-fi swapped for fantasy.

Embrace the Godlike

In Avowed, your character is a Godlike, and other characters will react to you as such. Being a Godlike means you have features bestowed upon you by your god. In the case of your character, it means plants and mushrooms are growing out of your face.

I had a visceral reaction to said objects growing on my character's face. And that was one of very much disliking it. It kind of made me feel itchy and gross. The developers must have known this would happen, as the character creator has a clearly labeled "disable Godlike features" button. I clicked it so fast my controller must have thought I'd broken the sound barrier.

Fortunately, turning the features off doesn't change the game at all. Other characters will still react to your Godlike features even though you can't see them.

Outside of the gross mushroom face syndrome, your Godlike nature plays heavily into the game's story. You don't know who your god is, and you want to find out. This theme plays heavily into the game's overall flow, and while I don't want to spoil it, the Godlike stuff ends up being one of the more interesting aspects of the story.

The story is a little more convoluted than I'd like, and it throws a lot at you right out of the gate. In the beginning, the game almost feels like it could be a sequel because it seems to assume you already know much about the world and its different powers. Granted, as the game is set within the universe of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity franchise, Pillars fans will likely feel at home.

The captions highlight essential dialog elements, and every sentence includes a name or place highlighted. While these are meant to help with confusion, I think the highlights only added to it by overloading me with unfamiliar terms.

Confusing as it might be in the small details, the overall story of saving the world, meeting companions and finding out who you are kept me engaged all the way through — I just wish Avowed didn't get so caught up in the little details that hardly matter and only add to player confusion.

A true role-playing experience

Perhaps my favorite thing about Avowed is the way they balanced item and XP scarcity. Getting an upgrade actually feels exciting every single time one comes along. Each new skill upgrade for your character feels like it will open up new combat opportunities.

Avowed has plenty of traditional RPG dialog and choices that feel heavy and important (albeit a little too packed with information in some cases). You'll get dialog options based on your character's skills (for example, if you have enough perception, you'll be able to say things you might not otherwise).

These dialog options are always fun because they make you feel like you're getting something other players aren't (though you'll miss out on plenty of options, too, based on your chosen character skills).

If you're the kind of player who likes to sink their teeth into a world, Avowed is the RPG for you. While it can be a little heavy on the lore in some places, that's only a negative if you like to keep things moving. For those who like it dense, Avowed brings the story and lore through the main dialog and with plenty of journal entries about different characters and important entities in the world.

Don't take it easy on me

If there's one thing I love, it's a difficult RPG. Too often, role-playing games get so hung up on the story and characters that it feels like you're barely playing a game. That's not the case in Avowed.

Even with Normal difficulty, you will die plenty of times. If you decide to push into a zone before you're ready, enemies will destroy you. Even if you're adequately leveled with decent loot, you'll still get overwhelmed by large groups who will take you down if you're not using your skills intelligently.

I love a challenging RPG because you get to feel powerful once you level up and improve your gear. With Avowed, you get to live that power fantasy. When your weapons jump from Fine to Superb, enemies that took 15 hits suddenly die in two or three. You feel like you really accomplished something by upgrading your weapon and armor.

Sure, I love a game like Diablo IV, where loot pours from the sky, but the scarcity of item improvements in Avowed makes every upgrade feel memorable and exciting. It won't be for everyone — some younger gamers who aren't used to old-school RPGs and their stinginess might not love it, but it's perfect for me, frustrating as it might be when you feel under-leveled.

Skill is essential in Avowed, as is decision-making. Knowing when to move aggressively on an enemy versus staying back and fighting strategically is just as crucial as your twitch reflexes for parrying a devastating attack.

Performance prefered

When I first launched Avowed, the gameplay felt slow and clunky.

It turns out that it defaults to the higher-resolution graphics mode instead of performance. Once I switched to performance mode, everything immediately felt better. It also looked better, with a more consistent and faster framerate.

I can't recommend switching to performance mode enough. You can try balanced if you want, but for a game with intense and challenging combat like Avowed, having the extra framerate seems critical to me and probably should be the default setting.

Even in performance mode, I did see a few instances of the game dragging to almost unplayably low framerates. This mainly happened during scenes of intense combat near water. It only happened three or four times during my playthrough and made the already tricky combat even more challenging.

Avowed review: Verdict

Avowed isn't a perfect game, but the flaws aren't enough to prevent it from being great. It's a relatively deep RPG with interesting and engaging combat, a profound (albeit confusing) story and everything else you expect from an Obsidian Entertainment RPG.

If you've played these types of RPGs and not liked them, there's probably nothing about Avowed that'll convince you otherwise. But if you know you like an open-world RPG with an Obsidian twist, Avowed is an essential experience.