Avadon
When I was a kid, there were two things that excited me, when I finally put my Amiga to rest and got a PC. One was all the Doom clone games, the other was the "Old style" PC roleplaying games, like Baldur's Gate and those.
Avadon is straight up that alley. It's a top down roleplaying game, you control a party of characters with some of their motivations and ideas, combat is turn based and rather tactical, there's a large world to explore, tons of little quests to do, and miles of well written descriptions and dialogue. What's not to love?
To be honest, reviewing this sort of game is almost pointless: You already know if you will like this or not.
Coming from a very prolific indie developer, the focus has been on story and character, rather than snazzy graphics. Don't get me wrong, it looks nice, but it looks nice in the way that the Baldurs Gate or Planescape games looked nice. You aren't getting AAA looks here. No voice acting either, just in case you were wondering.
What you do get though is probably some of the closest to an actual roleplaying experience you'll get these days. The companions you find all have their own stories, and will get you into trouble as you try to help them out. There's plenty of moral choices to be made, and they are actually interesting. I had decided on my first play that I would play a "hardliner", unfailingly loyal to the cause and his superiors.
Then I had an encounter where that would have meant taking on a dragon and almost certain death. Suddenly the game was reminding me that life is complex and there's no expectation that you'll win, just because you're the "hero". Good stuff, and without a single "alignment" or "morality" point score being tracked anywhere.
The combats are turn based, which is completely fine by me. There's a wide range of powers to use, though I found that many of the powers didn't seem all that effective to me. I mostly ended up using the same few powers repeatedly. That didn't stop the battles from playing out in interesting ways, but it would have been nice to get a little more variety.
There IS a lot of customization in the ways of equipment, skill choices etc, so the fact that the companions are predetermined won't bother you too much. It did irritate me a bit that when there is only 4 classes. With one companion in each class, this means you will be doubling up on one of the classes, which seems slightly awkward.
Graphics:
Clear, concise and characterful. I love this "late 90s" style of RPG graphics, but your mileage may vary.
Sound:
Ambient music and very simple sound effects. I was a little underwhelmed here.
Controls:
Everything is very clear, the interface is easy to work with, and you're rarely fumbling to figure something out.
Gameplay:
There's a lot of it here, and it all feels so "alive". It does take a little to get going. The opening quest isn't terribly interesting and I almost put the game down, putting it down as "yet another cave vermin extermination quest". Please don't do that. Keep playing and I doubt you'll regret it.
I may be biased, since I love this style of game, but this game earns an easy 89%. A bit more work on the sound, and it'd easily go into a low 90.
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