#hopefully this gives people who are sorta on the fence a clearer picture

[rellanas]

okay initial "i've played 15hrs of avowed's advanced access" thoughts. i'll try to not get into the details of the game itself, but these are my impressions of the system, how the game feels to play, etc.

(as a note: i picked up the advanced access version because i'm about to come back to a hell period at work and i wanted to get some solid playtime in before a/l.)

technical state wise, it's been running pretty smoothly for me so far - no stuttering etc. it has the same thing as veilguard where you go through a period of compiling the shaders every time you boot up the game. i've had a couple of instances where i've had to force quit the game due to infinite loading screens with fast travelling or flat out not getting to fast travel even though i should be able to. other than that, it's fine.

i don't know how many regions there are, but i hit the second today and i definitely had a moment of "oh god is each region going to be bigger than the last?"

levelling up feels kinda slow, and i haven't come across a huge amount of side quests. i've had your classic open world repeated quests (bounties, collectibles etc) but in terms of bona fide sidequests, i felt like i didn't run into many. it could also be i've just not explored the first area enough to find some of them? idk. however the actual sidequests so far have been okay, one of them i did really enjoy.

saying that about collectibles: there's actually not that many from what i've seen so far - 6 per region to make something up that actually gives gameplay benefits. makes it worth it, imo.

the world is pretty gorgeous, i'll give them that. the first area is really lush. exploration feels good, the parkour is nice.

for the love of eothas can i please have some enemy variety. i've pretty much only fought xaurips, spiders, bears, bandits, sporelings and only a couple of shadows/phantoms here and there. i'm getting a little fatigued from it, particularly the xaurips.

companions: i've run into all four of them but so far i've only got two officially. two to a party. can't speak on the second pair yet as for how i feel about them, though initial impressions are good. the first companion you get i like and i can see him being very popular, the second one i'm kinda ambivalent about.

backgrounds: so i can't speak for all backgrounds, but i've been really loving the background i picked (court augur.) it's been a lot of fun and really helps ground the envoy in who they were before being sent to the living lands.

combat: i've tried each of the classes - you can respec whenever you want and mix and match where you want. fighter/melee enjoyers, we kinda lost - it doesn't feel that deep or interesting compared to wizards or rangers. there's some story related passives that are really nice though.

as someone who hasn't played deadfire because the game refuses to Stop Crashing every time i've played it, i didn't really feel lost about the events of deadfire that have cropped up.

main story so far has been kinda what i expected but i'm enjoying it so far.