Have we ever told you how much we love The Outer Worlds? There was a little pushback when it launched; some folk thought it was too short, too lightweight and wishy-washy, but we loved everything about it.

Obsidian seemed to actively decide to remove itself from what felt like bit of a race circa 2019, to make the most pointlessly enormous open world in the biz. It was also around this time that we (or this writer at least), had sort of given up on spending hundreds of hours collecting everything across gigantic, and oftentimes boring, video-game expanses. Pretty - and historically accurate - expanses, for sure, but also rather empty and tedious.

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In comparison, The Outer Worlds felt immediate and exciting for its smaller world and tight running time. The companion characters are amongst our favourites of all time (Parvati, we miss u), and the whole thing felt like a challenge that was actually surmountable, highly replayable, and well worth returning to.

Avowed follows in much the same footprints, thankfully. The Eora presented here is split into bespoke regions, each one relatively small in comparison to most modern offerings (still quite big, then), and it's a downsizing that's a fair trade-off for locations that're packed to bursting point with smartly designed environs housing all the secrets, caves and off-kilter NPC conversations you could hope for. There's no wandering around bored in this game, we can't think of a single moment where we weren't doing something that felt somewhat important, and when you don't even get a horse to ride around quickly on... that takes some doing.

Kicking off in Dawnshore, Avowed presents the story of yet another Chosen One protagonist, which as much as we're sort of bored with the conceit, it does just allow us to get on with accepting that everyone speaks to us for some reason. This time you've got a god's voice in your head, and that voice wants you to go do a bunch of stuff and kill a bunch of people in order to free it from its otherworldly prison. Should you trust the voice? Should you follow its commands and do its bidding, or should you strike out against it and believe in what you can see with your own eyes?

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A very short summary, but that's the spoiler-free gist of proceedings. Having now completed one run of the campaign (clocking in at around 50 hours with a smattering of side quests), we can say that the story works well enough to serve what is primarily an action-centric experience. And this faint praise will be the first stumbling block for some, as the narrative here is quite surprisingly straightforward and fairly light overall.

There's nothing here we haven't seen before in a fantasy drama of this kind, essentially, and although Pillars fans will be made happier with a ton of lore presented throughout the world, and some amazing representations of locations, there's undoubtedly gonna be some ruffled feathers with just how very light the actual conversational and choice side of things is. Your four party companions, too, although likeable enough, never really raise the bar in any striking way, remaining loyal, doing their bit in battle and sharing the odd joke along the way. Would we need to look up their names if we were to try to put them down here right now? Yes, yes we would for one or two. And that tells you all you need to know. Parvati et al, they are not, as this is just not really that sort of thing.

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Avowed, you see, is chiefly about getting down and dirty with the enemy in combat that absolutely sings, if you dig its vibe. We played around 90% of the game in the 1st person view, although the 3rd person will get a run for our second character build, and it's just a delightful system to engage with. Again, incredibly light in what it does - there's no synergies of team abilities or deep strategy to think on - it just feels really good, it's fast, it's flashy and moreish. It makes us think of words like "spunky". Avowed is very spunky.

A lack of strategy doesn't equal a lack of fun, either, as the dual-wielding, quick-switching, double-loadout gimmick at the heart of the fighting has a surprising amount of variety to it. This variety melds with skill trees that are open to breezy experimentation, allowing you to quickly build and rebuild, creating powerful wizards who're also a dab hand with a spear, shadow-master stealth assassins, and everything in-between.

Swapping between weapon loadouts is quick - and can be made quicker as you progress - allowing you access to four slots where you can place swords, spears, shields, grimoires, wands, axes and so on in any combo you like. Mix and match, see what works best for you and then build out your trees to max that playstyle. By the end of our first run we could waltz through entire areas without being seen, one-hit kill lesser foes from range and rain down powerful fire spells. You don't even have to stick to one type of magic, as the grimoire system allows you to seek out and utilise all-manner of arcane arts just by equipping any grimoire you find and getting stuck in. Hooray.

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Speaking of finding stuff, by the way, the loot in this game is just kinda great. It's unfussy, fancy-looking gear, all big fiery swords, important looking shields and exquisite arquebus rifles that can pop a plague-infected bear's head like a melon from range. We stuck to light outfits, bows, grimoires and guns, but there are tons of spears, axes, heavy armour and so on. In fact, with regards to both combat and loot, the only problem that we personally had, was that grenades feel like an afterthought for the most part in comparison to the devastation wrought by a simple spell.

Companions, too, have their own unlockable and upgradeable skills that they'll utilise automatically, and these can be directed by you using LB, pausing proceedings to pick exact skills and then the enemies to use them on. Skills work on cooldown timers, and this makes up the little real strategy meat that's here. This isn't the sort of pause screen you'll spend aeons tinkering in, or working out killer synergies of elemental damage through. It's not really that kinda gig, mate.

The flashy, colourful and fast-paced action on offer is the beating heart of Avowed, for better or worse, then, and the (relatively) bite-sized nature of the regions, alongside that breezy narrative only serve to make the whole thing much more replayable, which kinda feels like the point. As the story progresses there are still "big" choices to be made, various endings to see, and you'll no doubt already know that each class has its own selection of responses to individual scenarios, so there's still some of that DNA in there - but as far as the main campaign goes, most of this stuff feels a little shoe-horned into the ending, without spoiling anything.

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This is an issue that's resolved somewhat by indulging in all of the lovely side quests and bounty missions, slowing things down, exploring and meeting NPCs who flesh out the fun and give you much more to think on between the fisticuffs. It also helps that Obsidian has very obviously went to town in its environmental design efforts. The four main regions that you visit across the campaign (with a bunch of other smaller areas thrown in for good measure) are uniformly excellent, with just enough freedom and scale to indulge your parkour-fuelled exploration desires. Did we mention that the traversal in this game is surprisingly great? You can climb a surprising amount of stuff, dive off huge heights into water and really put yourself about some to find all the hidden caves and enemy lairs that await.

It's in these moments, and in that spunky combat, that Avowed sings most sweetly. However, of course, if you came here looking for depth to the narrative to match Pillars proper, you're gonna be disappointed. End of. It's an issue that can't be avoided, but it's also one that the game never intended to address in the first place. Think of this more as an action-accompaniment to those things, and you're gonna have a much better time with it out of the gate.

We do have a few other issues which are less easy to forgive; namely two bugs during our playthrough involving Yatzli's special ability that hindered our progress for quite some time and required restarting a dungeon from scratch on both occasions. There's also some notable FPS stutter in the game's quality mode during a few big encounters (we reviewed the game on Xbox Series X), so be aware of that if you are rocking graphics over framerate. In performance mode the drop in visuals, while definitely noticeable, is more than worth it for what feels mostly like a rock solid and very fluid 60FPS. Mostly. It also still looks fab.

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Slightly more nit-picky, we also found, for our tastes, that the difficulty, even on hard mode, was fairly forgiving. Action veterans may want to consider this going in, as playing on normal (or the easy and story modes) definitely enables you to hit auto-pilot, and this takes a lot of the edge off combat which really comes alive when you're up against it.

So, in the end, Avowed arrives in pretty great shape overall, and presents a very moreish, highly replayable campaign that we will 100% be running multiple times as various classes over the coming months. Which really speaks to the fun we've had with this one. With more time on our hands we'd likely have spent double the amount of time just exploring every nook and cranny here, which is all the recommendation you could ask for, really. Just don't expect Pillars of Eternity. Or flippin' Skyrim. Have you not played enough Skyrim by now?

Conclusion

Avowed is a fantastic action-RPG that focuses on its combat and exploration first and foremost, which you'll either love the sound of, or not so much. Yes, Pillars fans looking for the sort of depth that comes with that series will need to adjust expectations accordingly, as this is a breezy, spunky, fight-fuelled affair that's more about creating cool loadouts and finding treasure than it is falling in love with an NPC or spending ten hours in your inventory at a time. Come for the fast-paced fights, colourful environs and excellent exploration, and you'll have a great time.