Immortals of Aveum Review (Dexascore)
So the game itself is fun. The story and writing are good. It's very much comic book fare but the performances sell it well despite the jokey and flippant nature of the writing. I've played about 2 hours so far and am liking what it's offering. The gameplay is a lot of fun and feels good to play with a controller.
Now for the bad. For all the hype about the graphics and UE5. I don't get why this game needs the horsepower it does to run smoothly. I could be wrong but the graphics don't look like the the generational leap the developers want you to think they are. Maybe it's the art assets. maybe it's because the game started on UE4 and was ported to UE5 but I don't feel like it looks better than something like God of War. Sure the particle effects are pretty and more extensive than any game ever, the character models have a lot of detail, but surely that can't be the only reason for this performance hit. It's also not even as if the low settings look better. If you set the game to low it devolves into a 360 game. If something like God of War Ragnarok can look as good as this game and run on a PS4, I don't see why this game can't as well. I can see that it's a step ahead but it doesn't wow me the way it should. The most disappointing part of the graphics so far is rubble. Broken parts of the environment just looks like universal art assets rather than tailor made level design. Also falling rubble in cut scenes and events disappear from the environment after falling. Maybe it's because my settings are on high rather than ultra which in itself sounds like the stupidest statement one could make regarding a games graphics but actually might apply in this case.
I've running on a Ryzen 7 5800x with a 3080ti at 4K. Performance is ok, not spectacular. Most everything is high with a few settings at ultra. It mostly sticks to 60 with dips into the 50s often. Gsync helps but not always.
Overall, is the game good? Yes, definitely, I can tell a lot of work went into it and it's fun. Is it a technical showcase? Definitely, you can tell from how people are talking about it. Is it graphically impressive? Meh. It looks very pretty but not for the requirements it's asking for. I feel like it could have been done without relying on UE5 with a few concessions without losing too much in the graphics department but again I'm not an expert on game development.
Also for some reason I can't run this game full screen and forced to run it borderless. Doesn't make a difference but hopefully it's fixed in the future.
So update. The game now runs full screen without issue but for some reason has a habit of changing my saved settings by itself for no reason when you start the game. It also needs to restart each time you change a some of the settings which is annoying. Also I can't scroll down the graphics options with a controller to change them anymore, I have to use my mouse.
After playing a little more I've found that the performance varies wildly from 30-60 during heavy battles. It stays at 50-60 most of the time when fighting normal enemies but sometimes chugs into the 30s in the boss battles especially during the fight with the dragon. This forced me to change my resolution from 4K to 1440p. Now performance is stable and above 60 fps 95 percent of the time and even reached 120 fps in the trials. I still don't see what's causing it to need that much horsepower. The graphics while pretty are nowhere near what I would consider needing a 4090 to run at 4K.
Get it if you have a 30 or 40 series card. If you have a 20 series or below I'd look up some gameplay videos on youtube for your card and see how they handle it. For the 1060 and such, the low graphics settings doesn't make it worth playing.