Immortals of Aveum Review (MikeWazowski)
I liked Immortals of Aveum, it was a short but fun experience. Theres just so many things that make it hard to recommend this game at least not at it's initial asking price of $60.
TLDR: Wait for a sale, it's a game worth playing, just not at it's current price tag.
Visuals and the elephant in the room
Talking about the elephant in the room first, the system requirements, I understand UE5 bringing nanite & lumen and newer technologies to the table make things more resource expensive, games do look amazing and this game is no exception the game is beautiful, but I have a hard time justifying the visuals, I just recently played Cyberpunk 2077 pre Phantom Liberty and that game looks far better than this one & that's a 3 year old game. Trying to think why that is, I can't put my finger on it, it could be just a better art direction, Immortals has this bland look, I get it, it's a world of magic with stone buildings, but all the scenery and maps just all blends together, no single place I thought felt memorable, or stood out particularly.
Anyways, I think alienating a huge part of your audience with these specs & chasing these new UE5 features was a mistake.
Performance & Bugs
Assuming you meet the requirements, performance Is actually pretty great, if you actually meet the requirements the game runs smoothly and flawlessly, no bugs whatsoever, frame generation is actually a godsent if you have the feature available, I will admit thought, this game gets carried heavily by upscaling and frame generation, running this natively you get decent fps but I see no reason to just not use these features available to you already.
Sound & Music
It was serviceable, It's another thing that I feel didn't stand out at all, the music felt generic, the main theme I liked and that's about it, battle music & ambience music felt super generic, the sound of guns in particular, well, they're not guns, finger guns? whatever, they lacked so much in the sound department, there's this satisfying oomph that weapons should have, that just wasn't there.
The voice acting was alright, the main cast did their job well, nothing to complain, but nothing to praise either.
Combat
Combat was super fun, this is were the game shines, I loved the combat, bindings are a little weird imo, I rebound almost everything except the shoot button. When you get into the flow of things It's a fun ride, matching the color of your spells to your enemy color sounds super simple, but it still keeps things dynamic and interesting.
Story & World Building
This one is complicated, I've seen other people compare this to a Marvel movie, I gotta say, I think it's a spot on comparison, the banter gets cringey, but i didn't mind it, the acting was pretty decent & I thought the story was decent enough, it kept me interested, but honestly it wasn't anything special.
Now the lore & worldbuilding, holy shit it's incredible, it's such an interesting world, the lore of cities, the history of magi, the origin of magic, it's wonderful, I love that shit in games, there's a lot of depth to it.
Conclusion
It saddens me this game didn't get a higher traction, but I understand why it didn't, it also launched in between some really heavy hitter games, I'm sure a ton of people aren't done with Baldur's Gate 3 yet, and Starfield is just around the corner, people have other interests in their sights.
This game launching at the beginning of the year would've seen a better reception, specially with all the buggy shit coming out.
I genuinely hope Ascendant Studios get the chance to make more games, they're in the right track, and for a first game out of a studio it's a pretty good one, just not $60 good.