Getting lost in The Living Lands isn't hard. The beautiful landscape and setting of the game give you some awe-inspiring views throughout the wonderfully crafted world built by Obsidian. With many hidden areas and random trails to follow, Avowed does a great job of letting the player get lost in its environment—but the overall gameplay may leave some players wanting more.

Avowed may feature some of the most colorful and prettiest landscapes of 2025. The handcrafted world offers a ton for players to explore. From scattered puzzles to hidden chests, you’ll often find yourself wandering off the main path in search of better gear and loot.

However, that’s not always a good thing. There were times when the game felt more like Garbage Collector Simulator 2025. While exploration is encouraged and often rewarded, the sheer amount of clutter—random items that fill your inventory and rarely get used—can be overwhelming. Too often, I found myself bogged down with loot that ended up being vendor trash or sat in my inventory for the entire game.

Overall, I found the game good, but not great.

Rewarding Gameplay

(image provided by RAWG.io)

There’s no shortage of options when it comes to how you want to play Avowed. From swinging swords and casting elemental magic to upgrading gear and scrapping old weapons for parts, the game gives you a healthy mix of action and progression systems. Combat offers a variety of approaches—whether you want to burn enemies to ash or freeze them in place and shatter them. Using spells like ice to freeze water or block gates isn’t just cool—it’s meaningful in how it integrates with exploration and puzzle solving.

The game also leans heavily into player choice, giving you impactful decisions that ripple throughout the story, whether it’s in companion arcs or faction dynamics. But while the systems are deep, they don’t always stay engaging. Despite the wide toolset, battles start to blur together the longer you play. The lack of enemy variety and repeated combat patterns mean you’ll eventually feel like you're doing the same fights over and over again.

Crafting and upgrading gear helps extend the loop, and being able to dismantle unused loot into useful materials adds some purpose to the otherwise bloated inventory. Still, even with these systems in place, the core gameplay can feel repetitive if you’re not actively switching up your playstyle.

Beautiful World Dragged Down by Repetitiveness

(image provided by RAWG.io)

As already mentioned, the world of Eora is a beautifully hand-crafted world that has a ton of wonderful set pieces to get lost in. There are a few different zones in the world to explore and navigate, while dealing with the same, repetitive enemy type throughout the entirety of the game. While there are some different enemies scattered through each zone, there isn’t enough variety in the types of enemies you will fight.

On the matter of repetitiveness, there is the same feeling throughout each major zone as well: arrive in the zone, meet an important character, major conflict, be forced to leave the zone.

The same structure of events seemed to be a theme that overshadowed the wonderful land and storytelling that could have taken place. Instead, we got a dull and predictable story that will leave you wanting more.

Lackluster and Unrewarding Story

The story of Avowed starts off at a sluggish, but promising pace. I was intrigued by the plentiful narrative choices that you are offered, all seemingly having a different effect on the outcome of the overall story.

You meet a variety of companions to help you along your way, each with their own personal quest that helps you uncover their story and motivations. Each choice—whether in their personal arcs or in quest lines throughout the game—leaves you with a wide range of decisions—some of which will come back to you as you continue to progress through the main quest line.

But... the narrative did not really sink its teeth in and hold on throughout. With a promising start, I was expecting more as I progressed through the game. But more and more, I felt the story became predictable and overall uninteresting—which I found surprising, given Obsidian’s past work.

Cluttered UI

Navigating the menus and screens in Avowed often felt more like battling the UI than the enemies themselves. Everything feels just a bit too overloaded—menus packed with tabs, windows layered on top of windows, and more information than is ever needed at one time. Trying to manage your gear, access quests, or simply sort through inventory often left me clicking around more than I should have.

It’s not that the mechanics are overly complicated—they’re not. It’s the way they’re presented that makes everything feel more difficult than it needs to be. There’s a clear lack of simplicity in the UI that ends up dragging down the pacing, especially when you’re knee-deep in item management or just trying to track a quest.

Final Thoughts

Avowed is one of those games that constantly flirts with greatness but never quite commits. Its world is undeniably beautiful, filled with scenic vistas, winding paths, and secret corners that reward the curious. The atmosphere and world-building show Obsidian’s craftsmanship, and there are moments—brief though they may be—when it all clicks into place: a story beat lands, a puzzle surprises you, or a new area takes your breath away.

But those moments are often interrupted by repetition, clutter, or systems that don’t fully live up to their promise. The narrative, which starts strong, loses its grip as the hours go on. The gameplay, while layered with options, slowly becomes predictable. The result is a game that’s easy to admire but harder to love all the way through.

If you're a fan of Obsidian's past work or just want to immerse yourself in a gorgeous fantasy world, there’s enough here to warrant a playthrough. But if you're looking for a must-play RPG that sticks with you long after the credits roll, Avowed might leave you feeling like something's missing.

Score: 7.5 / 10