I feel for Avowed. It’s a bit like an athlete that goes to an Olympics and makes it to a final but doesn’t place. It’s a great achievement, a success by many people’s standards, but history doesn’t care.
And Avowed seemed to be a success when it came out a year ago. It had a bigger moment than I expected it to, than many people expected it to, because there were doubts about Obsidian’s fantasy game before it arrived. But when it got here and people played it, we all seemed pleasantly surprised. I wrote almost exactly that in my Avowed review: “It’s one of this year’s most pleasant surprises,” I said. Yet here we are a year on, as the PlayStation 5 version arrives, and we seem to be asking ourselves the same thing: is Avowed worth our time?
I get it. Last year was tough for a role-playing game because there was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it bewitched everyone and gobbled up all the awards. It vacuumed the air out of the room. And even if there wasn’t Clair Obscur, there was Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, another big hitter, and there was Oblivion: Remastered and Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. There was a lot in or around that RPG space. Even Obsidian, developer of Avowed, released another RPG in The Outer Worlds 2 – there’s nothing like tangentially competing with yourself. It meant that 2025 was so busy that when it came time to reflect upon it, Avowed was overlooked – it only just squeaked into our ‘best games of 2025’ list.
It’s a shame because we know the game is good, and it’s unfair that Avowed, despite success, seems destined for life as an underdog. Though in another way, it helps reframe Avowed in what I think is a more appealing way, because I believe it’s a nice example of a modern double-A game – bigger than most, sure, but also with an intentionally limited scope compared to your mega-blockbusters. Avowed isn’t quite at the top-end and nor is it anywhere near the bottom. If I’m being really unkind, I’d say it was dated to look at and stiff in animation. But it doesn’t matter in a double-A game, because what a double-A game lacks in looks, it usually makes up for in character.
This isn’t meant as an insult Avowed in any way. There are plenty of moments where the game is capable of wowing with beauty, particularly environmentally, as you explore its fantasy land that’s been seemingly doused in psychedelic-laced Miracle Grow. Exuberantly coloured plants of colossal proportion fight for control of the light, overlapping each other while delightfully framing your view. It’s a trippy kind of paradise, and it’s a refreshing sight in a marketplace clogged by melancholic grimdark fantasy. And extend that thought a little bit and you get at the game’s character itself.
This is a fantasy role-playing game that’s admirably clear-headed about what it is. Avowed is escapism and adventure. It is romping and clambering around a paradisiacal island while thumping hordes of baddies and leaping off high ledges into small pools (shout-out to whichever developer hand placed these). The game isn’t complicated. There’s no convoluted social game to play, very little tactical mastery to employ, and little to slow you down or get in your way. It’s a game about doing. There’s no genre subversion, no po-faced complex meaning between the lines, no heavy emotional burden. Avowed is a game about the simple pleasures of play.
That doesn’t mean it’s dumb – please don’t get that impression. Avowed might not have the dating game that’s in, say, Baldur’s Gate 3, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow close to companions, or that they don’t have deep and meaningful storylines. Kai in particular, the fish-faced fellow from the promo images, has a really touching story to tell, and I thought Yatzli, the small furry lady, was hilarious. There’s humour here, a lot of it. And while there’s no heavy tactical side to the game, there is plenty of theorycrafting in how you mix and match weapons and abilities in freeform combat and customisation. And the realisation of combat, the physicality of it, is tremendous. There’s heft and wallop, and when you start combining freezing magic with hammer blows, say, systems converge in wonderfully destructive ways.
Avowed is a game preoccupied with fun, I think, and with play, perhaps as a game should be. Even exploring the game’s world, which is broken into a handful of regions, there’s a sense you’re exploring purposefully designed playgrounds which are intentionally populated with climbing frames and hidey holes masking subterranean worlds – or eccentric NPCs waiting to regale you with nonsensery. You can almost feel the designer’s eyes on you wherever you go, and I enjoy that, I find it reassuring. Adventure seems to be everywhere.
This is a long way of saying don’t overlook Avowed again – it deserves more than that, and yes it is absolutely worth your time. And a year has treated the game well. There are new abilities to play with, new races to play as, a new weapon type, a new game plus option, a photo mode, and myriad tweaks and fixes. It’s the sort of stuff I’m sore about not being in the game when I played it – not that it will make a fundamental difference, but still, these are the grace notes and flourishes and expanded options I appreciate. In short, Avowed is better than it once was, and it was already better than I think most people give it credit for.
Look, February is a grim month where I live, cold and miserable and dreary, and that’s exactly what Avowed is not. This is a much needed dose of gaming sunshine. It’s only a shame there aren’t more games like it.