two steps back(avadon review)

[devilkingx]

before anyone wonders this is a repost of a long dead and locked thread i made a long long time ago in this very forum, after playing avadon still havent finished it though... although soon i'll give it another chance and hope it doesnt suck this time around, so without further adue my review

 

(WARNING: gratuitous amounts of funny below, you have been warned)

 

TL;DR at the bottom folks!

 

this game in a way is much worse than jeffs other games

 

in this completely objective review i shall compare avadon to geneforge because ive played that extensively but i never could get into avernum because of mechanics i didnt like

 

things i liked(so that people dont think that i 100% hate the game, its only 99.98%)

 

- improved graphics geneforge 5/avernum 6 quality or maybe even above i like them

 

- graphics that represent the game, when they said that red dragon wasnt that big they meant that he wasnt that big unlike how in geneforge 1 they say that one drayk you meet was like 20 feet long yet the sprite was barely bigger than the PC this goes for later ones too

 

- SKILL TREES! because it makes no sense to cast spell of ultimate doom III without learning spell of regular doom I first

 

- actual story progression, in every geneforge game except 3(which sucked in most other regards but not this one) there was little story progression the game played more like a sandbox with stats(which was still awesomesauce extraordinaire) enter G3 ruining almost everything great about the series but ateast it actually bothered to imply you were doing something other than exploring until you stumble upon something you care about

 

- demons, they're awesome but they werent in any geneforge but G2 and then they were mysteriously removed, probably to quell the "magic and demons in video games is the equivalent of devil worshiping and satanism in real life" crowd but whatever the reason its nice to see them back in the series, they are mythology staples

 

- different cultures and customs and such, it made no sense in geneforge how all of terrestria was basically the same i mean i know the shapers conquered the place, but most COUNTRIES are all ruled by their government but kansas looks different from florida which is a start contrast to chicago which pails in comparison to new york etc. its nice to see that the many lands of avadon atleast acted different

 

- leveling chekhov's gunman(if you dont know, things that are useless upon acquiring but become useful later are refered to by TV tropes as chekov's for some reason EX: chekhov's skill, chekhov's gun, etc.) avadon avoids the final fantasy style "this character is useless as hell now but when you inevitably leave them low level and weak because of not using them you'll be screwed when we force you later" problem by leveling those you do not use for you

 

- decent leveling scaling, leveling in geneforge becomes near impossible because at some point not even the strongest of the strong monsters can give you enough EXP to level reliably unless you run around "dbugkill"ing entire areas for EXP grinding purposes, i remember getting 40 EXP for killing an unbound in G5, one of the hardest beasts of teh game and it cant even give decent EXP like 400 or something? but in this game leveling is actually possible without heavy grinding or gaining a free level 2 secs from the end of the game because of what you do with the geneforge

 

- junk bag, the junk bag alone has to be the single greatest thing in this game, FIANLLY! no more clogging all my glorious inventory space with useless crap i'll never bother to use

 

 

and now for the incredibly large amount of bad

 

- SKILL TREEES!!!, I HATE THE SKILL TREES OF THIS GAME SOOOO MUCH!!! every damn skill worked like this, to get skill C you need to raise A and B BUT YOU CAN ONLY RAISE C TO THE LEVEL OF A OR B(whichever is lowest), its like saying you need to know how to grill sasuges and fry burgers to brew beer or that you need to master shotokan karate and aikido to learn boxing

 

- geneforge 3's avadon's tedious boat system teleporters, why do i need to run back to goldcrag then touch the pylon then run across avadon then touch another pylon to go to khemeria? thats so tedious, in G4-5 you just go to a map and run across it then you can fast travel the rest of your journey as long as you've been there before. but i guess it isnt nearly as bad as

 

- characters and plot, why is it that all the hands but you are either dead or twiddling their thumbs until your beckoned call for a mission? why cant your 4 allies take you out on missions? why do you always have to go? why is it that convieniantly all other hands are either busy, dead or incompetent? the only one that makes sense is the dragon one because he asks for you by name because of your competence, and whats with that leader guy of khemeria? why is he not the least bit concerned that his most trusted wizzard was really an evil psycho mastermind that almost got him and the rest of khemeria screwed by avadon? and whats with the personal quests? what is this dragon age? if ima have to go risk my ass because nathalie is retarded and wants to get herself killed by a big scary dragon then i should atleast be able to bang romance her

 

- SKILLS, every last one of them sucks, the CD's are a million and 1 turns long without that cheat code, and all of the skills for the blademaster are "hit really hard and have a status effect" or the other type of skill he shares with everybody else "hit real soft but be of actual use" beserker leap and that thing the ninja guy has that attacks everything around him in a circle would be useful if not for the crappy damage

 

- SCARABS the only useful one i found in my travels was the one that allowed for teleporting, too bad that this isnt X-men legends 2 where when you get a skill you can actually use it to its logic limits(there are places you can only go by teleporting, and some places that require either teleporting or flying) teleporting was almost useless because you could only go places you could walk(making it useless outside of battle) and it was useless in battle unless you had more than 7/8 AP's worth of walking space directly in front of you and then it gets stricken with a like 15 turn cooldown

 

- the big kahuna LINEARITY the game was so linear its not even funny, you cant go anywhere unless someone explicitly tells you somewhere, because your character apparantly isnt intelligent enough to explore places and go somewhere himself, it really killed exploration for me, because i didnt feel like going back(TEDIOUSLY! as mentioned above)

 

- yet somehow i still didnt know what to do, i remember that mission where you need to make the 2 kingdoms get along and clear out the contested woods, holkanda and that other place nathalie is from i think, anyway you've gotta clear out the woods with 4 soldiers and the kings right hand dude, they bicker like 5 year olds(reminded me of me when i was younger, and evidently reminded me of me now) you go down and the soldiers get themselves owned by the the huge ass dragon, when you kill them all you'd expect something to happen right? something saying "quest completed" or some kind of story progression or something right? wrong, the only way you know that your done is you eventually thinking that you should leave and go talk to that other guy, who ran off(the coward) then you must take it upon yourself to check with that king if your done, AND THEN YOUR DONE you think they could've had a character go "we're done here lets go back?" or maybe i dont know put "quest complete" in the quest log, OR SOMETHING!?!?

 

- whats with the lack of living tools lockpicks, in geneforge 1 there were WAAAAAY too many living tools there were just so damn many that i had to frequently sell some by the end of the game to keep from being encumbered constantly, i had to sell over 60 living tools in that game, but maybe thats because i screwed up and my guardian had like 15 or 17 mechanics and 15 or 17 leadership, BUT I RATHER THAT THAN NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND ANY!!! what the hell? why were there so little lockpicks or maybe they were just ultra hard to find, regardless you'd need a wizard(nathalie) and a ninja(that awesome guy who's clan got decimated) in your party to maximize your efficiency, even with the guide i had a whole lot of trouble finding any lockpicks in this game, probably because they look like a generic useless item like a paperclip rather than the quite unique purple hands that i found in living tools

 

- why wasnt the chat log on by default? seriously, i turned it on by accident, it should've been on, the only downside is the chatlog spam if you do something wrong repeatedly but even that is worth dealing with for the benefits

 

in the end avadon is a terrible game with good/decent trends/concepts mixed in with crappy tinkering of great mechanics, i know that this isnt geneforge and so he had to change things, mechanics, names, concepts, etc. but why was/were most if not all changes for the worse?

 

3/10 5 or 6/10 its possibly the worst spidereweb game(making it worse than G3, making it a acheivement, no a bad achievement, like a downcheivement) that ive played(which means excluding all of them except the geneforge series, because i didnt even get past the tutorial in avernum because the graphics of the first 3, and UI turned me off and then the movement graphics of all 7 of them)

 

TL;DR avadon is a terrible game with some good stuff, but in 99% of ways a step down from geneforge and presumably a step down from avernum 3/10 5 or 6/10

[Zummi]

what is this i dont even

[Death Knight]

I cant lie, avadon was initially one of my hated spiderweb games, but that was only because like you, it didnt live up to geneforge games. However, once i realized that it was really like a bioware game, i came to like it for what it is. Personally, i find avadon to be more to my liking than avernum 1-6. Avernum while given more choices and nonlinear gameplay, is essentially like icewind dale-4 party members that dont talk, converse, no personalities, just adventurers that with no banter.

[Men are from Slars]

I'm confused. Why are you reposting this review? Did you add something to it?

[devilkingx]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

I'm confused. Why are you reposting this review? Did you add something to it?

well it is SLIGHTLY different but no, im reposting it because i wanted more people to see it, because it seems im the only person who actually dislikes avadon, so i want to try and get some of the horrid changes fixed for avadon 2

[Alorael at Large]

Some of these are just baffling. There are a lot of very powerful scarabs, and there are enough skills that you can use them almost every turn if you want to burn through vitality.

 

—Alorael, who still finds this painful to read. Tip: you get a better audience if your writing involves capitalization and punctuation.

[Men are from Slars]

Why are you surprised that an Avadon forum is populated mostly by people who like Avadon? People who don't like Avadon are not likely to hang around here.

 

Anyway, people took you seriously the first time and had quite a lively discussion incorporating your ideas. You're not going to get a new audience by posting it a second time. I'm locking this thread; add something new to the old thread if you have more to say about Avadon, but

 

I was going to lock this thread, until I noticed that the old one was locked. Say something NEW here if you have something new to say, please; copy and paste is a waste of everyone's time.

[Bushwhacker2k]

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

why is it that all the hands but you are either dead or twiddling their thumbs until your beckoned call for a mission? why cant your 4 allies take you out on missions? why do you always have to go? why is it that convieniantly all other hands are either busy, dead or incompetent?

You might have missed out in your rage against Avadon (not judging, just saying) but it's actually explained later on that

Click to reveal..

Miranda only paired you up with the rebellious hands and didn't let them actually command anything because she was trying to turn you against Avadon (or at least Redbeard) in a convoluted plot, i.e. she's a traitor!! >

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

whats with that leader guy of khemeria? why is he not the least bit concerned that his most trusted wizzard was really an evil psycho mastermind that almost got him and the rest of khemeria screwed by avadon?

I guess you missed this too, but

Click to reveal..

The king was in on the whole thing, it was really his fault

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

if ima have to go risk my ass because nathalie is retarded and wants to get herself killed by a big scary dragon then i should atleast be able to bang romance her

>

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

SKILLS, every last one of them sucks, the CD's are a million and 1 turns long without that cheat code

I kind of agree, some skills were more useful than others but I think they didn't want to risk making anything too powerful and the focus was more on teamwork anyway. Not excusing meh skills, just explaining why I figure it happened.

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

SCARABS

I also feel like Scarabs were kinda like tiny bonuses, I liked the teleport one (though I never ended up using it) and I was kinda interested in the earthquake and summon ones from Redbeard but I never ended up using those either... (meaning I tried them but they weren't that necessary). On the other hand, the scarab that lets me self-heal for free once every 4 turns was GREAT, in addition to simply giving an additional free heal it lets me heal Nathalie when she is in danger because she lacks a normal self-heal.

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

LINEARITY

I felt like it was pretty good about it overall but it certainly doesn't even hold a flame to Geneforge's exploration possibilities.

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

you cant go anywhere unless someone explicitly tells you somewhere, because your character apparantly isnt intelligent enough to explore places and go somewhere himself, it really killed exploration for me, because i didnt feel like going back(TEDIOUSLY! as mentioned above)

Well you can't travel to new lands without permission from your boss(es) and you couldn't really wander aimlessly in said lands because there is a lot of implied empty space. (I believe so, anyway)

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

you've gotta clear out the woods with 4 soldiers and the kings right hand dude, they bicker like 5 year olds

Lol, I agree, I wanted to kill them all right there... every land is so self-absorbed they practically need the Tawon Empire to come in and kill them all just so people will stop pointlessly feuding.

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

whats with the lack of living tools lockpicks

Lockpicks were actually VERY limited, I think I ended up not unlocking some places because I didn't want to take the time to visit every merchant in the game and pick up the picks they have. I assume this was actually done so you have to give what you unlock some thought, but on the other hand you wouldn't really know what's behind/in something until after you open it so I dunno...

---

Okay, I agree with some of what you say and understand some other stuff but I probably wouldn't call Avadon crap. It's the first Spiderweb game I really played (I think I played like 5 minutes of Avernum demo like 7 years ago) and overall I thought it was pretty good. Do I have complaints? Yes, but I still think it was done well overall.

I do think the perspective of someone with a lot of experience with Spiderware's (semi)older games explaining why he thinks Avadon was poorly done in comparison is something worth reading and I haven't read any posts past this (so far) but I hope we're all taking what is said into account without just getting offended.

[devilkingx]

Originally Posted By: Rentar vs. Redbeard

Some of these are just baffling. There are a lot of very powerful scarabs, and there are enough skills that you can use them almost every turn if you want to burn through vitality.

—Alorael, who still finds this painful to read. Tip: you get a better audience if your writing involves capitalization and punctuation.

like?...... for example?......

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Why are you surprised that an Avadon forum is populated mostly by people who like Avadon? People who don't like Avadon are not likely to hang around here.

now that you point it out... i feel stupid, very very stupid... but i mean these are the same guys that made GENEFORGE you would thing SOMEONE else would notice the changes and wonder how they could go from G5 to..... THIS(well technically its from A6 to this, but ive never played a6 so....)

Anyway, people took you seriously the first time and had quite a lively discussion incorporating your ideas. You're not going to get a new audience by posting it a second time. I'm locking this thread; add something new to the old thread if you have more to say about Avadon, but

I was going to lock this thread, until I noticed that the old one was locked. Say something NEW here if you have something new to say, please; copy and paste is a waste of everyone's time.

new new new..... this may take some thought

[devilkingx]

Originally Posted By: Bushwhacker2k

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

why is it that all the hands but you are either dead or twiddling their thumbs until your beckoned call for a mission? why cant your 4 allies take you out on missions? why do you always have to go? why is it that convieniantly all other hands are either busy, dead or incompetent?

You might have missed out in your rage against Avadon (not judging, just saying) but it's actually explained later on that

Click to reveal..

Miranda only paired you up with the rebellious hands and didn't let them actually command anything because she was trying to turn you against Avadon (or at least Redbeard) in a convoluted plot, i.e. she's a traitor!! >

true... but it would atleast make more sense if occassionally you had optional missions to go on.... or the ability to say no screw you to a mission

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

whats with that leader guy of khemeria? why is he not the least bit concerned that his most trusted wizzard was really an evil psycho mastermind that almost got him and the rest of khemeria screwed by avadon?

I guess you missed this too, but

Click to reveal..

The king was in on the whole thing, it was really his fault

hmmmm i probably should take that part out since i knew that now....

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

if ima have to go risk my ass because nathalie is retarded and wants to get herself killed by a big scary dragon then i should atleast be able to bang romance her

>glad to see, that we agree

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

SKILLS, every last one of them sucks, the CD's are a million and 1 turns long without that cheat code

I kind of agree, some skills were more useful than others but I think they didn't want to risk making anything too powerful and the focus was more on teamwork anyway. Not excusing meh skills, just explaining why I figure it happened. the explanation i heard for the skills is that the damage was arbitrarily based on a stat that they didnt tell you(so the reason some did crap damage is because you were pumping the wrong stat for that skill particularly and they didnt tell you that)

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

SCARABS

I also feel like Scarabs were kinda like tiny bonuses, I liked the teleport one (though I never ended up using it) and I was kinda interested in the earthquake and summon ones from Redbeard but I never ended up using those either... (meaning I tried them but they weren't that necessary). On the other hand, the scarab that lets me self-heal for free once every 4 turns was GREAT, in addition to simply giving an additional free heal it lets me heal Nathalie when she is in danger because she lacks a normal self-heal. those sound awesome.... why did i never see them

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

LINEARITY

I felt like it was pretty good about it overall but it certainly doesn't even hold a flame to Geneforge's exploration possibilities. exactly my point, minus the "pretty good about it overall" part, because the whole game was like playing a rail shooter, you couldnt go anywhere until someone or something gave you the greenlight... while in geneforge you could go anywhere just be prepared to be owned hard if you go too far

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

you cant go anywhere unless someone explicitly tells you somewhere, because your character apparantly isnt intelligent enough to explore places and go somewhere himself, it really killed exploration for me, because i didnt feel like going back(TEDIOUSLY! as mentioned above)

Well you can't travel to new lands without permission from your boss(es) and you couldn't really wander aimlessly in said lands because there is a lot of implied empty space. (I believe so, anyway) but still you'd think you'd be allowed to travel and see cities and landscapes and kill monsters and loot caves or something

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

you've gotta clear out the woods with 4 soldiers and the kings right hand dude, they bicker like 5 year olds

Lol, I agree, I wanted to kill them all right there... every land is so self-absorbed they practically need the Tawon Empire to come in and kill them all just so people will stop pointlessly feuding.

reminds me of dragon age... ferelden is so self absorbed in their stupid problems they'd let their whole country burn before they just let it go(except for the arl, and the elves they have good excuses) and redcliffe itself really

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

whats with the lack of living tools lockpicks

Lockpicks were actually VERY limited, I think I ended up not unlocking some places because I didn't want to take the time to visit every merchant in the game and pick up the picks they have. I assume this was actually done so you have to give what you unlock some thought, but on the other hand you wouldn't really know what's behind/in something until after you open it so I dunno... exactly my point whats the point of locked stuff if you'll never get to open it?

---

Okay, I agree with some of what you say and understand some other stuff but I probably wouldn't call Avadon crap. It's the first Spiderweb game I really played (I think I played like 5 minutes of Avernum demo like 7 years ago) and overall I thought it was pretty good. Do I have complaints? Yes, but I still think it was done well overall.

play G1-5 to understand my problems with avadon... once you've played those for a while you'll understand

I do think the perspective of someone with a lot of experience with Spiderware's (semi)older games explaining why he thinks Avadon was poorly done in comparison is something worth reading and I haven't read any posts past this (so far) but I hope we're all taking what is said into account without just getting offended.

i thank you for taking my criticism into account instead of complaining about me posting it here, or making a one sentence "your entire criticism is false" or outright trolling(the first guy)

[Randomizer]

In order to unlock everything you need a character with a lockpicking skill of 4 and buy/find every lockpick. Most places aren't worth it anyway.

[Alorael at Large]

The healing scarabs, particularly group healing, are very handy. The stat scarabs offer nice boosts, although some are lackluster and none are incredibly powerful. The scarab that lets you frenzy is a huge boost to any party member. The various scarabs that cast damaging spells usually do so with damage higher than the standard skills you get, and you can equip them so that your shadowwalker gets some nice area attacks. I guess I understand not liking scarabs if you don't like skills, because they're really the same, but both are more powerful than base attacks and give you chances to hit multiple targets.

 

—Alorael, who also recommends scarabs if you want to use skills every turn. It's hard to keep that up just using the left side of the skill list, but if you add a couple more scarabs you can do pretty well on a four turn cooldown cycle.

[Men are from Slars]

Not everyone likes Geneforge more than Avadon. I, for one, liked Geneforge but prefer Avadon to Geneforge.

[Bushwhacker2k]

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

play G1-5 to understand my problems with avadon... once you've played those for a while you'll understand

Been playing GF1 and a bit of GF2, it's quite awesome thus far. It got a bit monotonous near the end of GF1 because there wasn't really anything left to do except win, since I couldn't really level further without a glitch I found and my monsters were strong enough that they mostly just plowed through everything. I'm hoping it changes a bit as I go through the games, and I did notice GF2 changed the skill system in that increasing levels of skill cost increasing amounts of skill points, thus forcing you to be more well-rounded (thumbs up!).

Originally Posted By: devilkingx

i thank you for taking my criticism into account instead of complaining about me posting it here, or making a one sentence "your entire criticism is false" or outright trolling(the first guy)

NP, I try not to get offended even when people disagree with me, because I see how easy it is to get off-focus or just start arguing about something irrelevant when we could actually use it constructively.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Not everyone likes Geneforge more than Avadon. I, for one, liked Geneforge but prefer Avadon to Geneforge.

Orly? What did you like about Avadon more than GF?

[Men are from Slars]

Primarily, the game mechanics -- they are more interesting in Avadon. Geneforge games are generally less well-balanced than either Avernum or Avadon.

 

I did like the originality of G1 and the grittiness of G4, but other than that I found Geneforge even less compelling than Avadon plot-wise. G3 and G5 are especially egregious offenders here. I just found Avadon more generally engaging than Geneforge.

 

I do think that Avadon 2 is in danger of being the epitome of boring. If Avadon 2 is a vanilla sequel in the manner of most Geneforge sequels or the last 3 Avernum games, it's in trouble, because the original premise (while excellent) was not fleshed out very well in the first game, particularly compared to the vast fleshing out Exile/Avernum got.

 

Avadon 2 needs to begin with excitement and change à la Geneforge 4, because a repeat of "go to areas because Bob says so, see evidence of traitors and of unsavoury police tactics" will not be good.

[Bushwhacker2k]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Avadon 2 needs to begin with excitement and change à la Geneforge 4, because a repeat of "go to areas because Bob says so, see evidence of traitors and of unsavoury police tactics" will not be good.

I have not yet actually played Geneforge 4, but I do agree games need to have at least some level of constant change. Games get boring when the events become routine, this is becoming more and more evident to me as I play more games and wonder why I'm not enjoying something anymore.