Review Avadon: The Black Fortress Review

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Avadon: The Black Fortress; Spiderweb Software

<p>Inside Mac Games <a href="http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=1127&amp;Page=1" target="_blank">reviewed</a> Spiderweb's latest entry <strong>Avadon: The Black Fortress</strong>. The review is fairly positive.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Speaking of skills, Avadon has 4 different character classes: Blademaster, Shadowwalker, Shaman and Sorceress. You can't choose gender, but each class has a different set of abilities, strengths and weaknesses. The skill trees are varied enough that you could play through as the same class twice, but focus on a completely different set of skills. It may be tempting to try and leapfrog to the top of the skill-tree, but you'll be sorry if you ignore your lower level abilities. But that's the beauty of the diversity. You can go for a warrior with high melee and ranged damage, or more of a tank with high defensive and resistance skills, letting your other members of the party do most of the damage. Will your sorceress wield ice and fire to devastate her foes, or focus on dazing, defending and buffing your group? You can of course go for a jack-of-all-trades approach, but I like to specialize. Speaking of that, you gain a boost to an entire section of skills in the tree at levels 5, 15 and 25, with level 30 being the highest you can attain.</p>
<p>Leveling up is exciting in Avadon, because it often unlocks a new skill, or a new ability to an existing skill or spell you already have. Your Blademaster may gain a savage blow with high damage at level 3 of your melee attacks, while your Shamans acid rain will affect foes for several turns at level 6 of the skill. Loot is even more addictive in Avadon than previous Spiderweb titles, and that's a good thing. The inventory system is straightforward and easy to use, with handy additions like a junk bag where you can toss stuff in to sell all at once later on. An auto-sorting button would have been nice, but it's not a big deal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/102482-avadon-the-black-fortress-review.html">GB</a></p>

 

[Azrael the cat]

Looks promising like most of the Vogel games, but seems to be more in the Avernum style than the Geneforge. Some people will be glad for that, but for me it was the Geneforge games and the absurd amount of C+C in later instalments that stood out - the 'tactical' combat was nice for being one of the only remnants of turn-based party mechanics left, but aside from that I never found it particularly amazing in its own right. If anything I preferred the fewer but more intricate fights of Geneforge 4-5 than the dungeon crawling of Avernum.

And that makes the 'no attacking friendlies' a bigger loss than the reviewer makes out. The ability to attack anyone was important in a setting where small differences in factional powerplays (both between the factions and internal factional politics) could lead to different outcomes and endings. Given that those Drayks might end up backstab-assraping the rebels anyway, or that an overly pacifist element might lack the necessary resolve to survive, befriending a faction and then knifing their leadership was often a valid and sensible approach to taking down an otherwise near-impossible base assault.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

'no attacking friendlies'

What?!

 

[Virtual Vice]

This probably is not an issue for most people but I have some trouble understanding the gender fixed classes.
It might make some sense considering he opted for fleshed out NPC followers, but not enough in my opinion. His character models still dont display equipment in this new title from what I understand, how much of an effort would it be to have both gender options for all classes? For the PC at the very least.

Othewise it looks good, the only other minus is that it seems this title will be much shorter than most other spiderweb titles. But its only a minus for those who have the time of course. I will only be able to play something in the summer for a short time, so I might just give this one a go.

In my opinion, with this new series, it seems Vogel is going for a condensed ( and more "acessible" heh...) mix of the more popular elements of both Geneforge and Avernum. Will only be able to confirm this, and if it is the case if he was sucessful later, but thats the impression what has been released gives me.


And then there is the mention in the review of optional switching of characters between/before missions? heh. I am not sure if I appreciate that addition to Vogel's formula, might have worked decently well in DA:O, but it was a bit too Jrpgish. It always feels a bit too illogical, despite the flexibility. How will the experience gaps be handled I wonder....if at all.

Of course the 3 character party with 4 classes/characters available setup and the option for NPC followers with an actual personality and background make sense together, and these approaches make balance easier.

It will certainly be a solid, well rounded and stable product coming from Vogel. And these are qualities most of the indie rpg scene is still unable to offer.

Wether or not Avadon will be a true incline in comparison with Avernum 6 or Geneforge 5....well the pc version is about to come out.

 

[Coyote]

Looks promising like most of the Vogel games, but seems to be more in the Avernum style than the Geneforge. Some people will be glad for that, but for me it was the Geneforge games and the absurd amount of C+C in later instalments that stood out - the 'tactical' combat was nice for being one of the only remnants of turn-based party mechanics left, but aside from that I never found it particularly amazing in its own right. If anything I preferred the fewer but more intricate fights of Geneforge 4-5 than the dungeon crawling of Avernum.

And that makes the 'no attacking friendlies' a bigger loss than the reviewer makes out. The ability to attack anyone was important in a setting where small differences in factional powerplays (both between the factions and internal factional politics) could lead to different outcomes and endings. Given that those Drayks might end up backstab-assraping the rebels anyway, or that an overly pacifist element might lack the necessary resolve to survive, befriending a faction and then knifing their leadership was often a valid and sensible approach to taking down an otherwise near-impossible base assault.

Good post; I agree with pretty much everything you said.

The setting also seems relatively bland, even if, as the GameBanshee reviewer mentioned in its favor, it has shades of gray and no right or wrong side. That was part of what the Geneforge series did right, but steering clear of the stereotypical fantasy setting (even if it remained a close cousin to it) gave it an appeal that Avadon, for me, lacks.

There is a new nifty combat grid around each character (or the whole area if you want it to be) which highlights them on the map. If an enemy is within that space and engaging a member of your team, they can't run away. I thought it was a realistic touch, and adds another layer of strategy. You can't just keep running away, once you get up close, you are committed to the fight.

I don't really like this idea, at least if I'm reading this correctly. It sounds like it will potentially prevent you from moving back to set up choke points and ambushes, using line of sight to your advantage in some cases, and running away from powerful enemies (which also means you can't lure them to traps to weaken them like you sometimes could in the Geneforges). If anything, it seems like it removes a layer of strategy. I would prefer some form of attacks of opportunity/interrupts if Vogel feels the need to penalize moving away from enemies in combat, rather than simply making it impossible.

The inventory system is straightforward and easy to use, with handy additions like a junk bag where you can toss stuff in to sell all at once later on.

This is nice, and I'm surprised more games don't do something like it (or some other method of allowing you to mark items so that you can ignore the clutter while searching your inventory for whatever you need). I always end up setting up some sort of system anyway, like moving items I want to hold on to to the bottom right of the inventory.

(Incidentally, this is the sort of thing for which the word "streamlining" ought to be used - setting things up in a way that's more convenient for the player without affectiing complexity.)

 

[villain of the story]

The inventory system is straightforward and easy to use, with handy additions like a junk bag where you can toss stuff in to sell all at once later on.

This is nice, and I'm surprised more games don't do something like it (or some other method of allowing you to mark items so that you can ignore the clutter while searching your inventory for whatever you need). I always end up setting up some sort of system anyway, like moving items I want to hold on to to the bottom right of the inventory.

(Incidentally, this is the sort of thing for which the word "streamlining" ought to be used - setting things up in a way that's more convenient for the player without affectiing complexity.)

Indeed. This is so rare an example of streamlining being a good thing, provided that the game is typically shallow to make looting a major point of allure in the game world, which applies to almost every game.

 

[made]

But how does the game compare to DA2? That's what really matters imo.