Miserable Babies Hate Avowed

I'm starting to think we've entered a phase where people actively want to not enjoy games you can see this really clearly with YouTubers and reviewers because the simple fact is negative reviews do better than positive reviews which means if you make a living at content creation you have a fiduciary duty to yourself to not write positive reviews and negative videos do better by a lot not by a little by a lot it's gotten to the point that relatively positive review often have ambiguous or negative thumbnails secondly the more the audience becomes addicted to being pissed off the more dangerous it becomes to not give the people what they want it is a never-ending negative feedback loop made up of controversies and pointless whining but I'm an old kudan and my Decades of experience have proven to me that most people they're idiots and not only are they idiots they're lazy they're delusional they're easily influenced and they literally enjoy being miserable every single day I see thumbnails about how gaming is dying because some new game has bugs but I've been playing games forever and games are massively more polished now than they have ever been if you think avowed is particularly buggy I will point out to you that literally broken games used to be sold in boxes it was not uncommon to buy something totally busted at Ye Old Electronic Boutique in the mall and there was no such thing as a patch back then there were also no returns if the box was opened if you think games aren't ambitious today I'll point out that in the 80s for every Super Mario Brothers there were 59,000 broken garbage Mario clones with a Nintendo seal of approval on the box and this goes Way Beyond gaming even into politics people are convinced that things were better 40 years ago but things were massively massive ly worse 40 years ago in the 1980s interest rates on mortgages were three times what they are now in ' 82 they were 16% from the early '70s through the mid 80s inflation was over 10% every single year people think games are too expensive which is positively insane games were far far more expensive in the ' 80s and 90s so much so it literally changed how they were designed they were ridiculously difficult precisely because your parents got you one game for Christmas adjusted for inflation games cost like0 bucks in today's dollars back then games have gotten less expensive over time not more expensive here's another helpful graph are things perfect no because things are always terrible this is the state of man things are miserable and we endure and we take pride in the endurance and then we we die in pain and misery this is the order of the universe anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something one of the earliest writers we still have access to is PL the great grandfather of Western thought and a bunch of his writing is bitching about kids today and how everything sucks and used to be way better in the past he's talking about the past that existed several thousand years before the invention of toilet paper by the way I say all this to you to preface my review of a vow that nobody will watch because I make my living actually working and not catering to the decadent whims of an audience of angry morons I will say for the hundredth time that I don't read about a game I plan on reviewing I finished a vow and thought wow that ended up being really freaking good by the end there were definitely some things I didn't love and there was a real progression paino at the start of the game but that is a hella great game right there and then imagine my surprise when I booted up the old Metacritic page I scrolled through the player reviews and was buried in negative player feedback about uh diversity and woke stuff dear viewer I can honestly say I have no idea what the hell this person is talking about or this person there is absolutely no woke stuff in a vow none it's straight up not there this person here seems to want us to watch asmin gold comparing a vow to Oblivion why what that's enough introduction but be forewarned that as we go through reviewing this game I'm going to be annoyed and if you're going to be one of those people who comments unsubscribed just save yourself the time bro I don't care I can live without the 0.00001 Cent your views contribute to the 400 bucks a year I make from YouTube and you know what even if if I did make my living from YouTube I would sooner work in a uranium mine digging or with a shovel before I made a living shoveling [ __ ] to babies over the Internet combat I followed the development of a vow because I already noticed a strange thing happening with the last game they made the outer world was a you know pretty good double a RPG by a small Studio it had some problems but the response was extremely strange people were trying to compare it to massive AAA games like Skyrim or The Witcher 3 but you have to remember that not that long ago obsidian was like weeks from going out of business and the company was only saved by a freaking Kickstarter for pillars of Eternity the outer world was not a huge AAA game it was a budget conscious double a game and when viewed in that light it's pretty damn good however the combat was very mediocre Joker I mean it wasn't terrible but it definitely wasn't good the early previews of a vow had me thinking that this would be the same and I was all right with that to be honest with you first person melee games are usually pretty bad the Elder Scrolls games have just absolutely terrible combat but there's plenty of other things that can at least kind of keep me engaged with subpar combat although you know it's pretty important to me as a vow was delayed there were multiple developer interviews talking about like hit stun and how enemies react to being hit by your weapons and I found it interesting that they chose to talk about that stuff so much because you're trying to describe something the player has to experience at the very least it seemed pretty clear by the end that obsidian was feeling very good about the combat in this game and you know what in my opinion the combat is really great and AOW that hit stun stuff they were talking about feels fantastic enemy staggers feel great and more importantly that staggering makes the combat predictable attacks are clearly telegraphed and you quickly come to grips with when it is safe to attack and when it is not safe to attack encounters are welld designed areas are thoughtfully laid out as I've said before I judge a gamees combat by whether it still feels good on the hardest difficulty and AOW feels great on both of the two hardest difficulties parrying feels great and AOW the magic feels really good enemy variety is a little bit lower than you'd like and that is kind of a knock on the game but I think that's very much a result of how carefully they've designed the entire combat system I can be okay with fewer enemies that are well-designed you know rather than just throwing in a bunch of extra enemies that aren't really polished what makes it about so fun is that most damage is avoidable which leaves a lot of room for skill expression it really is great I didn't do very much stealth aside from one quest in the last area Al though what I did seems like that's a little bit less fleshed out still you know that wasn't really a problem for me I just didn't do stealth the enemies that are in AOW do a great job filling roles that make you have to prioritize the priests need to be chased across the battlefield and killed immediately which gives you a really great use for all of your entwine type skills Sorcerers and ranged enemies had to be hunted down while avoiding bigger stronger melee guys now one knock is that there aren't any big one-off unique boss fights but you know what I really honestly didn't expect that my expectations for combat were actually extremely low and it ends up massively surpassing them I never once got bored killing stuff in this game in fact I just like constantly search the whole map to kill everything which you can do which is kind of cool enemies don't respawn you can just cleanse the map of enemies which I found pretty satisfying actually overall this combat is probably the best action combat system I've played in an RPG in a good long while the game relies on a really great feeling Doom Eternal style Dodge parrying and avoiding ground effects heavy attacks break an enemy's guard parrying fills a stun meter that allows a finishing blow type thing there are cooldowns and resources to manage you need to constantly reposition and find Space to heal and use spells or abilities I played on the hardest difficulty for most of the game although I did have to drop it down one level to hard during the opening area which I'll get to later but overall the combat was really challenging and engaging now I can imagine if someone played on easy it might be a boring hacken slash or if someone played on the hardest difficulty but didn't understand that you absolutely must explore and do as many side quests as possible that they might find it frustrating at times but I found the combat not good but straight up great 10 out of 10 one of the best combat systems around and very easily the best combat in this particular genre ever still it does great up against the progression system if you allow yourself to fall behind and that is one of the places I can imagine people getting annoyed so let's talk about that next progression you have to do what the game wants you to do early in AOW you've got very little to work with you probably haven't unlocked anything cool your weapons are weak and your armor is garbage it's still manageable on the hardest difficulty mostly because the game doesn't really start spamming you with enemies until you're quite a bit stronger but it is definitely not easy you can only survive two hits and you won't have many healing potions all that is fine because it's early in an RPG and progression feels best when you start out weak however one of A's best aspects is that a ton of quests and important progression items are not marked on the map in order to get stronger you really do have to exhaust the map on harder difficulty settings and this is made Difficult by the way the game does enemy scaling the best analog to AOW that I could think of is funny enough Destiny 1 like in Destiny your level isn't a linear scale where each bit of damage reduction is weighed against an enemy's attack power instead the player scales in a very narrow band with hard break points enemies at or below your level feel great to fight but enemies in the next tier up are like hitting a brick wall in Destiny this produced situations like killing vas to rock by sitting under the stairs in AOW you have a traditional stats and skill tree leveling system that we'll get to next but the most impactful progression system on combat is finding gear and leveling it up at the camp there's a really fantastic variety of weapons and armor and legendary gear has significant changes to your gameplay and build but none of that matters with the way the level scaling works if you have a plus4 plus five or plus six weapon and the enemy has level seven armor you will do 25 % less damage and will be both unable to stagger them and your weapon will bounce off of them now you can still win fights but it's an extremely difficult SLO and again it doesn't matter if you're plus 4 + 5 or plus 6 until you get to Seven you will be at a 25% Nerf the same goes for armor but that's a little easier to deal with because all it means is that you take 25% more damage and will be two shot by most enemies instead of three shot still I could see some people beating their head against the wall with this for the vast majority of the game each area has one level of enemies but in the first Zone there is an Abrupt switch from level one to level two enemies at first I simply didn't understand why this was but after finishing the game I have figured out that this was the developer's way of making it clear that you absolutely 100% have to explore the map and do side quests to level up your gear and again a ton of those side quests and progression materials are not attached to marked quests they're in Exploration chests puzzle rooms unmarked side quests Bounty side quests and just jumping puzzles and secret finding if you just go through the main quests and leave a ton of the map unexplored you are going to have a pretty unpleasant time you need to be looting and disassembling a ton of stuff and opening every chest and selling all the lowquality items you have to be able to keep your gear at the proper level but if you do explore the map entirely and do as many side quests as possible you will end up with a perfect progression experience after finishing the first Zone I did find the first level frustrating enough to drop the difficulty from the hardest difficulty to just hard so I could power through a few boss fights and difficulty spikes but once I figured out how a vow expects you to progress I never really had a frustrating moment again I mean I died a lot because it's a challenging game in spots in the heart setting but it's never so hard that it feels unfair the other progression system is your player stats and the skill tree player stats offer small consistent increases in all the things you'd expect attack power Health stamina Mana attack speed Etc but really the stats are most important for dialogue skill checks that matter quite a bit to how quests work out and that skill tree is both very flexible and also extremely impactful it's full of gamechanging skills and a tremendous variety of build options it's also super easy and cheap to Respec so I was able to try a bunch of stuff out and switch if I didn't like it I found the range weapons kind of boring so I ended up doing a magic melee hybrid which was really extremely fun while the progression can be slow and the difficulty overwhelming if you Mainline the main quest ultimately I think it's one of the best designed progression systems in a 3D AAA RPG in ages man it's great level design I have long made my impatience with open World Games very clear the modern Assassin's Creed games drive me nuts because you move way too slow and the world has very few interesting things to discover and the combat is garbage so none of it's worth the time the game demands people seem to love Red Dead 2 and I found it extremely boring because the map is simply too big and most of it is basically empty I liked the open world of subn IA I like the Fallout games I like The Witcher 3 because the game is full of interesting quests but most open world games have maps that are three times too big I really did not like Dragon's Dogma 2 or one for that matter just not very good games with below average combat just terrible stories and a ton of totally pointless walking now obsidian keeps trying to like explain their map design as if it's a concession to their Studio size but they should stop doing that because their open world map design is flat out better than everyone else's maybe it's started out as a way to keep budgets low and allow teams each to focus on smaller areas but now this is a straightup strength of the studio the outer worlds had a few small maps that were fairly densely packed with stuff and that made moving about the map simple AOW takes that same idea and just massively improves it each area of the map is the perfect size bigger than the outer worlds but not some big big massive annoying open world there is a ton of armor and potions that let you run like 60 M an hour to make moving between areas easy and the map is absolutely full of interesting level design with each little area stuffed with jumping puzzles exploration puzzles and hidden areas to figure out I very much enjoy the simple pleasure of seeing a thing and then figuring out how to find that thing I also even like getting frustrated if I can't get to the thing that frustration feels good when you finally figure it out I like that the grenades in this game are actually puzzle tools the ice grenade is used to find secret areas in lava or across rivers or ponds the electric ones are used to power machines that open doors the fire ones burn out ways to get into side areas I absolutely love that there are just a massive ton of side quests hidden away or that seemingly random quests lead to Super super important things a character from pillar's dead fire has an amazing side quest just plopped in a cave as part of another minor side quest that one actually rewards one of the very best weapons in the game has a freaking great story attached and gives a satisfying cathartic ends to a character from the second game that has a real impact on this game's ending and it is totally and easily missable if you do not explore a crucially important and massively world changing thing happened in my game because I didn't actually finish a side quest that was in a cave it wasn't even a side quest it was an optional objective part of the side quest that's fantastic man the vast majority of super powerful gear items are found either in puzzle areas unmarked side quests or just by exploring the map the map isn't flat it's full of winding areas that require you to figure out how to get to them you'll very often see pockets of enemies on the radar and have to spend 5 minutes scouring the area to figure out how to platform into a mountain or up to a cave the level of detail and density of the map of a vow is straight up impossible if you're going to make a game that is a billion freaking square miles if every single open world was more like a vow the world would be a better place no more huge open world unless I have a car this is the perfect compromise three large open areas densely packed and easy to navigate but that require careful examination to explore for once I actually enjoyed exploring a map rather than tolerated it just fantastic story it's a slow burn I'll make this quick because I don't want to spoil much and because there's too much stuff going on in this story to comment on it all I'll start by saying that from the start of this game I sort of didn't like that the emperor had sent me because it's a bit annoying to be pigeonholed into having taken an oath to someone I do not know and the game starts slowly because although I played the pillars games a long time ago I do not remember much outside of the factions the very basic plot of those games and the fact that the gods are actually people who became Gods AOW does not seem to care if you have played the first two games it dumps you in there assuming you either played them or will watch a YouTube video to get the lay of the land now because I have played them I had enough of a base of knowledge to not feel terribly lost but I can imagine it might be rough for someone totally new to the world but frankly I don't know how you deal with that other than what obsidian did the plot stands on its own there's a ridiculous mountain of lore logs and you've got the internet in your pocket if it comes to that still even with all of that the game starts very slowly it is only the cumulative effects of a ton of RPG decisions you make that starts to make it feel really impactful once you get past the compri jumping off point for the game it really is a pretty interesting ride I find the concepts the game deals with interesting I like the idea of an infant God and all the havoc in canri I like the idea of having to decide whether a colonial occupation is the best a place can hope for I like the idea of balancing order and freedom and I like the idea of how important the culture of a specific place is and just how much that is worth in blood I like that a huge theme of the game is trauma and how much can we really blame people for what they've done I like that the game makes you choose over and over between Justice and mercy I like all of the side characters I liked all of the companion quest lines I love that the game actually lets you say hold on a second let me see what my companions think about this when you're confronted with choices and dialogue because that's what I actually wanted to do all of the companions have interesting personalities they all have unique and interesting takes on the world if you do all of the side quests by the end of this game you will have a very difficult time making the most important choices because every choice is at least defensible it actually reminds me quite a bit of the choices in New Vegas to be honest even the obvious villain of this game sincerely believes that she is doing the right thing stability comes from Law and Order and Law and Order are upheld by religious devotion I actually felt really bad when I destroyed her faith with a skill check at the end although you know what that's probably just as much a result of the unbelievable job Deborah Wilson does acting as The Inquisitor speaking of which voice acting is pretty good across the whole board story is the least important thing to me in a game that's why I still liked vilard despite it having a slightly disappointing story but AOW has a legitimately interesting story and unlike vilard it is full of hugely massively impactful choices almost all of the large side quests have an interesting choice to make almost every single one of them has multiple ways to accomplish them almost all of them have interlocking aspects that affects the outcome a ton of quests have different dialogue depending on whether or not you found a piece of information in a book or by talking to another character this is just an extremely well-made RPG story from start to finish every choice you make big and small will matter in some way even missing going to a cave can mean a city is destroyed just great stuff man wrapping up so listen not only did I like this game I loved it I'd give it an easy 9 out of 10 combat is great exploration is absolutely great the map design is freaking awesome the progression system is great voice acting is great and the story is very good so what are people pointing to when it's getting an 80 from reviewers and a 60 from players well that 60 is brought down by a bunch of people like this who are just too stupid to bother with but as usual I'd like to actually engage AG with the other critiques one big one I've seen is that there are performance issues I have to say that I simply did not experience this at all the game didn't crash even once it ran at about 60 FPS at 4K Max settings and I obviously could have gotten it higher if I backed the settings down a little it did slow down occasionally when I was running my recording software but that happens with almost every game I experienced literally two bugs in my entire playthrough and I cleared basically the entire map and did everything I could find I played for over 65 hours one bug was a chest when an open for a request reward that was annoying and in the very very last area a waypoint got broken in over 65 hours I'd say that's pretty good performance this is a complicated game with a bunch of interacting Quest and dialogue choices it's got a bunch of hectic combat and it is a beautiful looking open world game if you or someone you know had to significant performance issues that sucks and I'm sure it would hurt your opinion of the game but the game performed absolutely flawlessly for me again 4K all Max settings I can only comment on how it ran for me man either way I'm quite sure all performance issues will be fixed unlike how it was in the 80s and '90s when you were just [ __ ] permanently you know the good old days another complaint I've seen actually pisses me off because it is pointless a bunch of the written reviews called the game dated first of all I don't even know what the hell this means a bunch of reviews called the game dated even mentioned Kingdom Come Deliverance which is literally purposefully dated how is a vow dated the combat is absolutely unique combining Doom Eternal Dash stamina management cooldowns a vast array of status effects and a functioning and satisfying Parry system if anything the comat is incredibly fresh is the story dated what the hell does that even mean it's a video game story a good one it's better than 90% of video game stories which are let's remember generally absolutely terrible a lot of people on Steam and Metacritic talked about how NPCs in the cities just stand there who gives a [ __ ] what MPCs do are you spending a bunch of time watching NPCs walk around and Skyrim the NPCs move around and that does absolutely nothing to make the game more fun cyberp Punk is loaded with NPCs walking around but who cares NPCs are just Graphics they are there so a city looks like a city as you run through it would the game be more fun if you could sit on a bench and feed pigeons while fake NPCs went to fake jobs and then took fake cabs back to fake houses I literally do not understand why anyone in the world would give a [ __ ] about this a strangely common complaint is that you cannot kill NPCs like you can in oblivium and Skyrim okay but why is it important that I be able to kill every NPC you actually can kill an awful lot of quest givers and characters in the game when it makes sense for you to do so you cannot however be a serial killer in a vow now I never tried to kill everyone in the game because that seems like an EXT extremely idiotic and childish thing to want to do but apparently that's an extremely important thing now now to my knowledge there are very few games where you can kill every NPC there are a few to be sure but that is a rare thing that a tiny minority of people will ever want it is not worth it for a developer to have to account for you killing every NPC and how that will interact with quests it's it it just doesn't matter so it's not worth spending money and time on not every game is whatever we want all the time you cannot kill every NPC or your companions you can't kill companions because their story critical and it would be stupid so why even code it in the game someone like me would then have to make sure not to accidentally kill my companions you can't just murder main characters because that's not who you are in the game you have latitude to act differently and you have a surprising amount of freedom but not total freedom I can't perform prostate surgery on myself without anesthesia in balers Gate 3 it never occurred to me to be annoyed at the lack of Auto prostate surgery it's just something I cannot do in that game a bunch of people seem to believe the game has a political agenda which is straight up Insanity the game will happily let you be an imperialist a freedom fighter or Forge a middle path it will let you be a religious zealot or totally reject religion the game does not have romance thank God so there's none of that adsc I cannot possibly imagine what political agenda the game can be interpreted to have it lets you decide that Colonial imperialism is bad it also lets you decide that actually Colonial imperialism is good because it brings order and law it doesn't seem to judge you for which one of those you choose I also saw some complaints about the lack of a compelling evil option I just don't understand this either you can choose to enforce the Empire's RIT and kill a god the one valid complaint of this flavor I saw was from Mr Maddy plays who said companions don't convincingly react to your evil actions I'll say okay that's a flaw I agree I don't ever purposely attempt to be evil in a game because I don't believe anybody actually thinks what they are doing is evil I'll agree that companion should leave if you consistently choose the Empire although again it's important to note the companions are with you to end the plague but okay AOW isn't great at accommodating an evil playthrough it seems pretty good at accommodating an imperial one though is that one problem actually that big does it matter why can't we take the game as it's presented and enjoy it for the Myriad things it does wonderfully rather than hate it for the three very weird small specific things that it ises less than perfectly for you I saw a ton of people complaining about the game being $90 but the game is not $90 the game is $69.99 if you wanted to pay $2 extra dollar for two skins a digital artbook the OST and Early Access that was your choice why would you do that I have Game Pass and actually I did play 20 bucks for the Early Access because I was bored and $20 is basically nothing to me at this point in my life I didn't need to do that the game didn't demand it for me and I wouldn't have held it against the game if I hated it that $20 was charged because I am precisely the sort of person the paid Early Access is marketed to somebody who is bored with 20 bucks to spare if you can't play this game and have a good time I honestly think you just don't like video games anymore I can understand thinking it's good but not great I can understand thinking it's pretty good but you just didn't love it or just not inspired enough to rate higher than a 7 out of 10 but if you think this game is bad like to give it two stars or a 50 out of 100 or even a one star man that's a you problem I suspect it's because you're miserable and you enjoy being miserable I suspect it's because you find being a part of a community based in grievance and entitlement more fun than you find video games now and again always remember this I get 1 1,000th of a scent when you watch a video so so don't bother telling me you're unsubscribing just go ahead and press the button man I will be okay I'll be more than okay actually I'll be enjoying the literal dozens of amazing games that release every year in this golden age of video games and you will be getting your kids complaining about how much better things were in a time when you weren't even alive to the rest of you thanks for coming I appreciate every single one of you who watches my videos the small group that you are I really do appreciate it it's actually why I keep doing it it certainly isn't the $2 to $400 a year anyway thanks for coming I'll see you next time bye