"....high visual fidelity does not prevent something from looking or feeling generic, and that's how I felt about Immortals of Aveum."
PC | PS5 | XBOX SERIES
HOW I PLAYED: 80/20 split on PlayStation Portal/PS5.
STORY - 13/20
INTRO
You're a Young Adult Mage in a world called Aveum, full of magic and cutscenes. Immediately, you're introduced to characters the game wants you to understand and care for in an oppressive world stuck at war. Abruptly your strong-willed female best-friend dies causing your magic to "explode" and a random army officer notices you can wield "all 3 Colours of magic", something you're told is extremely rare in Aveum. Fast forward 5 years and you're a seasoned military mage! Kicking low rank ass and taking names. But you aspire to take on bigger challenges...
CUTSCENES
The most "immortal" thing in this game are the cutscenes; they never die. They are quite constant and the developers certainly spent a lot of time crafting these very cinematic cutscenes as though they wanted to make a movie but settled on a game.
WORLD BUILDING
The world doesn't feel "alive' or "fleshed out". Even though they give the player so many cutscenes to explain the story, the world itself is bland and it's hard to get immersed. It felt like the world building aspect was a rushed afterthought and someone had the story idea and didn't know how to flesh out the world around it. It wouldn't surprise me if the story was written for the real world then someone said "make this story situated in a magical world".
OVERALL STORY
The story is relatively easy to follow, a bit predictable with a twist or two along the way, but not overly exciting or memorable. It's disappointing because the game felt like most of the effort was put into this part, behind the visuals, but we will get to that in a minute.
Important note: In Aveum, magic comes in 3 colour:-
1. Blue spells are like Sniper/Assault Rifles: Medium bullet count, long range, medium damage.
2. Red spells are like the Shotguns: Low bullet count, short range, high damage.
3. Green spells are your SMGs: High bullet count, medium range, low damage.
Green spells shoot in quick succession like a machine gun
GRAPHICS - 12/15
CHARACTER MODELS
Top notch work by the developers. The models are of extremely high quality. The characters were modeled after real people who also voice acted their roles for the game and the details are amazing! Just like a movie.
ENVIRONMENTS
I was surprised to notice how generic a lot of the zones felt. While you get to travel to a few different biomes along your travels and all of them are visually stunning, they didn't have much character to them. This falls in with how the world building felt like the world was built to fit a set story, the world doesn't feel like it had a set vision or solid passion to follow, leaving it feeling a bit lifeless and generic.
Generic feel and look to the game
SPECIAL FX
Animations are done extremely well. It is clear that the team went out
to make a visually stunning game and they did so beautifully. The spells
on their own look great and the armor, weapons and enemies are highly
detailed. I won't deny sometimes I would look at the magic weapons on my character and
just appreciate the detail and beauty. However, so many flashes, so many beams, so much to blind me. The bright colours and lighting was a bit of a nightmare sometimes. During some fights with certain enemies or bosses there would just be so many beams on the screen it really made it hard to enjoy the game; on the Portal especially.
This is just an example of overly bright light that hindered my vision
AUDIO - 11/15
THE AMBIENCE
This played a part in why the game world felt empty. While not solely its fault, the music in the open world isn't inspiring and it's such a shame as the other music is great.
BOSS MUSIC
I couldn't hear much over the audio from the magic spells and explosions. It is hard to fault the music for the other sounds being loud though, as I just needed to adjust this in the settings. The music was actually quite well done; when you can hear it.
SOUND DESIGN
The Blue and Red spells felt like they had good weight to them and the green ones felt more punchy and agile. Overall the sound design was solid. The variety of sounds was more of a weak point, though. sadly, each colour of spell sounded similar to each other spell of the same colour, but at least the sound of them was nailed.
PERFORMANCE - 9/10
FRAME RATE
While I didn't do a FPS capture test the games frame rate felt alright. However, it didn't feel like a locked frame rate. The games frame rate wasn't my biggest issue during combat though, so no cause for concern there.
STABILITY
Zero crashes for my playtime and no lock ups. Nothing to report for stability issues.
GAMEPLAY - 26/40
CONTROLS
I played on the portal and very few times was I frustrated with anything except aiming, which is an issue with the Portals screen size and not the game. Moving around was a tad frustrating in combat because the game is in First Person View. A choice I don't want to say was wrong, but it made it hard to enjoy combat when you were surrounded or when getting shot from multiple angles. A 3rd Person view always seems to handle this better. But I respect what they were going for.
MECHANICS
They were simple to understand and easy to follow. More mechanics were introduced overtime. For this game, one of my biggest gripes is the "blue spell kills blue shield": "Rock, Paper, Scissor" gameplay. I hate not being able to play any style I want and being "railroaded" into doing exactly what I am told to and removing my freedom of how to play. I don't want games to feel like a chore, nor do I want it to feel like a job; with a boss micromanaging me. On a more positive note, the puzzles were well implemented in this game and I think they struck a happy medium between difficulty and being approachable for "puzzle haters".
Crafting is meaningful and easy to navigate
PACING
This game was pretty good at moving the story along. Sometimes there was backtracking, but the story could be done from start to finish with no "go grind" sections of the story. Side content was completely optional during the story.
UI/UE
Nice and clear and menus were easy to navigate. The UI had just enough necessary info on the screen, but not too much to overload the player. Crafting was clear, missions were easy to track. I really appreciate easy-to-navigate menus!
The UI is great in Immortals of Aveum
BOSS QUALITY
Bosses are well designed "set pieces" like you would see in a Sony game, such as Spider-Man or God of War. But they are also only really killable in one way. Red spell to break red bubbles and blue for the blue. Again, this kind of thing isn't my favourite mechanic, as mentioned earlier. There are some side bosses to kill that are extremely tough for those wanting a challenge too.
ENEMY VARIETY
By late game you are fighting the same enemies as early on but now they sometimes have "shields". Meaning you have to hit them with a set colour spell to break the "shield" or you will do little to no damage with a different colour spell. Some bosses were reused to become normal enemies practically immediately after the boss fights. Which isn't a terrible idea as some games, such as Elden Ring, reuse a lot of bosses. Here, however, it felt like they tried to keep the budget down by reusing assets.
Warp point to a secret side boss that proves
quite the challenge for those who seek it
GAMEPLAY VARIETY
There
is no real ability to make "builds" or spec to be a "Pure Blue Spell
Mage" with how the game is designed. Which is a shame and a missed
opportunity. Again, another reason I do not like the "rock, paper,
scissor" setup with being forced to utilize all three colours of magic
in a more balanced way instead of being able to lean into one colour and
being a master of it.
REPLAYABILITY
Unless you vibe extremely well with the gameplay you will be finished after your first playthrough.
BONUS - 2/4
Immortals of Aveum grabs some extra points here for having 3 Colorblind modes and giving the option to remap controls on PC. Please note, controls can not be remapped on controller.
OVERALL - 73/100
GOOD
Immortals of Aveum leans heavily into it's visual fidelity and it seems like the development team was relying on it to carry their game. Some developers seemingly want to make "movie-like" games with loads of cinematics, and they push the story to the forefront of the game. The issue is that high visual fidelity does not prevent something from looking or feeling generic, and that's how I felt about Immortals of Aveum. From the story, to the characters and even the combat; to a lesser extent. Generic overall. I see their vision, and on paper this is a great idea. But there needed to be (at least) more depth to combat for it to shine in a sea of better game.
TL;DR 73 (Good) Pick up Immortals of Aveum if you enjoy being "wowed" by flashy visuals and great sound. With a forgettable story and characters, hope to enjoy the combat, but even that leaves a lot to be desired.
PICK UP IMMORTALS OF AVEUM HERE:
PlayStation - https://amzn.to/4cxfDYy
Xbox - https://amzn.to/45yThUh
PC - https://www.cdkeys.com/immortals-of-aveum-pc-steam
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