A fast paced story driven shooter that told me I could “play my own way” in terms of upgrades and weapons - boy was that wrong.

The story wasn’t anything to really shout home about; had a few twists but sometimes was hard to keep up at times with how much lore there is to the story and characters.

Gameplay got very complicated - for me anyway. It was nice to have a wide variety of spells, but then creating enemies that could only be damaged by certain ones just made the combat turn into chaos.

Nothing really stood out - but I wouldn’t say it’s an overly bad game either. Worth a play if you have PS Plus.

Immortals of Aveum is a somewhat fresh take on First Person Shooters. Instead of guns you use spells that function similarly to different types of guns.

IoA has an aesthetic that I like to call “MagiPunk”. Medieval or High Fantasy with Steampunk/Cyberpunk elements and influences, instead of science or technology, everything is the result of extremely advanced (often vibrant) magic. From character design to writing styles and themes to even the soundtrack, the influences are obvious and blend together pretty well.

Combat gameplay is fun and fast paced, with some puzzle elements. Although some fights can be overwhelming, with a few too many enemies (with some having annoying shields that are always up), and the fights end up being just red, green, and blue lights flashing all over the screen, which can be disorienting.

The story is basic, with almost MCU levels of writing, including a “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Almost every character refuse to be upfront about their feelings and goals, constantly flip-flopping their relationships and ideals, and keeping even the smallest of information a secret from the protag, in an attempt to make 5-D chess plays for… reasons. If even just one character took the time to explain things to the protag, there wouldn’t be as many problems. Instead it’s just a mess, filled with gaslighting and “I don’t have time to explain, just do it!”.

Definitely check it out for the gameplay when it’s on sale.

Played this on Xbox series X and it couldn't even maintain 30 fps.

I genuinely think there's a core to Aveum that might have been good but it's barely half baked and personally I got sick of it and it myriad shortcomings only 6 chapters in.

This game on Xbox has no:
Map deadzones so your map will spin or drift for no reason
No control remapping so have fun using your consumable mana gems trying to open chests and talk to people because both are on the same button and as a hold as well as slew of other terrible control binds by default

I was quite suprised by this game in a positive way. It is certainly a game where the main character suffers from some 'marvel dialogue' which is a no for many people. I was able to get past that, the gameplay was fun and the story strangely ended up captivating me after a while. The main character thankfully got a lot better but there was still some marvel jokes here and there. I think partly the reason that I ended up enjoying it is because I was open to it, had low expectations and well.. then just enjoyed it. Many people are quite harsh and very quick to hate things, you are allowed to enjoy things even if they're not masterpieces.

I played the game through gamepass so no money spent on it myself (apart from the gamepass sub ofc) and I would not reccommend anyone getting it for a full price. Either play through gamepass or get it on sale.

I knew this game hadn't been received well, but given that it was free on PSN+ this month, I thought I'd give it a shot. It actually opens strong. The world and lore and premise seemed pretty cool. But man does it have some issues. I made it about 2/3 of the way through the game before tapping out. The combat is just a mess of particle effects and screen filling colors. I get what they're going for: Doom Eternal but with Harry Potter spells. But they only got the formula about 50% of the way there. It just doesn't work. And it certainly isn't helped by some absolutely awful writing. We're talking well below MCU quip standards here. Also, at a pivotal point, the protagonist makes an absolutely terrible decision that the player has no control over. Then you spend a half hour getting reamed out about it even though you didn't even want to do it in the first place. It's just... not fun. Throw in some terrible performance and weak generic open-world filler activities and you've got yourself a game that I can't really recommend even at the price of zero dollars.

Where to start with this game... It is way too ambitious for a debut title, and it feels like they should have committed to a linear title with much smaller scope before making something like this.

All the mechanics are there, there's light metroid-vania progression, there's a loot game, there's first person shooting, there are puzzles. None of these mechanics are quite as satisfying as they should be, and maybe the mechanics ancillary to the first person shooting could have been missing from a hypothetical first title, and maybe it would all be a bit better if something of this scope was a sequel.

As for the first person shooting, this is the meat-and-potatoes of the game, and the abstraction of magic-as-guns doesn't work for me. It takes away a lot about why guns are a great abstraction for a video game, like being limited in how much you can shoot by ammo, being able to pick up another gun if you're bored with your current one, and a lot of the customisation modern games embrace by way of weapon attachments. What shooting is here is let down by having to stick with the best set of 3 guns you have (limited to one precise pistol/rifle type, one splash-damage shotgun/grenade launcher type, and one bullethose-y SMG type), until you find one better than what you have. Enemies are mostly uninteresting as they boil down to be either cannon fodder or a bullet-sponge that does big areas of damage, for a specific weapon colour, or a boss. The end boss is a recycled version of a mini-boss that then becomes a normal enemy, and one boss is the same as a mini-boss "but much bigger this time". You do get tools to use in combat along-side the core shooting, 6 extra small range or single target abilities, an ultimate beam, 3 tools you can swap between, but I forgot about most of them for the vast majority of the game.

The puzzles are a lot of "shoot a blue, red, and green things in the wall with the appropriate weapon within a small time limit". The metroid-vania aspects can actually confuse the player a little bit because theyre used to gate areas with story progression sometimes. You'll get an ability you can use on things in the world and you will get new loot, cool! You will then find another puzzle of the same kind, and try as you might, you cant complete it, only to discover it is actually only active at certain points in the story. The world that ties them together isn't particularly interesting to go through, the art direction doesn't seem particularly inspired and you also have a "lava world" and "snow world", and "shanty town".

The rest of it, is just a bit janky. There are lots of interactions that are implemented in an ameteur-ish way. Interaction prompts require you to be close to them AND look at them to be interact-able, grapple hooks have a cool-down and the leash has a cool-down too, the map is cluttered and difficult to use with a mouse and keyboard, dialogue menus have a distinct delay between selecting an option and the game acknowledging your choice. I could bring up so many little interactions that are just irritating and could have used polish, but if I did this would end up the length of a novel.

The story is a mess. Dialogue is instantly dislikeable in that over-done Joss Whedon manner where several characters don't take this serious world of a magical forever-war seriously. Characters seem to see twists coming, waive away questions the player might have about aspects of the world, or just belligerently withhold information seemly only because you're only supposed to find certain things out later in the script. There are so many proper nouns to keep track of that it becomes very hard to remember of which one is a faction, which one is a place, which one is a person, and which ones even matter at all. Otherwise you have a pretty standard-fare story about war, resources, and betrayals.

I am generally not a graphics buff, but I do appreciate when a game looks nice, and looks unique. I don't see how people seemed for fawn over the game's technology when it runs pretty poorly on a good spec PC. Trying to use the game's settings menu to dial in settings is basically pointless as there are no explanations for what settings do, just an obtuse points-based system that doesn't accurately reflect what each setting does or what it's performance impact is.

I didn't hate my time with this game, but it does seem like the team stretched themselves very thin for their first project, and it shows in almost every inch of the game-play. Again, I would have liked to seen this game's combat mechanics in a linear, smaller game first, and then a game like this with much more polish in a sequel, but that is not what we got.