The fundamental problem with Immortals of Aveum is that it is so utterly standard. I’ve never seen a game exactly like it, but I have certainly seen a lot of games that are very similar. I suppose it isn’t bad, and there is clear love put into the project, but I feel the effort was misplaced.

The narrative is what really hampers any potential enjoyment that might’ve been had. It’s worldbuilding is so simple yet has that problem a lot of games do where the characters just start throwing so many names and concepts around that it jsut becomes white noise. Seriously, basically every single line out of any character’s mouth with involve the name of someone, some place or some high concept regarding the political and magical systems. The result is a world that feels alien in all the wrong ways - it just existed as nice set dressing to me as I found it so utterly inpenetrable for the majority of the runtime. However in the closing hours of the game I did grow to appreciate the world building a bit more. The ending stretch of the plot, while flawed, is satisfying enough and I found that I was almost growing to like the game by the end.

The characters all leave nothing to latch on to. Both allies and villains alike are all incredibly uninteresting at best, while at their worst they can be absolutely intolerable. The dialogue is bad, both for its over-indulgence in exposition and just because they are poorly written lines. If I said it was Marvel-esque dialogue, that would be an apt fit - loathed as I am to use that as a point of comparison. It sacrifices it’s own potentially gripping tone to cram one-liners in all the time. Certain characters are worse for this than others, but the worst ones always seem to be hanging around to drag everyone down. All these weak links circle around a protagonist who is simply uninteresting and unlikable. I don’t care for his story one bit and I found him to be gratingly whiny. What happens to him right at the end is one of the laziest bits of writing I’ve seen in a hot minute, but I won’t spoil it.

The combat is the game’s fundamental flaw, which is a shame because it could’ve been the high point. However, throwing bolts of light at enemies that have no visable reaction is the antithesis of a visceral feeling combat engine. It’s sad, because there’s some okay ideas in there. The range of different spells is impressive, and the various enemy types are designed to be best tackled with a varied approach. But it just doesn’t feel good - and when the health bars get spongy in the mid to late game it feels even worse. I’d praise the game’s enemy variety, but it unfortunately stagnates about a third of the way in. The game opens with so many new types of foe being constantly introduced, and there’s a cool variety of early game bosses too. But then it just stops; boss fights become very infrequent and most of those early game bosses keep getting brought back as frustrating standard encounters, bogging down the pacing with their huge health bars and ridiculously high damaging attacks.

The game’s art direction was the clear focus and I will admit it does a great job. While the gameplay becomes repetitive, the world remains grand in scale and unique in presentation. The highlight for me has to be the sequence where you battle in and around the giant body of a colossus as it wades through the sea - that was just great start to finish. It is graphically very impressive (despite semi-frequent frame drops), however there is too much visual clutter during combat as everyone throws their light powers around. As stunning as the environments are, everything becomes a blur of flashing lights and HUD elements when any battle begins. It is common to not be able to see the enemy you are trying to shoot, which is great evidence that maybe they should've toned down the effects a bit.

In conclusion, this is a flawed title that is hampered by a lot of mixed elements. The open world, the gear mechanics, the skill tree; it’s all unnecessary additions to what could've been a much tighter experience. It might also have benefitted from writers that actually know how to write compelling dialogue.

I had never heard of Immortals of Aveum until it dropped on Playstation Plus. I decided to check it out based on a quick trailer. The idea of a mage based FPS did sound like fun and for AAA budget and it being free why wouldn't I at least try it.

Immortals while not spectacular was decent fun for a good bit. The only real drab elements for me was that for one the game was too long for my liking and quickly lost it's luster halfway through with most the game elements already at your disposal and the story I found to be very dull. I appreciate the attempt of making a massive fantasy world for what is essentially a FPS shooter but I found the world and logic a bit too fantastical and overly complex to really get into. While there is a good bit of lore and story building all throughout, the plot is rather simple and straight forward. It just didn't hold my attention. I really don't have much to say about it except for "meh" honestly.

As for the gameplay you have three different colored kind of magics that you can use at any time. Blue magic which is a more precise straight forward shot, Red Magic that explodes in a wide space and Green Magic that shoots many small projectiles in a single path. While that may sound limiting, I really didn't find it to be that in practice. You can switch between them at anytime like a gun in any other FPS. You constantly find new bangles that change the properities of your magic that change their stats such as damage, range, and number of shots. You can really choose which style you want and roll with it. The game does a pretty good job at rolling out gold, upgrades and secrets and really encourage exploration. You can pretty much back travel to any point at any time and find something that will help you solve an old puzzle or get further in an area. Theres a good number of side activities that you can do and I never felt like I was required to do them but if I wanted to I could.

One of the things I really like about Immortals of Aveum is that the magic does feel really good to use. Yes at the end of the day they do kind of feel like guns but the visual and audio design of the magic attacks looks and feels good. The constant particle effects from both player and enemy can really light up the screen and be a visual wonder. However having said that the other side of the coin though is that, that same splender and visual noises does dillute your view of what is happening all around you. I have never played a game as much as Aveum that I really can't tell what is hitting me or what I'm taking damage from. There are so many times that I just see my health drop from 100% to 10% in a blink of an eye. Thankfully you can heal instantly and heals are plentiful but so many encounters that I have lost or took damage from felt so cheap and confusing as I didn't even know why it was happening. I'm taking it up to visual clutter but I'd be lying if I felt like some enemies just hit fast, quiet and hard and I just don't notice it. Enemies usually go down very easily or can be quite tanky. Some enemies I feel like I shoot like 50 times before they are taken down. The combat felt unbalanced.

Immortals of Aveum really was a middle of the road game for me. Held my interest in wanting to finish it but by the halfway mark I was ready for it to be over. It's fine just not spectacular.

this game is way better than i thought it'd be

the world and lore are way more interesting and unique than i would've given it credit for, the combat is fun and (literally) colorful, lots of interesting story beats and threads (some of which don't pay off admittedly), the dialogue is mostly AWFUL but the characters are pretty likable nonetheless

kind of a shame it flopped at launch. i wouldn't mind seeing a sequel

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.

Genuinely dreadful on nearly every aspect. Despite trying to "get my money's worth" from a stupid purchase of this game an hour before it was announced to headline April's PS+ offerings, I could not force myself through it.

Gameplay is vapid with barely any variety in level and enemy design, performance is god-awful despite being obviously upscaled with shimmery/muddy visuals, and the plot is unbearable with the worst protagonist I've ever been forced to play as. Every character is a Marvel-quipping smart-ass with ceaselessly annoying chatter and "jokes" that makes a lobotomy look attractive by comparison.

I got just over 40% according to my Playstation but I couldn't take it any longer, selling my copy and deleting this garbage off console storage for good.

How the hell do you make wizard FPS this boring?!

I will bet $1000 that some EA producer said "In our focus testing, we found players didn't understand how to play the game." Which resulted in the worst tutorial since shooters from the genres dark-age of 2007.

EA apparently spent $40mil USD on marketing for this game. They literally blew so much money on marketing, that it was too scared to risk letting the devs make something actually fun. Now all those devs have lost their jobs and the earth has been salted so thoroughly that I will never get a Doctor Strange shooter.

This is all too sad. My hearts go out to the devs who clearly wanted to make something cool, and were held back in the most blatant example of publisher meddling I've seen in the last 10 years. Because not one creative that works in this industry could possibly have wanted to let this happen.

I should finally get around to finishing Amid Evil...

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.

I had such a strange relationship with this game....At first the gameplay was fun, like a magic DOOM without the gore....Then it became the same 10 enemies over and over and over. The story was boring....Then good....Then boring again, but overstayed its welcome. As I complete this game though, it wasn't that bad. Once you found some great spells and good gear, you really got into the groove and I can see how my playstyle would be different to others.

I was expecting a graphical showpiece though and this game is ugly....So very ugly. The lava looks like cheese.

I went into this game mostly blind and it was a very fun ride.
I had heard very little about this game besides it not having a huge reception at launch, so I didn't much pay attention until it recently came to PS+

I had fun with mutliple aspects of it, the visuals are very creative and the world and it's set pieces very memorable and unique, the story is goofy more often than not with a looot of "Marvel" writing bits, but actually original plot twists and world rules.
The combat is fun albeit a tad repetitive but in the run time of the game it never starts to feel like a bother, plus the clear inspirations from Doctor Strange type magic leads to a very fun fantasy combat loop.

It is worth a try, but the biggest down point is the full price, the game shines the most when you feel like you only paid for a AA experience.

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.

Trading guns for magic, you play as one of the special few who can wield all three colours of the arcane. You are armed with Blue (a Rifle), Red (a Shotgun), and Green (a Machine Gun) to mow down your foes. The writing is fun, and the voice acting is good. Although, you might struggle to find a character you actually like, as they are all different shades of asshole. The game claims you can build your character to fit your playstyle, focusing on powering up one colour or evenly spreading your points across all three. However, it then throws you encounters that require specific colours to defeat enemies, spitting in the face of those claims. Sometimes, a game can simply be "good". They don't have to all be masterpieces.