Avadon: The Black Fortress Review - Politics… What Is It Good For?

Avadon: The Black Fortress is an RPG game by indie development studio Spiderweb Software. It’s an old school RPG game with elements firmly rooted with old classic RPG games. This is not to say Avadon is a hard game to understand, on the contrary. Avadon is apparently the first chapter in a new series by the developers. It’s also quite an epic and long game(these are getting rarer these days).

You start out Avadon with a choice of four characters. You can either be a Blademaster(warrior), a Shadow Walker(back stabbing stealthy guy), a Shaman(magic gal that can conjure beasts to help out), or a sorceress(wizard gal with…well… magic). There is absolutely no customistation offered other than being able to change the default names of these characters(which I just went with anyway).

Slow start killing rats. But it gets more interesting a bit later on.

You are plonked down in the entrance of the Black Fortress, the beacon of power for the Kingdom of Avadon. An eccentric old man tries to pacify a pair of dogs. They don’t look quite right and it falls into your hands to put down these angry mutts. The ‘Keeper’(essentially the King) of this fortress is Red Beard, a man whom you hear many questionable things off. He does anything necessary to stay in power and remain a political power in the realm. But in effect, upholding peace around his realm.


How Does The RPG System Stack Up?

Like any other RPG, Avadon has the usual equipping your characters(this is a party based RPG, you’ll role on missions with 2 other party members) with stuff you find or buy. Speaking of buying, things are really expensive in Avadon. You wont be rolling in dough in the first few hours(even to some extent, later in the game as well). Health potions cost a lot and you’ll have to make the most out of them. And you’ll definitely need em’ as combat is bloody challenging.

Not much in terms of character customisation. You get to pick 2 characters to join you on your  quests.

There’s one thing which I feel is a bit unfortunate about the inventory system and that is the fact that your changes on your character don’t show on your character. Your characters will always look the same on screen(which might disappoint those that would love to gawk at all the cool gear and loot you’ve equipped on your characters). Speaking of loot, one cool feature is that you got a junk bag. You’ll be able to place ‘junk’ in the junk bag and sell it at a vendor with a single click of a mouse… pretty nifty.

Unlike modern RPG’s(read, Dragon Age II), there is no common inventory for all your characters. Equipment you place in other characters inventory will stay with them. You’ll have to be careful about not leaving health potions with another character(if you decide to swap party members) when you go out on a quest, which you’ll have no access to their inventory once you’ve left Avadon (Avadon acts as a hub of sorts, you collect quests here and replenish your potions and do rune crafting).



There are also these things called scarabs that act as a modifier. You can equip your character with scarabs that may impart a positive effect like healing your character over time etc(and even have multiple scarabs) but the more you have the more negative effects you’ll have to deal with them. Your character attributes are standard fare RPG with Strength(makes your character hit harder), Dexterity(increases initiative and makes your character move sooner), Intelligence, and Endurance(increases health points). If you think you know what these stats mean, you’re probably right. It’s pretty similar to other RPG’s.


Skill Trees

Each character has his/her own skill tree(class dependent). As you level up, you’ll be able to assign one stat point on your attribute and a few skill points to invest in your skill tree. The skill tree is filled with abilities for you to select and some abilities are off a higher tier and require a certain proficiency with the skill directly below it. Due to the challenging nature of the combat, making the right choice can be incredibly important(it depends on who you’re going to roll with in your party and strategise how you want to build each character up).

Skill trees! No trees were harmed in the making of this game(I hope)

Each class also has three different specialisations that you can pick when you hit level 5, 12 and 25. Allowing you to further customise the role of your character. Again, nothing completely new in an RPG. You'll be able to pick it up quite easily.


Combat - It's My Turn To Whack You

Combat in Avadon is turn based like in the old school RPG’s such as Fallout(the first and the second one) and Arcanum. There are action points(all party members get 8 action points) which limits how much you can do in a turn. Combat reminds me much of how battles are done in the Heroes of Might & Magic series.

It takes places on the same game world and it has that same element of moving characters on a tile based map with obstacles & environmental objects that you can use to funnel enemies into your warriors, while keeping your sorceress or shaman safely behind to do their magic stuff.

Use the environment to funnel enemies

Projectile(and magic) require line of sight for you to even use them. Hit and misses are mathematically calculated and pop up over the heads of the enemies(like so many RPG’s). However, I found ranged weapons to be not so effective. They certainly do a lot less damage than the melee equivalent and if you have many ranged units, you can slowly withle down a group of enemies. But since you only bring along 3 party member(including your own character), I find ranged weapons to be only useful as secondary weapons.

Combat is very challenging though, and you’ll have to use health potions and your magic well if you want to survive the tougher combat situations. Thankfully you can lower the difficulty anytime during the game, so if you just want to move on and get more of the story of Avadon, you can. To me, combat only interested me only for a while. I got tired of the same rigmarole(don’t get me wrong, there are many different new types of enemies, but it’s the same course of action every time). It certainly isn’t as good as any pure turn based tactical game. Merely okay.


The Story – Fantastical Magnum PI

The strength of Avadon: The Black Fortress is definitely the story. It’s what compelled me to continue playing through the game. In the world of Avadon, all nations hold onto the pact. An agreement that no nations shall declare war on anyone in the pact and to uphold peace. This pact is policed by Avadon, and in many of these places, Avadon is seen as a big bully(I think you might be able to draw parallels with real world global politics I suppose in a way).

Get used to burning away gold on potions

You initially wont know who the bad guy is, who is trustable, or even if you are doing the right thing policing everyone else around(frankly sometimes you feel like a big bully rather than keeping up the peace). As you continue on, you start to learn about a plot to remove someone very powerful, which you can have a part to play in. It’s one of those RPG games that have multiple branches and variance in terms of outcome of a quest or how an NPC(non playable character) reacts to you.

As you interact with book stands(in libraries) or some objects, you get more fleshed out text on the world and lore of the game in the in game codex(yes it  has a codex system that archives all information you get about the world and lore). I find the writing and story to be mostly pretty good overall. It’s unique, entertaining and motivates you to keep playing the game to find out what happens. What are the motivations of a particular factions? Or just what the hell is happening? Why cant we all just... get along?


Conclusion

Avadon: The Black Fortress is dated in a lot of departments, clearly technically limited by the engine. It’s not going to visually impress you, in fact, many older RPG’s look even better than this. This becomes pretty damned obvious when you realise there is just three animation routines for all characters, which includes walking, attacking and getting hit.

Fortunately, Avadon: The Black Fortress has a unique plot with branches and different outcomes that somewhat makes up for the lack of customisation, poor presentation, and a merely okay RPG system. If you love reading a good fantasy novel(and you’ll have to LOVE reading as there is a tonne of text to burn through with absolutely no voice acting) or immersing yourself in a original and well thought out fantastical world, Avadon: The Black Fortress plays like an interesting play your own adventure book(in a way). You can try out the demo over here. 




Pros:

• An interesting narrative that is not necessarily cliched(which it might seem in the beginning)
  
• Some branching story.
  
• It’s realistic like Fallout in the sense that you can’t go into people’s home and loot their stuff. But unlike Fallout, the game just completely stops you from picking stuff up in peoples homes.
  
• Interesting party members with their own characteristics and story.
• While nothing in the RPG system stands out as being unique, on the other hand, Avadon is an easy game to pick up and play. It's pretty familiar ground if you're an RPG fan.

Cons:

• The game is a slow burn. Starts off slowly.
  
• Poor visuals with bad animation(very limited animation), despite having sharp texture resolutions.
  
• Lack of character customisation
  
• Turn based combat is pretty uninteresting. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s damned challenging(you can lower difficulty in game if you want to just breeze through the combat to get to the story bits).

Verdict: Uninspired RPG system but unique and interesting narrative