Decent. It is no PoE in terms of writing and lore. In fact big chunks of the lore are kinda ignored, which is frustrating. What is new is in general interesting and fun, although predictable. This was rather important to me, since PoE games are among my favorites when it comes to writing and lore, I did had my hopes down though since I saw that most people responsible for PoE were not working on this project.
But overall:
Graphics - great, really like how the game looks, environment, characters, magic etc.
Music - forgettable, big step down from PoE
Combat - pretty fun, but too easy, including the highest difficulty, that I had to switch to at the end of act 1 (out of 4). Too little options to experiment though, due to points and gear restrictions. It does however succeed at making you feel very, very strong. Specially as a mage. It is nice to be on the other side for once, as a change of pace from all the Dark Souls wanna be. Since this game is 80% run around and fight, being "pretty fun" might not be enough, but that mostly comes from enemies not being varied enough or not interesting enough
Exploration - its nice cause the land is beautiful and designed well. You constantly have a thing around the corner that you want to explore cause it looks interesting. However rewards are usually materials for upgrades, which are too sparse and expensive to allow experimentation anyway. On the other hand materials to change the "mode" of an unique weapon (a choice of 1 from 2 options) are so abundant and cheap, they just feel useless to collect and look for. From time to time you find an unique weapon or armor you probably wont use and will have to sell/recycle for barely anything.
Story, writing - Main story, as mentioned, is fine. It sill focuses around metaphysical concepts as PoE did. Relationship between people, religion and nature, and how those intertwine is explored in a pretty smooth, non "ham-fisted" way. It does not feel preachy or surface level and your choices in that main story are interesting, and reflected well at the end. The writing however is very uneven. Main story is mostly good, with the exception of the main villain being just a minor character from PoE2 with no agency, no competence, and not a good reasoning. Uneven writing shows in companions, and side quests too. What I enjoyed in Obsidian writing is that they always tried to be objective and give you an option to have a character that believes in what is says and can justify it. In PoE you can be an asshole, but an asshole that backs up your rudeness by competence. In Avowed, you get into discussion with one of the companions about the merits of the Aedyr empire that you are an envoy of. As an arcane scholar, and educated character that attended university and juggled imperial courts, my 3 options in a conversation where Giatta said "monarchy bad" were: "say nothing" "I guess you are right" "drool stupidly", because the writer for Giatta can't come up with a reason why someone coming from a powerful empire might see benefits of a system that made it powerful. It is like they are afraid to put themselves in shoes of characters that they might possibly not like. If you write whatever, game, script, short story, with that attitude, you will never write something that is interesting and thought provoking to either you or the recipient. There were more examples of this, but this conversation about imperialism with Giatta was the biggest offender and most blatant, cause all the options in dialogue were just "you are right, empire bad". Lazy. PoE was trying hard to justify character like Durance, and even that game apparently cut a lot of his reasoning. It felt far more safe and scared that previous game, not touching on events from previous game almost at all was also annoying. The main story was a saving grace along with the remaining 3 companions having good character, stronger dialogue and stories. Yiatzli story line had most interesting choices and Kai was the most thoughtful, while I liked Marius honesty and interjections the most.
Choices - I saw this being a big complaint. I feel there was plenty of choices, although still a big step down from PoE. As choices I also include options to role play (the R in RPG). Those were also huge let down after PoE and in general after what Obsidian has had me get used to in their games. But there is plenty of choices to role play still and choices in quest, actions, main story line, that are reflected or... not. But its still a choice. In real life too, some thing you say are your choice, and don't hugely affect the world around you.
Technical state - plenty of bugs. Got locked out of few achievements and quests. Quests were mostly fixed, but with achievements I am screwed.
Overall I can barely recommend it, but I still do. It is a decent entry to the Eora lore, but one that had potential to be much better.
