Combat is not a high point of Avowed. Though I found the game to broadly be average (which is a polite way of saying ‘below average’ for the prestige of its studio), there were some high points. Enjoyable character moments, a sense of discovery, putting mushrooms in your face, that whole deal. But combat, with clunky animations, incredibly slow weapon swapping, high stamina drain, and no lock on, was not one of them. So it’s especially baffling that one of the most common enemies makes you do each battle twice.
Enter the Priest. Every form of enemy has a priest. Whether it’s the kobold-equivalent xaurips, the cursed Dreamscourge, the mushroom people, or just regular human soldiers, any cluster of note has a Priest in their ranks. The Priest has one job – to heal people. Right off the bat, I have to say, I don’t like this. I didn’t even like Lorelei using Rest in Pokemon Blue. Unless you’re a boss with a distinct second phase mechanic, I think it’s bad form for enemies to heal in battle. But the Priests really take the Bread of Christ.
Avowed’s Combat Is Too Hectic For Healers
The Priests of Avowed are the most powerful healers I’ve ever seen in a game. In an instant, they take any enemy from the brink of death to the prime of life. It’s an unstoppable full heal ability. I actually turned the difficulty down to Easy, and then to the even easier Story Time, specifically to see if it weakened Priests. It did not. While my power rose and every other enemy blow was reduced to a tickle, these Priests would not be moved.
The counter, you may argue if you have a feverish need to shield Avowed from any and all reasonable criticisms, is that these Priests are themselves quite weak. They go down relatively easy, and have no other attack to speak of. They heal their teammates, run away, and then heal their teammates again. The tactic is obvious – go for the Priest first. It’s literally shoot ’em all and let God sort ’em out, especially if armed with a fancy arquebus.
But this tactic has two major problems. Firstly, I mentioned before the lack of lock on. In Avowed’s hectic combat, whether playing in first- or third-person, it’s hard to hunt one specific enemy, especially when the priest wearing a brown robe instead of a grey helmet is not much of a distinction in the heat of battle. Once they start glowing green and healing, it gets a little easier, but then you have to battle through a re-energised crowd you cannot cut down because their health keeps rising. The Priests are too slippery for taking them out first to be a viable tactic. And besides, Avowed’s combat does not encourage tactical play so much as it does slowly conserving your various bars and unleashing a spectral bear to solve the problem for you.
The Priests Don’t Even Fight Fair
The second issue is these Priests are not good timekeepers. Very often, you’ll start a battle and be charged by a Chief or Bruiser or Barbarian or whatever the moniker is for this group’s Big Melee Dude. Once you get to about halfway down, which may have damaged you quite a bit if this was in the overworld between rests, the Priest will emerge from a cave or hut and fully heal them. This makes everything you’ve done so far pointless, and gives you a much stronger enemy to push past to take out the Priest.
This is so much worse when you’re on a Bounty. On every map, there are five or six tough enemies with specific Bounty quests. Some are individuals, where the task is ‘go kill this one guy’. Others are groups, where the task is ‘clear this area of bandits’. Priests being part of this second one is fair game, and to be expected, even if I still hate how Priests function in general. But often, the solo Bounties will be happened across by some random marauders, including Priests, who then fully heal your target after you’ve almost killed them, despite presumably being complete strangers in this world.
Worst of all, your own healing takes an age. Giatta, your party’s healer, can’t match the Priest but at least gets close. Health potions are below her standards though, as are your own spells, and the classic RPG mechanic of eating food to heal causes you to instead grow a hypothetical health bar, which your actual health will eventually recover into if you manage to survive the next few minutes on your own, which makes it entirely pointless as a healing mechanic. Meanwhile, the toughest enemies in the game can just call a Priest to exorcise their damage in an instant. I wonder if there’s a way to change my character’s religion to worship whatever god these weird lizards get their powers from.
- Released
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February 18, 2025