Recent reviews by guttural

Super fun. It looks absolutely stunning, the world is crazy good, the music is awesome, gameplay is extremely fun and well designed, as can be expected from Obsidian, they're just expert craftspeople. Combat as a wizard is a blast and quite deep, also appropriately hard.

Exploration and verticality/parcour gameplay is very important in Avowed and it's very rewarding. I've played through Pillars of Eternity and played POE2 for a good 10 hours, so I'm familiar with the universe.

I really like this game. Will update the review as soon as I'm done.

P.S I tried playing this on Linux with multiple versions of Proton including the newest glorious eggroll releases. Sadly I've had regular (5-10 minute interval) freezes of the graphics of the game, making it unplayable in my mind. The sound kept playing, so the game did not crash. It ran great besides that though so maybe patches will improve this for me.
I have for now resorted to play this on Windows. The steam cloud saves do work cross platform, so that was no issue in contrast to POE2 (still not fixed to this day).

Good game. Exploration, platforming, atmosphere, music are great, striking art style. Ran well on Steam Deck and Linux, though it's way better on a huge ultra wide than on Deck. I think the game is mechanically too shallow and requires its visuals on a big screen to function. Which it then does pretty well. They should have done way, way more with the lore / background setting.

Absolutely 10/10. Stunned how good this game is.
An absolute triumph of storytelling, dialogue writing and voice acting. Tonally, it's basically what you know from the movies, funny, full of banter, but also really hard hitting emotionally. Pretty blown away by this.
The music mixes typical epic orchestral pieces with 80's gems, basically one face melting banger after another.
The world building and detail of all the locations is spectacular.
Game play is rock solid, full of over the top action pieces, crazy enemy designs, combos with your buddies, all the good stuff.
All in all, there is not a singular dull moment in this game and it did clock in at a very respectable 17 hours for me. One of the best games I've played in years, it just hits all the marks for this franchise perfectly.

It's a typical Ubisoft game in the vein of modern Assassins's Creeds and Far Crys.

The opening scene is ridiculous and assumes you are an utter fool. Going in as a detective with your team, massively outgunned and outnumbered. Apprehending a violent criminal amongst his highly armed fanatical followers. Walking him down to the helicopter through his mob of armed thugs right behind him and with zero back cover. What could go wrong?
This is beyond suspension of disbelief, this is just the Ubisoft writers writing for their target audience: imbiciles and children.

Another example. There's a side quest guy who believes in aliens and talks all kind of nonsense. You do the side quest and they insert some boring fetch quest and some supernatural stuff into the game that completely breaks any immersion that might have been there. But doesn't that sound fun? Crazy guy talking nonsense and aliens? You like that right? It's just absolute drivel that is neither funny nor interesting game play and world building wise.

The game tries to reward you for meaningless and boring activities at every turn like a spoiled child. You fly a plane with flight mechanics that a handicapped chimp could master drunk. You do some mind meltingly boring fetch quest or you clear some outposts with three brain dead and harmless NPCs and the game designers reward you with flashy popups and enthusiastic NPC dialogue that tells you what a good boy you are.
It's basically a Pavlovian experiment on their subjects testing how dull they are and what their tolerance for pain is.

Technically and in terms of presentation, this game is top notch, as is standard with Ubisoft. It runs great, the world looks amazing etc. The gun play is great. It even runs flawlessly out of the box on Linux.

If you used to like these kinds of games and feel like you've seem to have outgrown them: you're right. Don't play this game, it's bad.
If you're a 12 year old or mentally impaired or you're just an adult with the mind of a child and you can find the fun in anything: play this. You'll enjoy it.

I played 5 hours of this and I ultimatley decided that this is just not for me anymore. The main quest might be okay, but I simply can't countenance the amount of pain and time invested necessary to experience it.

Great DLC, more excellent content for an already excellent game. Worth it.

Amazing DLC.

Great game.

This is my first Owlcat game and it is hands down the best Warhammer 40k game I've ever played. Which is not a particularly hard thing to accomplish. So I'd rather say this is one of the best RPGs I've played in a long time (the other all time faves being Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity 1) and one of the best games I've played in a long time (among those best are Cyberpunk 2077 and the Valve Half Life series).

The adherence to and respect for the lore in all respects (settings, characters, visual style, stories, etc.) is almost unmatched. Owlcat really did their homework on this. It straight up feels like a Games Workshop creation. They even used the correct and better Astartes Design. Amazing.

The environments, the visual style are just flawless. It captures what 40k is so well, it's honestly shocking how good this is.

The sound effects and sound track are amazing. There are some bangers that almost reach Mechanicus levels of bangerdom.

The combat system seems simple at first, but the longer you play you realize how detailed it is and how deep it really is. It's just incredibly fun. Same with the space combat, I really wish they would have put more into the game, because I enjoyed it so much.

The main story is good, fits into the universe, is well written and so on. But there really is no main story. The main story is that you are a Rogue Trader and you have to deal with many crises that threaten your domain. All of the "small" stories are awesome. A lot of them deal with your domain, others are about the companions you chose. The latter are just great (including the first DLC).

The game really immerses you into the universe, being a Rogue Trader, being in the 40k universe, exploring new worlds etc. The sense of wonder and exploration is incredible. All of that in the peerless 40k universe that I love so much. Flawless.

The scope of this game is mind boggling. You think it's over and there's no stories or places left to discover and the game hits you with new locations and enemy types and a new chapter to explore. And contrary to other games I never wished it was over. I was 100% engaged and immersed at all times and wished there was more there.
It took at least 120 hours for the main game and 10 for the first DLC. And I enjoyed all of those hours.

I activated the first DLC when I was about 90% done with the main game. Since the DLC is compatible with the main game, this worked very well. I completed all the DLC missions before the point of no return of the main campaign and that worked well. While this worked well, because I wasn't finished with the main campaign yet, I would have personally preferred if the DLC was playable after you finished the main campaign and the game not having points of no return.
Though this is a fantastic game, I'm not sure I will have time to play it again all the way through to really integrate all the DLC into my play through. I'd rather continue with my last save and then play through any DLC that may come out and exclusively enjoy that new content.

All in all this is hands down the best (c)RPG in the WH40k universe, a superb (c)RPG in its own right and probably the most fun and engaging game I played in a long time.

10/10

P.S: Argenta is the best. May her bolter barrages never cease to instill fear in both heretic and mutant and may her DPS forevermore please HIS name. Praise the Emperor!

Excellent. HL3 pls.

Good.