Immortals of Aveum Xbox Series X Review

Immortals of Aveum is one of the titles I've been anticipating for a while now. While there is an increasing number of reboots and remasters happening in the gaming industry right now, Immortals of Aveum, on the other hand, promised to deliver a truly fresh experience. Brett Robbins, former creative director of Dead Space 2008 and currently the CEO of Ascendant Studios, spent nearly a decade at Sledgehammer Games as Senior Creative Director and was responsible for the ideas behind many of the best Call of Duty games.

Despite being Ascendant Studios' first project, Immortals of Aveum has many attributes that can be praised, including its stunning visual presentation, which is a direct result of the game's utilization of the Unreal Engine 5 engine. But after completing it and exploring most of its content, I'm still on the fence regarding whether or not it should have been considered a revolutionary game.

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter at heart despite taking place in a magical world where spells take the place of guns. It advertises itself as a thrilling adventure and delivers one of the most spectacular visual experiences. Still, it tries too hard to please everyone and ends up failing at almost everything.

An ever-widening hole called The Wound has sprung up in the middle of a world called Aveum. Wars have raged between Aveum's five kingdoms for years, seeking authority over magic, the currency of their culture. During the last stages of Everwar, the world was covered in blood, and only the kingdoms of Lucium and Rasharn managed to survive. Young Jak, who survives with the help of a gang of thieves, takes advantage of the dire circumstances to unleash his magical abilities—being one of the few in the Aveum universe to have mastered all three forms of magic, rather than which makes him a prominent figure.

In preparation for the Eternal War, in which the realm of Lucium and the dictatorial Rasharn dictatorship struggle over control of the magical arts, Jak receives individualized training. Even though Lucium is on his side, Jak leads a low-key life in Seren, the city of the struggling, among those who can relate to his situation.

Jak is one of the extremely rare Triarchs who can use all three magic hues, Red, Blue, and Green, due to the emotional pressure generated by the events surrounding the attack on their town by the Fire Nation, Rasharn. Jak's unrestrained display of strength catches the eye of Kirkan, commander of the elite warrior club Immortals, who decides to enlist and train him as they plan to launch an assault to guarantee Lucium's victory in Everwar.

There are some major positives and some major drawbacks to Immortals of Aveum. As the primary story unfolds throughout the game's 12 to 13 hours of gameplay, depending on your skills, it becomes clear that this is a mixed bag, with some parts being excellent and others falling flat. Because it's refreshing and new at first, but it gets old and repetitive before the game's conclusion.

The environment Ascendant Studios have created here is fascinating and deserves to be explored further; however, I believe a change in approach was necessary because there are blatant inconsistencies in the attitudes of the game's protagonists and antagonists, which undermine the game's overall seriousness.

As the story progresses, you will find yourself engaged in action almost immediately. There's a lot going on in the main story, and the game would have benefited greatly from giving us a few pauses to take it all in.

While Immortals of Aveum does add one or two new enemy classes with each new zone, the underlying combat and emotional tenor remain consistent across the board. Therefore, it is essentially irrelevant, and the relentless onslaught of enemies is especially annoying, given their variety.

Every type of enemy, from ranged to close combat rushers to brutes, etc., fights in the exact same way. It makes no difference whether they are clad in humanoid armor or have had their skin replaced to make them appear to be a different creature. The tactics you use against them haven't changed either; therefore, the changed enemies don't feel any different.

Sadly, Immortals of Aveum takes about four or five hours to really get engaging. And considering there's only around a dozen hours' worth of actual story in this game, it's really a bad choice by the developers. Later in the game, the enemies will be equipped with shields that are color-coded for one of the three sorts of magic.

Therefore, to damage an enemy who is protecting himself with red magic, you must first switch to the red sigil. The shielding mechanism in Hogwarts Legacy is somewhat similar. It may not be all that exciting in a one-on-one fight, but when you're up against five or ten enemies at once, switching between magic types to break the numerous shields is both exciting and challenging. Though you might get tired of the same old weapon archetypes long before combat really becomes engaging.

As your character levels up, you'll unlock new talents, some of which may provide just minor bonuses to your power, such as a 5% increase in damage from a certain sort of magic, while others may alter the way your sigil's damage works. Just like any other RPG, it's up to you to make choices about which ones to pick and which path to take via the skill tree, as some of them are more beneficial than others.

While this was effective in most cases, the game's brief length prevented me from ever feeling like I had complete control over my character's attributes.

The shooting is, of course, a major part of the Immortals of Aveum gameplay. You have three distinct forms of magic, indicated by different colors. Blue magic depicts the Force, Red depicts Chaos, and Green depicts Life. You have the unique ability to use all three, while most other characters in this universe are limited to using only one.

Blue magic is essentially your semi-automatic rifle or pistol; it can be upgraded throughout the game with in-game currency gained from exploration and quest completion, eventually becoming a very powerful single-shot or semi-automatic weapon. Red magic appears like a standard shotgun and is most powerful when used at close range; however, its potency comes at the expense of its capacity.

Thus, each shot requires a reload. Green magic manifests as an automated weapon that trades off damage per hit for a continuous onslaught that may be used to clear out swarms of enemies.

In-game currencies and essences of various colors can be found throughout exploration and used to improve any of these as the game progresses. This bracelet Gauntlet you wear, which is similar to Atlas Fallen or Forspoken, allows you to alter the sigils to suit your needs.

When you switch them out, you're using completely different weapons. So, some sigils may increase your blue magic's magazine capacity, allowing you to fire three more bullets before reloading, while others may increase your magazine capacity but reduce the damage of each shot.

Ultimately, blue magic is no different from a semi-automatic pistol or rifle, and the red magic sigil is no different from a shotgun, and green magic is an automatic rifle. In this variant, bullets are replaced with a small magic ball, and the weapon is reloaded by waving the user's fingers.

Although it was designed as a magical first-person shooter, it doesn't feel significantly distinct from a regular FPS, save from the fact that you essentially only receive three weapons. You can still use different sigils for different effects, but they are all so identical that you won't really feel like you're progressing much from one upgrade to the next.

A spell with such a high damage output seems like it ought to include some sort of theatrical flourish or something. In reality, however, it quickly becomes apparent that, outside of their varied fire rates, all blue sigils feel identical to fire, as do red and green ones. You will not have access to any weapons other than these three during the entirety of the game apart from a hook and quick melee attack.

While you can modify and enhance your weapons to deal greater damage or recharge more quickly, you'll still feel as though you're just carrying three primary guns for most of the game.

While Immortals of Aveum's campaign doesn't last very long, the overall experiences in Immortals of Aveum aren't all that unique or fascinating either. Throughout most of the game, you'll constantly move between locations, and you'll have to do it while facing rounds and rounds of enemies. All of these have story-based explanations, making them feel natural and not forced.

Nevertheless, what struck me most was the limited chances for rest the developers have allowed in the game. Depending on how much time you spend talking to the local NPCs, there's hardly any break between the encounters, and it also becomes tiring very soon. Feels as if you're forced to finish the campaign as fast as possible and get on with the side quests or other activities or do some exploration that the game has to offer.

But the in-level exploration you'll be undertaking is another area where the game falls short. As you progress through the story, you'll visit various levels, many of which will have fast travel points strategically placed across the maps. In the beginning, you'll notice a lot of prompts telling you to come back later after you've gained some new abilities and can access additional paths or rewards to see what they have to offer.

This is nothing new; in fact, it's been around for a while and is now standard practice in AAA games: the Metroidvania style of level design. But with such a light learning curve, I did not feel the need to explore every corner of the game for hidden upgrades or additional perks.

Because the side quests are neither informative nor engaging, even if you're trying to dig the game's lore, leaving you in the position of having to simply ignore it. While I was intrigued enough to try out new abilities and see whether they held the key to anything exciting, the meager reward from the side quests left me feeling unsatisfied.

In most cases, I used the newly acquired abilities to revisit already explored areas, only to find out that they were less useful than the abilities I already possessed. The platforming difficulties aren't difficult enough that you deserve to spend another few hours on the game, but there are some interesting puzzle places you can go to.

Even encounters with bosses can also be a mixed bag. When initially encountered, many of them present unique and daunting difficulties, while others are so simple as to be amusing. Even though many of the bosses usually have many minions to support them, I never had any trouble with them and found them to be relatively easy. Many of the game's bosses are recycled, but the ones that are different, like the Howler, one of the most engaging and difficult bosses to encounter.

There's also a boss called Archon who initially seemed interesting, but by the end of the game, you'll have seen him reused too many times, at times with a replicate, but always essentially the same boss just regenerated in different ways. While later encounters with Archon may not have the same high health bar as the original boss, I would still classify them as rehashed content.

The sheer spectacle of many engagements with enemies is something I must give Ascendant Studios credit for. This game looks very beautiful, as I remarked before. It's great to see such high quality in a game from a development team that has never released anything before, and playing it gives you great energy.

While the character designs are also lifelike, the protagonist, Jak, isn't particularly likable. He, along with the supporting characters, is thrown into many situations where his decisions will have a direct impact on the fate of this battle, as well as the ultimate destiny of Aveum. And it's so annoying that Jak and the other supporting characters never seem to take anything seriously; instead, they're constantly making jokes about the situation.

Ultimately, Immortals of Aveum caters to fans of first-person platformers and shooters. Those who have enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy, Atlas Fallen, Forspoken, or even Call or Duty may find the game likable, but it's not for everyone. The challenges aren't too difficult, while the game's structure is too linear, from enemy encounters through main objectives to puzzles.

The problem is that no matter what you do or where you go, you can't shake the feeling of Déjà vu. The area itself is rather linear, and aside from a few spectacular settings, you're essentially rushing through some catacombs. It's not a particularly remarkable game, and like most other things, Immortals of Aveum will soon be forgotten. If you're considering picking it up, you should hold off until it goes on sale.