Magic is something we're all too familiar with in gaming and we've had plenty of experiences with it throughout the years. From recently slinging spells from our wands at Hogwarts to throwing fire out of our hands in Skyrim or Oblivion from the good ol days. What if I told you you can be the arcane warrior you wanted to be that gives you some of those Doom (2016) levels of combat, an impressive set of levels to traverse through, and a story and characters that can surprise you with their charm. If I've got your attention, then let's grab our sigils and discover the world of, Immortals of Aveum.
Our story starts out as we see our protagonist, Jak and his friend Luna doing what they need to grab some extra gold in the slums. We get the chance to get used to the basic movement controls as we get back home and things don't take long to pop-off as an invading force attack the city. Jak's home is destroyed, the children and his friend Luna are killed in the attack, but we discover Jak has hit the magic users jackpot. There are 3 main branches of magic that are easily distinguished by the colors; red, blue, and green and most magic users can only use one type. We discover though that Jak is a triarch magnus, meaning he can use all types of magic and his potential is quickly seen by the leader of the Immortals who wishes to brings him into their ranks for this war.
Five years pass where Jak is trained on the front-lines of this war while under the tutelage of, Kirkan the leader of the Immortals. In these extended tutorial, we get to play around with our magics and discover how one type may be more effective at long-range, groups, or more tanky enemies. We're then taken to the Palathon, the floating base of the Immortals where we meet a host of new characters. There's Devyn who is becomes a fast friend but is quite the smart-ass, Zendara is more of a hard-ass that doesn't fully trust Jak because he's a triarch but time will tell if she eases up, and a smaller host of characters are dotted about the area we'll become familiar with. Once Jak passes his trial, he is granted the rank of Immortal and we can start to properly get out there and make a difference against, Sandrakk the man who led the attack and killed our friends five years ago.
Let's sidetrack from the plot for awhile here and jump into the real meat of the game and what is going to keep you playing, the exploration and the combat. As we continue through the story, more areas become available to explore and each one has a pretty distinct feel to it. Initially we have the civilized area with some trees and ponds, then this extends to rocky terrain made up of gigantic floating rocks, and then we'll even be going to mystical planes with impossible geometry and foreign colors. As you explore through the areas, you'll spot some areas and traversal paths not open to you immediately, but as you progress through the story you'll gain the powers needed to get around these obstacles and discover chests and challenge dungeons. Finding these things is almost always beneficial as you'll find new equipment and upgrades to your health and mana bars as well as materials needed for enhancing your equipment.
What about the magic-slinging though, is it any good and is it fun? Oh hell yes it is my friend. Jak having the ability to swap between all three magics at any given time and initially the three magic can be divided up like this; red magic acts like a shotgun, blue magic has great distance and can be pistol/rifle, and green magic likes to go all out with a barrage just like an automatic weapon. By finding new sigils, you can change how the magics work like their changing their fire rates or how much is in the... 'magic clip'? before needing to reload, or even changing their behavior like making your red magic becoming a single firing explosive. Beyond just changing how a given magic works, the sigils also come with buffs too such as; increasing critical damage, tearing through given shields easier, and even powering up your spells individually or across the board. Beyond your normal spells, you'll also gain more powerful spells that need the mana to be used and can help swing the fight back into your favor. These powerful spells have their own unique feel to them as a blue spell send out a wave that once it encounters an enemy it bursts upwards, a green spell fires nearly a dozen homing bolts to attack a group or barrage a single target, and my personal favorite is a red spell that has Jak put a lot of destructive power in his fist and lunge forward for a devastating punch. There's plenty more and I haven't even mentioned how your traversal items can be used to aide in combat too but I think it's better you discover those synergies for yourself.
The enemies you'll be facing consist mostly of other mages and wizards lobbing their own spells at you but you'll also have; hammer-wielders seeking to flatten you, constructs and creatures of oblong and strange design, and towering humanoids that will blast you with their face lasers. Overall the general enemies you'll be fighting keep things fresh and interesting, though there certainly are some enemies you'll hate to have to fight, my personal nemesis are the powered up green wizards that dart around and can heal themselves if not stopped fast enough. How about the bosses though, well the best I can say is... they're alright. They don't really do much to change things up or change the status-quo of just blast with magic until vaporized. While I can say the bosses you'll face aren't awful or stressful to combat with, the problem also comes with the bosses not being memorable or challenging especially the further you go as you get more and more powerful. So while the bosses may not leave much impact, the battles and fights all the way between those big fights are fast and dynamic and reminded me of those snappy and exciting fights from Doom (2016).
Before we round this out, let's get my closing thoughts on the story and all that jazz. Throughout the story, we meet more characters that are likeable if not strangely out of place like a former magus who has a southern accent, but he grows on you. However there is another character related to some twists, that while you may see coming those coming, I only felt apathy towards them despite the game trying to make me feel otherwise. The story itself I felt did a good job of giving us our bad guy and his motives as well as showing that Jak isn't infallible just because he's the character we play as, he makes mistakes but he does work hard to rectify them as well. So while the overall story isn't anything to go wild for, it strangely felt comforting playing through it. Best way I can put it is that the plot reminded of older fantasy movies with it's band of characters who grow to like and trust each other while keeping the world feel real and believable with a real threat attempting to turn everything they know upside down.
Are the achievements an easy thing to nab or is this list going to an obnoxious grind? Not to worry, the vast majority are very easy to get as you'll gather up plenty over the course of a playthrough. BUT please keep in mind that while you can get all the achievements in one run, there are a handful that can be easily missed such as exhausting all of certain characters dialogue or finding a bird, yup... a bird. Please be sure to do your rounds during each chapter to make sure you're not missing any and use what we have on site to further aide you. Beyond that, the achievements are easy enough and the difficulty related ones do stack so I would recommend playing on the hardest available as you can bring the difficulty down after the story to easily mop up the six super bosses and waiting to upgrade anything as you'll need the resources for certain achievements too.
Immortals of Aveum was a good time from beginning to end for me and I'm certainly glad I gave it a chance. One of my biggest issues I had with the game was it's performance and sometimes in combat where due to all the colors and effects it can get a little confusing. On the performance end, I did note that fairly often there were some frame drops, nothing ever dropped to single digits but it does suck when things go from looking smooth to going choppy for a moment or two. Putting those couple things aside though, I do believe that you'll have a fun and good time as you play around in this magical world, one that while it's impression won't be immortally imprinted on yourself, you may find yourself thinking back fondly to it once the magic has ended.
3.0