I can only recommend a game like The Fall of Avalon to anyone who enjoys open world rpgs. It succeeds where many other similar games fail: by making the exploration more often than not always worth it, whether it's an extra magic item or a new quest hidden in the most remote tiny bit of land, sea or closed door you haven't explored/unlocked. While not ALL of the side quests are of the highest quality, the average level is still way above most of its competitors where all you get are boring fetch quests. The story, the main quest and the dark, gritty game world, not without the occasional humor, make the experience interesting and pleasant, repeatedily making you extend your play session by "just ten more minutes" until you lose track of the time. Many of them seem to have different ways you can solve them, which should ensure a good degree of replayability as well. The combat is similar to Skyrim and the likes, but with a hint of Dark Souls, meaning that you are given a "dash" button that you can use to move in and out of range, but you can't spam due to stamina/restrictions, but you can improve by investing into the right perks (similar to Skyrim). You are also allowed to try using perfect parries (no damage incurred when blocking), although the timing window is quite small, but again it can be increased by investing in the appropriate perks. You can build your character however you want, and there are potions in the game that allow you to retrain completely your character, letting you respec without the need to start a new game on a new character if you so wish. It takes time getting used to, but while it's not anything revolutionary, it's still far better than most of its competitor, and offers a good degree of challenge at the highest level, without letting you face ridicolous "human sponges" in the early game like the legendary level of skyrim. There's also a free demo available that I highly recommend you try beforehand. I am running out of character, try it!
It does still have bugs, including game breaking ones. How much importance this has and how excusable it is given the size and scope of the game is subjective, but it is a flaw that has to be kept in mind. For a fan of old style rpgs though, it's godsend with almost infinite character creation combinations and diverse mythic paths that offer lots of variety to the way you can handle quests/areas of the game and different endings/ending slides (unfortunately some are way more fleshed out than others). To my personal taste however, I found most of the NPCs to be luckster/not making any sense, and for a game that big, you are limited in your choices, although just like in Kingmaker, you can still create your own party members similarly to IWD, making the game way easier in the process although you would me missing out on a lot of NPCs quests and experience. The difficulty balance is a bit of a hit and miss, especially depending on your class choice as MC/whether you go with the story NPCs or your own. Overall I found Core to be well balanced as long as you know what you are doing, with a couple of sudden spikes in a couple of areas, and a sudden dip as you get closer to the peak of your own power (not necessarily a bad thing as you do want to feel powerful in a game like this). The writing (or NPCs as mentioned earlier) is not at the level of other classics of the past, but it's not too bad either to the point of being detrimental to your enjoyment. (There are a few moments/characters that feel really off but they are few and far between.) I give it overall a 4/5 and can recommend it to any fan of old school rpgs.
I am giving it 5 stars. Why? It delivers exactly what it promises: - Mini campaign for low level characters, 8-10 hours seems fair for the content in it. - Two companions will join you, they are relatively well made/written and will offer completely different perspectives/options on how to proceed at specific times during the adventure. Yes you are forced to take them with you and you can't let them die as they are an integrant part of the story. Can't see what's wrong with it. There's the 3rd DLC for those that don't want any NPCs in their party. - It's a survival style DLC. There won't be a lot of roleplaying during the usual point/click action, but there will be multiple "book narrated" events that will allow for some interesting choices. Not very impactful, but adding flavour to the flow of events. - Played it on Core difficulty, it offered as far as I am concerned, the perfect level of challenge. It has been one of those few instances in this sort of games where I found myself having to judge whether each encounter was worth my resources/risk. - Maps and encounters are relatively well designed, exploring feels interesting and rewarding as you can really use whatever you happen to come across, and there's lot of room for different approaches to the fights or ways to get past them. The few puzzles for once were not annoying and quite straightforward, feeling like a nice occasional diversion from combat without requiring you to look for a solution online or decide not to even bother with their nonsense. Only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is: - Cliffhanger final/part of the plot not being properly explained - Stealth mechanic is a bit barebones. This DLC would have really benefitted from a rework of the stealth gameplay. Even something similar to the Pillars of Eternity would have been a nice to have.
