You start off with no real character customization options. Game options are sparse in the beginning. Oddly, a near-constant wind seems to blow whether you're indoors or out. The game has no music or voice acting, and monsters share a handful of attack noises. Only some of the textures stand up to scrutiny: the gravel roads and stone walls look pretty good. Outdoor locales are loaded with symmetrically arranged cacti, rocks, and other terrain features that make the landscape look surreal. Dungeon furniture and architecture mainly consist of standard chests and wardrobes like the set dressing in summer stock theater. Characters and monsters are soft-focus multicolored blobs, and you can't zoom the camera in to get a better look. Crude isometric visuals and paltry sound recall the 286 era. The single-player-only game could almost have been developed in 1989.
If you don't have any experience with Spiderweb's previous games, your first moments with Avadon are likely to come as a shock.
With that said, you definitely need to possess the nostalgia gene to get the most out of this one.Īvadon ain't pretty, but it offers a lot of RPG depth to get your imagination working. Just like the developer's earlier efforts in the Avernum and Geneforge franchises, the game compensates for its archaic visuals and sound with an engaging focus on storytelling and turn-based party combat that recalls the glory days of the Gold Box games from the late '80s and early '90s. Avadon: The Black Fortress is a fantasy epic that's as appealingly retro as the big red demon on the cover of the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide.
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