Avadon 2: The Corruption Review
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I'll say right now that I am no fan of this approach, because I feel it both overly simplifies gameplay by making resource management much less important and attrition almost non-existent. Unfortunately, Avadon 2 has kept all of these systems and has not seen fit to improve upon any of them. The character system is the same and advancement is just as limited, with your character at best going one of two directions down the skill tree - "jack of all trades" builds are too heavily punished to be viable. Because it's not possible to increase a skill to a level beyond the preceding skill in the tree, the skill system reduces the variety of character builds, and the lack of non-combat skills means there is no way to add secondary or "flavor" abilities.
The actual combat itself in Avadon 2 is actually a step up from the last game, in terms of encounter design. Combat against regular enemies tends to be very boring and uneventful, with little strategy required short of luring enemies around corners one-by-one, spamming area-of-effect spells, and buffing your party up, and as the game goes on these trash fights succumb to hit point bloat and pointless repetition. However, the addition of Tinkermages doesn't just mean you get to use turrets and traps - it also means many areas feature mines, blade throwers, and other mechanical obstacles that present some interesting challenges. Enemy Tinkermages also present more potent threats, and many encounters combine both stationary traps with standard enemies. There are also a number of fights against bosses and unique enemies that, while often heavily scripted, require the use of special one-time mechanics to complete. These fights are often very engaging, and towards the end of the game, challenging in a way that doesn't feel cheap or frustrating.
Quest Design
The limited character system, in my opinion, has some significant repercussions for overall scenario and quest design in Avadon 2. The lack of non-combat skills means that the game's focus is almost exclusively on combat when you aren't chatting with a character. Predictably, this gets incredibly boring, because the game's areas are often quite large and sprawling, but there's nothing to do in them but fight - even with the improvements to combat and decent encounter design and pacing, there's tons of trash enemies to wade through, and these are simply not much fun to deal with.
Furthermore, this conflicts with the more focused, narrative-driven formula. In Avernum and Geneforge, the non-combat activities and mechanics tended to be more varied and interesting to make up for the lack of story; in Avadon 2, if most of the superfluous combat was removed, it'd be a 20 hour game instead of a 60 hour one. The addition of a few skill checks and non-combat skills, with secret areas and hidden stashes to find, maybe a puzzle or mystery to figure out, would have helped break up the monotony a lot, but there's none of that to be found at all.
Earlier, I mentioned that Avadon 2 is a very linear game. What I didn't mention then was that it's often linear to the point of being frustrating and outright illogical. Due to the way the game is structured, you'll often return time and again to the same areas, and new quests open up for you each time. In theory this means the world itself feels a lot more alive and you'll never be wanting for side-quests.
In practice, Avadon 2 will cut off stages in its quests arbitrarily, simply because it's decided that you're "not ready" for the next stage. This happens even within quest chains, not just for individual quests, and can be a huge time-waster and immersion-breaker. One especially absurd example is a quest to hunt down a prisoner who escaped deep into Avadon's dungeons. After I chased him and fought his minions, he ran beyond a gate and locked it behind him. Yet when I returned to the quest giver, the character refused to let me continue the quest, informing me that I was suddenly too weak to continue, even though I had just been on the same task. This happened not once, but three times for this same quest, and in the meantime I had to keep heading back to the quest giver to see if I would be allowed to proceed or not. I understand the goal is to prevent players from taking on content above their ability to complete (which in itself is something I object to in an RPG), but in many cases absolutely no effort is spent on justifying it logically.
