REVIEW: ‘Immortals of Aveum’ is Magical yet Flawed (PS5)

Trying to bring something new to the Shooter genre is a tall order. Particularly when that game is a single-player-only campaign. Whether it tries to tell a story from a unique perspective or even approach a new way of exploring how weapons function, there’s often a lot that has been tried before. Immortals of Aveum, by newcomer Ascendant Studios and published by Electronic Arts, attempts to take the long-running genre into the magical fantasy genre, replacing guns with flashy spells. While the setting is a fun twist the gameplay itself does the heavy lifting.

Immortals of Aveum follows Jak, a thief who is just trying to get by with his friends. In the world of Aveum, magic is abundant and used regularly. That magic however also leads to destruction, with an eternal war is raging between the two major magical kingdoms. This “Everwar” surprisingly arrives at Jak’s doorstep, destroying his life and home. In a fit of vengeful rage, Jak awakens a mysterious power that is rarely seen in lowborn, and he alone can repel the threat that endangers everyone around him. Soon he is quickly whisked away to join the Triarch Magus to hone his magic, become an elite Immortal, and put a stop to the Everwar.

The start of Immortals of Aveum is one of the games most frustrating aspects by delivering oddly paced exposition. While other fantasy games find ways to ease players into a new world with lore that needs time for full understanding, Immortals of Aveum instead drops lore bombs repeatedly. The result is overwhelming. Each new piece of information sounds interesting at first but Jak just doesn’t give a damn about them. So all the minutiae of the Everwar and who the major factions are are rendered unimportant or unnecessary because this character that you embody isn’t bothered to learn.

Jak’s attitude does begin to change but with a time skip the player is left to play catch-up while there’s been a five-year gap of Jak learning. Many of the revelations and twists of the story don’t hit nearly as hard because there’s so much to comprehend. Deep, lore-filled worlds in new settings are fantastic but the success hinges on how the information is delivered. Immortals of Aveum fails to make things memorable, delivering information so that it either feels like a lecture or, as mentioned, is brushed off by Jak as he races to the next big objective.

The game settles into itself over time as we grasp what all the different terminology means and grow with Jak as he slowly becomes a leader in this war. As the game progresses, Jak drops his annoying attitude for one that is about compromise and trying to find a different light at the end of the tunnel, an ending that doesn’t involve total annihilation. The change ensures that the rest of the revelations hit hard, the game becoming one that has a bright future as a game franchise worth revisiting.

It would be interesting to see this world from a different perspective. The way that everything ties together, like how the use of magic affects the war, to the long-storied past of Aveum is really interesting. It’s just the character who delivers it to the player needs an attitude adjustment to make it all more palatable.

Thankfully, the gameplay is fun. With a mix of run-and-gun, and tactical moments, the implementation of spells as guns makes for flashy and intriguing minute-to-minute moments. The most common spells break down into three different color classes: Blue, Red, and Green. Blue translates to a more common rapid-fire mix of equal damage and firing rate guns, like rifles (or summoning a lance). Red is heavy-hitting damage like shotguns, lobbing explosives, etc. Green is niche and doesn’t fall into the other categories, like SMGs and homing bullets. You cycle between these three as needed depending on preference, or when the situation calls for certain colored attacks.

Occasionally enemies summon colored shields to slow you down, changing up the faster-paced moments. Firing the same colored weapon at them will break the shield, stun them, and do massive damage. On top of that, there are more powerful spells that use mana charges and equipment. All of this can quickly get overwhelming as using each of these three types of attacks is necessary for survival. Faster enemies or ones with heavy armor need to be slowed down so you can sneak around and deal quick damage before they land big hits. Sharpshooters farther away can be gripped to you to be quickly taken down. And enemies grouped up can be wiped out easily with a strong mana-based attack. With 20+ weapon spells to equip, these could be fun on their own. But they are bogged down by a superfluous gearing system.

Numerous modifications can be equipped to Jak to change just about anything of his kit. These range from increasing specific color damage, increasing armor, decreasing cooldowns, and more. But these modifications can be on everything including guns. While better gear does make later moments in the game more approachable, all the equipment changes are unnecessary with a talent system beyond incentives to explore Aveum and uses for the numerous currencies you collect.

As you take down enemies and explore the many environments, you level up or gain “ascendants”. These can be applied to different colored talents that affect the three weapon colors, accessories, and other general upgrades like dodging. These by themselves feel necessary, making everything more and more useful. They’re general upgrades that make it feel like you can use the spells that you find the most fun, or change up your playstyle as you get more powerful talents.

A good example of this is how a talent makes the toggleable shield much more useful. On top of everything else, you also get a shield that blocks damage. It can break and require recharging before it can be used again. With some upgrades, your shield can heal you with 25% of the damage it takes, melee hits recharge the shield faster, and pulling up the shield right before a hit nullifies that damage. These are all fantastic additions to an ability that was middling at its initial introduction. All of the equipable items lack the impactfulness of the talents, almost like they’re forced min-maxing.

The open world and levels echo elements of Metroidvania. Players go through a level once and see a lot of things you cannot collect, or pass by puzzles that you don’t want to solve yet. As you progress through the game and get more equipment, you can go back to those areas to fully explore and find more gold/resources for upgrades and better gear. All of the levels are offshoots from an open world that can be explored between missions. The world is full of all the hidden items found in normal levels and challenge levels which grant health and mana upgrades. They’re fun little sequences, breaking up the high-octane moments of the actual levels.

Not all of the puzzles are fun. Many of them are situational awareness-based, where you need to find several different colored crystals in an area and hit them with the associated weapon of the same color. There are some occasional light-based puzzles that require lining up beams of light and triggering switches at the right time. Despite lacking in difficulty, they become annoying in the more detailed areas that have hidden certain crystals. As you’re trying to get to the next point, these feel like roadblocks as the game heats up rather than cool down points. When you have time to think, they’re great because they’re turn-your-brain-off fun that leads to some rarer quality weapons for a slight boost in power.

What makes the exploration fun is how beautiful the world is. The world of Aveum is really well-designed. It’s mystical and full of enticing routes. All the environmental detail makes Immortals of Aveum at least look like a game fit for modern consoles. There will be awe-inspiring moments that have you take a beat to just look around at your surroundings.

Immortals of Aveum at its core is a fun take on the shooter genre. Yet it quickly bogs itself down with an over-complicated story and an unnecessary gearing system. Set in a new world that’s fun to explore, Aveum has the potential to be a great universe to revisit in the future. And while it takes awhile, Jak does grow on you. It just depends on if the player thinks that time is well spent. There just needs to be a refinement in almost every aspect of the game.

Immortals of Aveum is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.