Avadon: The Black Fortress
Avadon: The Black Fortress is an epic, Indie fantasy role-playing saga. Form a band of skilled warriors, explore dungeons, hunt for treasure, learn many unique and powerful skills, and attempt to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to destroy your homeland!
Five great nations have banded together to form The Pact. The Pact is defended by Avadon, a secretive sect of spies and assassins. Its agents are everywhere. Its word is law.
You have been recruited as a Hand of Avadon, charged with missions that require swift action and a heavy fist. However, the enemies of the Pact have plans of their own, and Hands of Avadon are being picked off one by one. It will fall to you to struggle to survive and to reveal that plot that could shatter the safety of The Pact and plunge your homeland into chaos.
Beware! Allies are few. Traitors are everywhere. And the closer you come to the truth, the closer their assassins will come to you.
Key features:
- Epic, Indie fantasy role-playing adventure in an enormous and unique world.
- Four different character classes, with dozens of unique spells and abilities.
- Uncover the fascinating history of Avadon and the land of Lynaeus.
- Many different endings. Your choices will change the world.
- Dozens of side quests, hidden dungeons, and secrets to discover.
- Hundreds of magical items to find. Use enchanted crystals to make your artifacts even more powerful.
- Huge adventure with lots of replay value.
Steam User 2
These are some of the best cRPGs out there, along with the Avernum games. These updated versions are probably the way to go, though the original releases are also available. If you like turn based combat without punishing difficulty (or do, with the hard mode) and immersive, well written dialogue and story, and fun but simple art with varied environments and a somewhat open world if segmented, check this out.
Start by buying the first in Avernum or Avadon and go from there - on sale it's like 3 bucks, which is insane for the amount of game you get. 40-50 hours for the main story, plus another play through for the next difficulty or character class, then multiply by 3 for each game. So like 150 hours between one play through of 3 games for ten bucks with a lot of replay value and extra content. Geneforge is also supposed to be good though I havent gotten to it yet - you can build followers our of body parts in that or something lol.
Avernum and Geneforge have wildly unique premises, Avadon original for a classic fantasy story, but more standard than Spiderweb's other games. Avadon you start out a Hand, reliable and devoted soldier/agent of the Pact, and in turn Redbeard of fortress Avadon. But theres crazy stuff going on as soon as you show up, let alone what begins after you assemble a team and enact your duties across the land. Shadowy figures, lies, espionage, among much more. Unique and classic creatures and classes mix together for a very engaging experience even outside the quite solid combat and skill mechanics. Only thing missing is a charisma system I think.
Anyway, this is the longest review I think I have ever written on Steam lol... check it out! It's only 3 bucks for the first game - though you may regret not just buying all 3 in the series, regarding this or Avernum alike.
Steam User 1
Engaging story line and interesting characters. It IS text heavy, but if you like story-rich games then that shouldn't be a problem. Spiderweb software made some my favorite games growing up!
Steam User 1
Decent old-school RPG
Steam User 1
Historically I have never liked CRPG's. I played a few here and there over the years and the current king of CRPG, BGIII. But I did end up refunding BGIII since it was a bit over the top with everyone constantly throwing them self at you PC.
Now review... YAH!
So I watched a GDC talk with the dev of this game talking about indy games ect. I retired a year ago and thought hey, lets make retirement souls like and painful for no reason. Lets Learn c++!
So I got Jeff's games, played it a bit and it is well done and actually fun. You dont need some odd love triangles, combo spells with crates and oil and such.
Take us back to when games were simple and fun again!
Steam User 1
Solid RPG! You're not playing for the graphics or sound but the story, which is really well done.
That said, you can bump up the graphics to 4K using an app called Lossless Scaling on Steam. I set the in-game graphics to 1920 x 1024 and then set Lossless Scaling's Scaling Mode to custom with a scale factor of 2. Looks perfect in 4K.