Immortals of Aveum is a blockbuster action game. Much like superhero movies, it excels in combat but loses its heat in the story with lackluster dialogue and a hurried narrative. The cornerstone of Immortals is its graphics. The characters and environments were expertly crafted, highlighting the strong motion-captured characters. It was always refreshing to see how all the colors were utilized in each mission of the game. Excellent level design and fast-paced gameplay made a wonderful pair.
Fast-paced action and flying colors. Is it Sonic the Hedgehog? No, it’s EA’s battlemage FPS, Immortals of Aveum. While Immortals falls flat in the story, it is a visual masterpiece. Vibrant colors and enticing environments are where it shines.
In the world of Aveum, you play Jak. A street rat with the ability to cast spells. Not just any spells, but all three colors of spells, making Jak a “Triarch”. Similar to Avatar: The Last Airbender, it is very rare in Aveum for someone to be able to cast red, green, and blue spells. After tragedy strikes, Jak gets chosen to fight in the war against the enemy Sandrakk, the leader of Rasharn. Utilizing his abilities, Jak becomes an Immortal. During Jak’s journey, he advances his magic prowess, forges new friendships, and makes ill-timed jokes during serious moments. Alongside the other Immortals, Jak attempts to end the war and save the world.
As I previously mentioned, Jak is a “Triarch”. He immediately finds out that he can cast any spell without restrictions. Most of the magic users in the story can only cast one color. Each color has its characteristics. Blue is long-range. Red is short-range with higher damage. Green is lower damage but with seeking missiles. When playing the game, your goal is to defeat the enemies using their color against them. Blue is strong against blue, green against green, and red beats red. Not the typical, Pokemon or Rock Paper Scissor gameplay, but sometimes the colors don’t matter. Using colors to attack weaknesses is not required, brute force is a way to navigate through combat.
Magic users in Aveum use “sigils” to cast their spells. This becomes a gameplay mechanic. You can earn, find, or craft new sigils to fit your magic style. Sigils may offer passive benefits but their real significance is their effect on the color they use. One red magic sigil could carry a ton of damage but has only one shot per “clip”. A separate red sigil could carry more shots but offers less damage. A nice feature was that once you equip a sigil, the appearance would also reflect that. Your casting hand will visually reflect your equipment loadout.
Pressing the triangle rotates you between the 3 spells. Blue, red, green, and back to blue. Unfortunately, there is no way to quickly swap between the spells. It became cumbersome swapping to the right color in the middle of combat.
I often found that sigils and colors did not matter. I was able to use blue spells the majority of the time. The sigils I chose to equip were ones I received early in the game. Immortals never got difficult enough to force me to change my strategy. The only time it felt necessary to change spells was for boss battles.
Immortals of Aveum is a very fast game. The gameplay is fluid, with constant movement and running. Immortal’s rapid pace also bleeds into the story. Whenever a major story beat would happen, we would have to just move on to the next thing. As a result of this, it felt like nothing mattered. Any repercussions to the characters in the story, were inconsequential since we had no time to ruminate on the past. Our time with each character was always cut short, so in turn, the characters felt unimportant.
The writing and dialogue in the story were flat. Any heartfelt moment, in the story, was immediately ruined by a superhero-esque one-liner. These quips were not sparse and this resulted in a mixed tone. It became very hard to take the plot seriously when the characters never did.
The true highlight of Immortals is the visuals. It performed wonderfully and looked great. On PlayStation 5, I was impressed that there were no issues throughout my playthrough. The gaming experience was very smooth, with no chugging loads or dropped frames. Often with new games, cutscenes have characters that might have glitching armor or demonic facial animations. Immortals never suffered any of these issues.
Ascendant Studios did a great job with the motion capture and character models. Not only did the story and characters look good, the enemies looked intriguing as well. The enemies’ design always played well with their color. Red enemies were always burly and moved heavy, while blue enemies were thin and agile. The whole world is rife with color, and its playable space is beautifully crafted. The level design was intuitive and fit very well with the gameplay. Each area played into the fast-paced combat with different height levels, grappling points, and circular layouts.
