Avadon 2: The Corruption Review
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This focus on morally grey political situations is Avadon 2's biggest strength, as far as its story goes. The story provides you many opportunities to side with or against many involved parties, and additionally makes a bigger distinction between the Midlands Pact, Avadon itself, and its ruler, Redbeard, as all three dimensions are called into question rather than just one. Jeff Vogel, though not the flashiest writer when it comes to dialogue, knows how to create interesting scenarios for events to take place in.
But, while these smaller individual situations and scenes found in the game are often quite interesting, the wider plot unfortunately feels like it's taken a back seat. Avadon as a setting is extremely generic, and while The Corruption has expanded it somewhat, the political drama that makes up its more interesting subplots isn't fully realized in the main story, which instead devolves into a similarly generic "save the world" plot that's one step short of featuring a doomsday device. I do think it's better than the first game's story, which I found extremely slow-paced and uneventful - but it's still not that great, either, and lacks a lot of the mystery and sense of discovery of other Spiderweb games.
What's more, Avadon 2's story constantly resorts to frustrating contrivances. There are close to a dozen times throughout the game where villains twirl their mustaches and cackle from behind magical plot armor, and even in those situations where you may be allowed to act, the game gives the enemy an absurd number of hit points and protection spells to stop you from messing things up (which, of course, you can never get yourself). There were also several instances where my party was captured by the villains in a cutscene, and in one case subdued by the same types of enemies that I'd already slaughtered dozens of with ease. This inconsistency between game mechanics and story happens time and time again, and in my opinion, runs contrary to the core principles of computer RPGs.
There's also a lot of little nits to pick which show Avadon 2 may not have received as much attention as it could have in the story department. There's a ham-fisted, awkward romance sub-plot shoehorned in that keeps popping up whether you care or not, there are still tons of "fake" choices in dialogue that have no impact on how events play out, and the ending feels very rushed, acting as a blatant sequel setup rather than a satisfying conclusion. Additionally, while Jeff Vogel has constructed a character-driven story, unfortunately his writing often doesn't provide those characters with interesting back-stories, motives or personalities, both allies and enemies alike - while the villains are probably the most one-dimensional, the companion characters also feel like they were picked off a shelf, most of them falling into the "arrogant and egotistical" or "mysterious and brooding" camps.
Character System & Combat
If you've played Avadon, or any other Spiderweb Software title, for that matter, you'll be right at home with Avadon 2. The character system from Avadon makes a return with few real tweaks, and combat is still turn-based and grid-based. Its biggest new addition is the Tinkermage character class, who joins the existing classes (Blademaster, Shadowwalker, Sorcerer, and Shaman), and sets up mechanical turrets and totems to provide buffs, debuffs and spit fire and ice at enemies. I picked Tinkermage for my main character, and enjoyed how versatile it was, either focusing on support or offense depending on the situation. Another welcome change is the ability to pick your character's gender rather than being forced into one depending on the class you picked as in the first Avadon, though it has no real gameplay effect.
Avadon generated some discussion on its release due to its highly modernized approach to RPG mechanics, compared to the fairly complicated character system found in other Spiderweb games. Non-combat skills were almost entirely stripped out, attributes were pared down to the basics of Strength, Dexterity, Endurance and Intelligence, skill checks completely disappeared, and the game even adopted knock-out and post-combat health regeneration ripped right from BioWare's Dragon Age.
