Avadon: The Black Fortress Review

Inside Mac Games reviews Avadon: The Black Fortress – only the second review of the title we’ve seen – and like the first, it is pretty positive about Spiderweb’s new IP, giving the game an 8.25/10.

Speaking of skills, Avadon has 4 different character classes: Blademaster, Shadowwalker, Shaman and Sorceress. You can’t choose gender, but each class has a different set of abilities, strengths and weaknesses. The skill trees are varied enough that you could play through as the same class twice, but focus on a completely different set of skills. It may be tempting to try and leapfrog to the top of the skill-tree, but you’ll be sorry if you ignore your lower level abilities. But that’s the beauty of the diversity. You can go for a warrior with high melee and ranged damage, or more of a tank with high defensive and resistance skills, letting your other members of the party do most of the damage. Will your sorceress wield ice and fire to devastate her foes, or focus on dazing, defending and buffing your group? You can of course go for a jack-of-all-trades approach, but I like to specialize. Speaking of that, you gain a boost to an entire section of skills in the tree at levels 5, 15 and 25, with level 30 being the highest you can attain.

Leveling up is exciting in Avadon, because it often unlocks a new skill, or a new ability to an existing skill or spell you already have. Your Blademaster may gain a savage blow with high damage at level 3 of your melee attacks, while your Shamans acid rain will affect foes for several turns at level 6 of the skill. Loot is even more addictive in Avadon than previous Spiderweb titles, and that’s a good thing. The inventory system is straightforward and easy to use, with handy additions like a junk bag where you can toss stuff in to sell all at once later on. An auto-sorting button would have been nice, but it’s not a big deal.