The idea is nice enough, and an expansion of challenge fights in Avernum 5. For example, there may be endlessly respawning spheres that need to be destroyed, the party may be forced to go shoulder-to-shoulder in a tight space, or there may be requirements to even damage an opponent. The other side of the improved combat situations sees your party fighting opponents as normal, but with specific requirements needed for victory. But it is part of the game's overall tone (more on that later), and to me it actually makes the fights feel more grand in scale, not less. The fact that you're not always working alone means the player's team feels less important, and this might bother some players. This resolves both the problem of it feeling implausible that you save the world single-handed, and helps in having the big fights feel different from normal fights. Specifically, the main plot will drag you into massive, high-level fights where you work alongside key NPCs or groups of elite soldiers. Where in the end-game of the previous titles you'd often still have to grind through pointless, repetitive fights, Avernum 6 blesses us with less combat situations, and each one tends to be a better designed conflict. But Avernum 6's combat progression is much better designed than that of its predecessors. This makes for a very simple combat system, and most fights are of a rinse-and-repeat variety where you just go through the motions, including the obligatory buffing up with spells before every fight. Where Avernum 5 added battle disciplines, Avernum 6 sticks to the same basic setup as its direct predecessor: you can attack, use a spell or battle discipline, and the parry and riposte skills allow you to react to enemy attacks. Gameplay Avernum 6 does not have any additions to combat in its core design.
#AVERNUM 6 GNASS MISSIONS UPGRADE#
It's a very pleasant upgrade that makes the game quite a bit easier to play. But it is now more customizable, and takes up much less of the screen, leaving more room for the actual gameplay action. A huge jump forward is a redesign of the GUI, which the same in basic functions, showing you the map and status screen and having quick buttons available for combat, spells and items. The game ran without a hitch for me, and the engine is as low-demanding as it should be. Comparing the party's cartooney portraits to the well-drawn portraits of NPCs in dialogue is one of the worst examples, but the animations and detail in different monster models from older Avernum or Geneforge games don't always mesh either. That usually works fine, but in Avernum 6 the usage of different assets from different iterations side-by-side becomes a bit jarring.
#AVERNUM 6 GNASS MISSIONS SERIES#
Spiderweb's lead, Jeff Vogel, has stated multiple times that retaining assets to use in a series plays a key part in his business model. But this is one area where the franchise's age is a bit of a problem.
The mid-90s era level of graphics will bother some people, but they're generally good enough to keep you engaged in the game. Graphics/engine Avernum 6 continues the competent and well-designed graphics of its predecessors with no real change, other than some more flexibility in screen resolution. The main strength of any Avernum has always been its huge explorable world, supported by competent-to-good writing and simple but good turn-based combat, all executed in isometric view with competent if unspectacular graphics. At its core, Avernum remains unchanged, it is an exploration and combat-heavy RPG in which you control a party of four characters you create at the start of the game, pursuing a number of consecutive main missions (or mission-groups) and of course taking on every rat-infested cellar and bug-butt collecting quest they bump into along the way. Spanning a decade, the Avernum series has always stuck to the same core formula while slightly improving and upgrading graphics, UI, writing and other gameplay elements from title to title. Avernum 6 is the closing chapter of Spiderweb's flagship series, the first three of which are remakes of earlier Spiderweb titles, and the latter three an original trilogy.
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