According to Steam I spent around 20 hours playing this game, although my final save file was just under ten hours, so while some of those 20 hours were me dying and reloading the game, some of them were just me leaving it open while I did something else. There were many elements of it that I liked. I liked the characters and I like that the plot feels almost Shakespearean. I also liked the 'realism' - the environments in the game felt realistically large, there were loads of cities, and, after killing something, you had to search its corpse for loot. However, there was one big flaw and that's the fact that this isn't a complete game. There are subquests you can start in this game but not finish until the sequels. There are chests you can find which you can't open until the sequels. Finally, the plot just doesn't advance well. It doesn't feel like a satisfying character journey or ending. Honestly, I resent the fact that I'll need to pay another £20.97 to finish the story. I can't remember how much I paid for this first one, but since I probably got it off Humble Bundle it was probably between £1 to £3. For 20 hours of gameplay, assuming I paid £1, that's 5p per hour, which is 10x as much as Final Fantasy X and X-2 (400 hours to finish the first, second, and third games, all of which cost me £19.99 on Steam). This game is pretty good, but this first chapter wasn't worth 10x as much to me as Final Fantasy X, and then they want another £21 for the rest of the story? Fuck right off. If they pop up on Humble Bundle at a discount, I might spring for them, but I am not paying £6.99 for a 20-hour segment of a game that doesn't even feel like a full game in its own right, and I am definitely not doing that three times in a row. Knowing that that was what I'd need to do to finish the story just made me resent playing this one. Oh, also there's only one achievement. Since there's no indication of which side quests you can finish in this game and which ones need to wait for the sequel, the achievements could have been a way of giving you a hint. The game just does not reward exploring, because you don't know which blocks you can breach during this game - for example, you do gain a way of blowing through doors blocked with planks, but you don't learn how to pick locks - and which subquests you can finish in this game, or which need to wait. After the first hour or so I just followed a guide. Oh, that reminds me - I did like that the puzzles had an element of randomness, so even if you followed a guide there were still some things you had to work out yourself. That was a nice touch.
The description of the game also claims that "laughing is not optional". It absolutely is. The dialogue is human and realistic, but it's not particularly funny.
I've played - and enjoyed - the .Hack// series, which had a similar set-up. Four chapters, each sold separately, adding up to a complete story. I enjoyed those games a lot more, and I think a big part of it is that they did feel like complete games, with satisfying story arcs. I paid more - about £10 for each if I recall correctly - for each one, and I didn't resent that. I've replayed the series multiple times, and each one came with an episode of an anime series, telling another story that happened alongside the events in the game. I also enjoyed a sequel manga and the longer anime series, but the biggest difference between .hack// and Aveyond is that each of those things felt like seperate stories. They were all sparked by the same event, but each had their own events and character arcs. Plus, my ending save files generally had about 20 hours on them, so they offered approximately twice as much gameplay.
Anyway, in summary, Aveyond: Lord of Twilight is an enjoyable game, but it is not worth £27.96 - the price for all four games without any discounts - and while, theoretically, you could just pay the £6.99 - still way too much - to enjoy just one game, the game is not designed for you to do that.
The next game on my list is actually The Banner Saga, but I just bought several more games from Humble Bundle; 1bitHeart (99p), Désiré (£2.15), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (£14.99), PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness (£9.99), and The Sacred Tears TRUE. (£3.24). I've noted down the prices because I quite like "cost per hours of enjoyment" as a way to compare games. I'm going to play the Phoenix Wright games next, because I have been waiting for them to arrive on Steam for just the longest time. The whole point of trying to play through all the games I own is to make sure I'm actually, you know, getting value out of the things I buy, so it would just be silly to avoid playing the game I just bought. I've also been replaying Final Fantasy VIII (and reviewing my guide) and I'm in the end stages of that, so I'll probably finish that as well before starting on The Banner Saga.
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