As you can easily tell from the primitive graphics, this is another RPG by Jeff Vogel.. I’d previous played the first two games of the Avadon series and if anything this unrelated Avernum series is even more well known. Confusingly for those who are less than fully devoted fans of Vogel’s games, this 2011 game is actually a remake of a remake of a game that he first made all the way back in 1995. It’s a pretty good indication that though this is very much a small niche, Vogel does have a big enough following to justify his making these games.

Whereas Avadon has a pretty sophisticated premise, the story in Avernum is dirt simple: the empire is ruled by an evil king who throws dissidents and enemies into a huge underground prison. It turns out that this prison is so huge that it’s an entire civilization in of itself and your entire party has just become its newest inmates. Naturally the moment you arrive, your ambition is to one day escape back to the surface and perhaps strike a blow against the empire that has sent you there. This will be a huge undertaking as the exit is well guarded. Finding and unlocking it requires making good with the powers that rule the underground realm of Avernum, helping to fight against the threats against it and even dealing with the powerful dragons who are also being hiding from the empire there.

As I said, the game engine is the same as the Avadon games and therefore the graphics and mechanics are the same as well. Even the tilesets and images for monsters and items are reused. There are more options for character development here due to a wider selection of skills, talents, spells etc. I don’t think that’s a good thing however as the more streamlined selection in Avadon felt more polished to me. Even with more options available, the character archetypes that are viable don’t really increase so it’s just more confusing make work. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that you can also pay money to improve skills in this game, beyond what you gain through experience alone and the costs rapidly go up faster than the money available. In terms of RPG mechanics, I’d say that this is merely ok. It’s a decent framework around which to build fights, some of which can be challenging even on normal difficulty, but it’s nothing special and not any kind of draw on its own.

While Avadon had a tighter story that sent you specific locations according to the dictates of the main quest, Avernum is more like an open-world RPG. There’s an overland map of the huge world across you which you travel and it’s cool how there’s all sorts of caves, hidden treasures, coves etc. you can discover as you explore. Looking around I see that this approach has its fans but personally I really liked the uniqueness and quality of the plot in Avadon while the story here is as generic as you can get. There are some twists here and there like the underground resistance group that are plotting against the emperor and the fact that the government that rules Avernum actually continues to cooperate with the emperor in exchange for aid and to avoid trouble. Still as with the mechanics, it’s just a loose framework around a game of killing monsters, gathering loot and gaining levels. None of the characters are memorable, the dialogue is basic stuff, there are no surprises in the plot, and it doesn’t even attempt to rouse the emotions in any way.

All this means that yes, I don’t really like this game all that much. I still played through all the way, even completing all three of the endgame quests, but I resorted to a walkthrough pretty early on because I couldn’t really be bothered to manually keep track of everything. The in-game journal for example is very sparse and doesn’t automatically update across the different phases of a quest like in modern RPGs. Then there’s the fact that the spell pedestals and magical barriers you come across will most likely be inaccessible to you when you find them so you need to remember where they are and come back later. Like I said, very annoying. I think I may buy and play the last part of the Avadon trilogy at some point just because I like the story in that series so much but otherwise I think my itch for old-school RPGs like this is well and truly scratched and I have no real interest in checking out Vogel’s other games.