A magical first-person shooter with potential

We were allowed to watch the debut game from Ascendant Studios and get a first impression of Immortals of Aveum. We share our impressions of the fantasy shooter with you.

Well-known story in a magical world

At first glance, Immortals of Aveum has a familiar story ahead of you: An unknown protagonist, who initially has no powers, gains magical abilities through a traumatic experience. This makes him the central figure in the eternal war between two kingdoms.

In the approximately 25-hour main story you follow in the footsteps of Jak, who grew up powerless on the streets of Seren in Aveum. With his new magical skills, Jak is reluctantly drawn into humanity’s war over the control of magic. He is taken under her wing and trained by General Kirkan, Grand Magnus of the Immortals. Jak will grow into the Immortals’ strongest weapon and be the ace up his sleeve against the army of the antagonist Sandrakk. The world is on the brink of collapse and it’s up to you, of course, to ensure that victory doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Whether the story has more to offer than the usual “good versus evil” scenario remains to be seen. However, I can say that at least in our preview, the lore of the actors involved is convincing. Especially Darren Barnet as Jak (never in my life…) and Gina Torres (Suits) as General Kirkan leave a positive first impression.

I have to admit that the information on the history of Immortals of Aveum so far does not grab me immediately. You have already experienced such stories 100 times in one form or another, whether in video games or films/series. In general, I have nothing against this starting position, but the range of transmission quality can be immense. That’s why the initial story doesn’t really knock me off my feet. However, there is hope for my part that we only received superficial information about the story in the preview of the game and that the well-known story gets a breath of fresh air through one or the other surprise.

So far I’m not interested in the story, but in the gameplay. Which brings me to the next point.

A possible CoD with magic

In a nutshell, I can describe the gameplay as follows: Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter with magic instead of weapons, a Magic FPS so to speak.

yak, who roams the battlefield as a Battlemage, owns three types of magic: Green magic that shoots like some kind of submachine gun. Blue magic that fires precise and straight shots and Red magic that acts like a shotgun. You fire these “weapons” from your so-called sigil, which is attached to your arm. The learning curve of the game should sometimes consist of using the appropriate magic for the different opponents and the different combat situations.

You can switch between these three types of magic fluently and make your way across the battlefield. In addition Immortals of Aveum is not a cover shooter. You carry a shield with you, which you can manually hold in front of you and shoot through. However, activating the shield slows your movement speed. In addition, it breaks after a certain time, so you can’t keep the shield in front of you constantly.

In addition to the basic magic, however, there is also a talent tree and other types of spells. There are more than 25 spells and 80 talents to unlock and improve. For example, you can perform a dash (dodge), pull opponents towards you with a kind of lasso or catapult yourself into the air at anchor points.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how the whole thing feels on the controller, as we only received a presentation of the gameplay. And this is the crux of the matter, because a first-person shooter lives above all from how the mechanics of the game feel on the controller.

From the outside, Immortals of Aveum looks like a very fast and fluid first-person shooter. The most interesting thing for me is that the gameplay seems to be easy to learn but hard to master. In skillful hands it has the potential to show an insane speed, which at least in the preview really excited me.

And of course there is loot to be had. Through the loot, you can customize and upgrade your gear and create your own playstyle. How and whether the skills create a synergy with the equipment depends on you and your decisions. So every player should be able to create a build that suits him.

Your progress in the game should not only be reflected in the talent tree, but also in your magic. New spells and abilities can be acquired and a total of 9 slots in your equipment (3 sigils, 3 x totems, 3 x rings) can be customized. In addition, you can use new skills to return to past and previously inaccessible places and explore new areas of the game world. Greetings from Metroidvania.

As an aside, it should be mentioned again that Immortals of Aveum is the first game from Ascendant Studios, but this fact is not at all obvious at first glance. This is mainly due to the development team led by Brett Robbins, who has already worked on AAA games like Dead Space and Call of Duty, which already has experience with some blockbuster games.

Immortals of Aveum certainly has great potential, but whether it can fulfill that remains to be seen. The nice thing is that the waiting time isn’t too long, because it’s scheduled to be released on June 20, 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.