Immortals of Aveum review - pioneering new heights of naffness

Early on, Immortals of Aveum gives the whole game away. During one of many, many expository scenes with General Kirkhan - played here by a committed Gina Torres, of Destiny 2 and Suits fame, who is if nothing else wonderfully game - you, the hero Jak, are told that you're special. This is because you're a Triarch, which is a kind of Magnus (Immortals of Aveum loves a proper noun, brace yourself), only better: while a regular magic wielder must commit themselves to one of three "colours" of magic - red, green, blue - a Triarch can tap into all three.

The downside, Kirkhan tells you: you'll never be as strong in any of them as a regular Magnus is to their committed colour. It's hard to think of a game that sums up one of its biggest problems so succinctly. Amongst the various issues Immortals of Aveum has, one of the biggest is its central concept of being free to switch between its three schools - the freedom is a mirage. You have to switch, constantly, to defeat its very rigidly coded enemies and solve its rudimentary tricolour puzzles. And so the whole three-magics, three-weapons, three-skill trees thing is all a bit moot - you're locked in from the off as a master of none.

Sadly, that's also emblematic of Immortals of Aveum as a game. This is the everygame taken to another dimension. You are a wise-cracking kid with a maverick attitude thrown onto the frontline battlefield, you're also a sort-of chosen one - special Triarch and all that - and you have a three-pronged skill tree with exciting upgrades like "+5 percent critical hit damage" and, thank god, the ability to craft, collect, upgrade, and dismantle loot, despite this really feeling like it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to your efforts on the field.

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