Avalon is an open-world Action RPG in where we play as a nameless catgirl that has found herself stranded on an island. Luckily for her, she is a competent swordsman and is armed with the only weapon you’ll be finding on this island. It is said to have been where the King Arthur of legends lived the last of his days, but these days there is no trace of humans having ever lived there aside from the derelict buildings scattered about. What you will find are a ton of monsters that will be after your neck within the first few steps you take onto land from your shipwrecked boat.
Before I go any further into this review, it is critical to know that this title crashes like crazy. Every few minutes in fact. I found myself booting it back up and waiting for it to load again much more than actually playing the game. The first few hours of that were such a massive pain. I’ve tried it on three different computers and tried multiple things to fix it, to no avail. I finally came across a band-aid like solution by pressing Alt and Enter to force the game into windowed mode. That would cause the game to crash every 15 or so minutes, instead of every 2. I have found no way to improve upon this any further.
Well, that immediately took the wind right out of the game, but let’s move on from this title’s technical instability for a bit. Stranded and thrust onto this island, you must piece together what to do yourself. I liked the lack of hand-holding. It makes this feel like an actual adventure as you poke your head into every nook and cranny, then feeling quite accomplished when you find something. The thing here is that there is very little to see in the world. It is filled to the brim with dead space and the only thing that brings any life to it are the monsters that spawn only a couple of feet from you. That is less threatening than it sounds. You can run past any enemy you encounter and every time you attack them, they get stunned. If you know how to left-click, then you have pretty much mastered the combat of this game.
Enemies being completely defenseless if you strike them completely negates the entire stamina system. It is meant to limit your mobility as you roll out of the way of attacks, yet your foes will never be able to attack you. The only time I ever found myself making use of it was in exactly one single boss section, which spawned in foes with enough reach that they could usually get an attack in before you reached them. Usually, the only time I found myself taking damage is from the game crashing after a battle. You see, the enemies all respawn once you reload a save, and they can move around before you can. Not a great combination when you saved within a room you just cleared that was full of foes. After some time, I just started jogging my way past most encounters.
This is an RPG and you do level up by defeating enemies. That would not be an ideal solution for most titles, but due to the combat being a nonissue here, it is mostly irrelevant. I just threw in all my points into the Strength stat to lessen on all the clicking during the uneventful battles. This kind of bit me in the arse with the final boss fight. Every other boss consisted of me immediately running up to it and going to town on his shins, making them not much different than fighting regular foes. Its last fight was different, this boss had actual abilities and ways to defend itself. I died four times before I slayed it and it was also the first time I ever had to use items in my inventory during a fight. It was a pretty intense battle as opening the inventory does not pause time.
Opening the map, you get a pretty clear indication of where it is you are meant to go via the small hints of color in the otherwise murky brown landscape. It is a way to attract you toward the area and give you a clue as to what you should be on the lookout for. Only one of the items you need is found on the island itself, the rest will be in this title’s dungeons. Also scattered about are treasure chests that give you items. They range from extra XP, a healing potion, or something to temporarily boost your stats with. You need exactly none of them. The enemies give you all of that once defeated. Your foes drop items like candy, which again, you will rarely if ever need. The lack of needing to use items may be a blessing in disguise. Avalon has a habit of randomly changing the item descriptions to pure Japanese.
A key thing to note here is that I am playing the English version of the game. I have no idea if the Chinese or Japanese versions are any better technically. I can not overstate how glitchy and how often crashes occurred in this title. The worst of these were during the ending. I gathered all the needed items that it asked of me and placed them where they needed to be. That did absolutely nothing. I easily spent well over double the amount of my actual playtime trying to work this out assuming this had a solution I was somehow missing, and trying everything that came to mind. That was a fruitless endeavor. I truly believe that this game either doesn’t have an ending implemented or the script for it is broken, which would be far from surprising considering the state of everything else.
Avalon is a hentai game. While its technical stability is an objective flaw, the lack of difficulty is not an issue for some people. If you let yourself be attacked, you have the chance to be knocked down. Once knocked down, whatever foe nearest to where you fell will try to have their way with you. You’ll have the chance to avoid this fate by rapidly left-clicking. I say rapidly, but eh, even halfheartedly clicking on it will be more than enough to get you out of it 100% of the time. Much like being attacked, you have to let the sex happen. It is.. something. I was wondering how in the bloody hell a skeleton would be able to abuse you. This game’s answer was summoning a magic pickle between its hollow thighs and began thrusting away. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen.
That last sentence of mine actually happens, it wasn’t just me memeing. In any case, its lewd content is not bad at all. I wouldn’t call it good overall, but some are decent and it has a good amount of variety. Every monster has their own unique positions and animations, equating to a total of 20. Most of them are not as silly as that skeleton example, yet keep in mind that these are mostly non-humanoid creatures you are fighting. There will be sex with Wolves, Rats, and Spiders to name a few. It is nothing hardcore, you will not see any egg-laying or even semen. You won’t be seeing much at all with any of them actually, the camera angles are too zoomed out and angled.
Where you can get a better look is in the Gallery mode that allows you to play any sex animation you have experience or picked up from an enemy item drop. You can then zoom in and move the camera through the floor to get a better look. There is still no way to remove clothing aside from your character’s top, like you could in-game as well. Still, this mode is definitely needed for those that want to see the H content. The monsters in this game pack a decent punch and even with zero resistance, it can take a long time to get knocked down. With some, it is far more likely you’ll flat out be killed by their attacks trying. You can save anywhere, so it’s not a huge issue, though unlocking H scenes via item drop is a safer bet.
I’ve been particularly harsh with Avalon, but know that its concept is very appealing to me. I was excited going in, slightly concerned when I saw you could turn back and walk underwater in the bottom of the ocean, and missing my 15 dollars when it crashed after a few minutes. Even without the technical issues, this title feels like it should be in an alpha state rather than be a full release. It is unbalanced, you have zero use for some of the game’s functionalities like none essential items & dodging, and jumping is absurdly janky. I take no pleasure in slamming an Indie dev, I know full well that just because it takes us a few hours to beat a game doesn’t even come close to the amount of time they spent making it. Despite that, I can not in good conscious recommend Avalon to anyone, whether they simply want it for its 3D hentai content, think its premise is interesting, or out of mere curiosity. Its execution is simply too flawed and what you will be struggling against most is the nonstop saving to avoid progress loss from its constant crashing.
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