The character depth is good, the turn-based combat can be tense. But I've got this far without discussing the graphics. On top of that, the character animations are non-existant, with your heroes and the enemies both sliding around the game screen. It's obvious that a lot of effort has gone into creating the graphics for the huge number of game areas, cities and dungeons, but when you've just quit from a Diablo 2 session and fired up Avernum , it all looks rather tame. But then the Avernum budget is smaller, and the asking price lower.
Sound effects are as basic as the graphics, by modern standards.
The interface is also not a strength of the game. You can certainly get at all the information you need to, but it's often an extra click or two further away than it should be. You can't even see how many arrows you have left without picking them up. And you have to be stood adjacent to an object to search it, even if you're not in combat mode. Moving with the mouse can also be clumsy, but you can thankfully turn on movement via the numeric keypad.