The men are fighters, and the women are casters.
That's it. There's no choice, no customization, in that regard.
I will concede, at least it is a 50-50 split. The two blade-wielding characters are men, and they're matched by two female caster options. And I've yet to be in any way insulted by anyone's clothes in this game; everyone seems pretty reasonably dressed. (Within the bounds of tradition, you know, wizards going to do battle in robes.) These are good things. And I understand that it's easier, when you don't have a big development team, to limit the number of sprites you have to create.
But my first gut reaction of dismay and resignation was telling, and in fact, being halfway through the game, I feel my gameplay experience is negatively affected by the inability to choose a warrior chick for my main character. I picked the shaman, but it's just not the same.
See, I have the habit when I play an RPG, if I can choose a class for the main character I have on hand all the time, it will be something like a paladin if that's available. Something built for survival. Why? Because sooner or later, they tend to put you into one or two solo missions. If you're a glass cannon, and you're prone to dying on your own, it's going to be a problem. And in fact, there are solo missions in this game, and I did feel a little irritable about it, and I think I had to reload once, because it was hard. And as well, I'd absorbed enough of the in-game thematic encouragement to think of myself as totally badass and able to handle anything. Thankfully, I chose a shaman and not a wizard, so I could summon a pet to help hold off some of the groups of enemies. But if I had the blademaster, I could have just run in and attacked everything and I think it would have been more satisfying.
The other problem I have is that when you're exploring, it's just practical to have your melee characters go in front. That way they get most of the default enemy attention, and they have less distance to run to get into the fray. Now, the way the game interface is set up, you can put someone at the top of your roster to be the "lead" character, i.e. the one that walks around in front. But this also means that this is the character who steps forward when you go to take an action, like open a door, open a chest, or talk to someone. This is the default person who picks up inventory items, and the default person you shop for. So, I feel like this is the person in charge of my party. Not my "main" character. Doesn't help when I take the blademaster on a mission where I get to work with other soldiers and he starts going on about how "I'm so happy I have my own command, now!" Hey, man! This is MY command! I'm the one in charge! Jerk.
On a related note, but not so much to do with gender: I have yet to find any characters I really like in this game. All the companion characters are crazy and obsessed about something and usually really violent regarding their obsession. I feel like I'm playing through the Facebook movie, where everybody is shifty and bitter and I don't much identify with any of them. At least they're...interestingly flawed characters? I guess? But, man, when I take the wizard girl everywhere, and then she's like, "Hey! We need to talk. Look, I'm tired of waiting around here all the time. When are you going to take me out hunting?!?!" and I'm like, "Uh. I take you everywhere. Everywhere! We just got back from a 5-story dungeon crawl!" but all I can say to make her happy is "You're right. We should go hunting soon." Well, that's a little weird.
Note that I'm not through with the game, and I can already see a plot reason developing as to why all the people I can pick to go adventuring with are slightly psychotic.
In fact, the only person I really unreservedly like in the game is a duke. One duke. He's all young and idealistic and wanting to use his power for peace after years and years of war in his country.
Which brings me back to the gender discussion. It seems that most all of the people at the top of the power ladder here are male. You could say, hey, it's just a feudal society, so what do you expect? But -- there are lots of women with power. All the shaman women seem to have power, they're just isolated and people don't necessarily respect them anymore. (Aside from the one lord's shaman wife, who talks big, but she's just kind of isolated, and opinionated by herself in a little garden, I guess?) Redbeard's "wives" are the people with most of the day-to-day power in the ultra-powerful fortress of Avadon itself, but really, they are subservient to Redbeard, and maybe not that happy about it. They are powerful women, but there is a glass ceiling, maybe. And Redbeard is set up as the ultimate power that no one can defeat (unless, I suppose, you do it yourself -- again, I haven't gotten far enough to see how that option might play out.)
Ultimately, the power balance in Avadon is convoluted enough that I'm willing to let it lie. I have mixed feelings about the name "Redbeard's wives" for the three powerful, dangerous, competent women who answer directly to the man in charge, given that none of them like the name and it's evidently intended to be slightly derogatory, but okay, maybe we're dealing thematically with sexism here and it's making a point.
But there's no reason that the ultimate powerful rulers of the different countries should all be men. This isn't medieval Earth. No one in the game's world ever questions that a woman can be as powerful as a man. The idealistic duke could be a duchess. The shaman wife of the iron-fisted lord could be reversed to a shaman husband of an iron-fisted lady (if you had a sprite for a male shaman). That would be even more of a compelling character, I think: the violent woman trying to strengthen her leadership position at any cost for the long-term protection of her people.
I think I've seen two soldier leaders bugged to display a female warrior while the dialogue text refers to them as "he". Every time it happens, I get excited. Is this a lady in an active combat leadership position? ...Oh. (So then I kind of keep flipping their gender in my mind, and trying to assume they are women as they appear, until they open their mouths again.)
Anyway. It's a good game, overall. Worth playing if you like old-school RPGs with skinny sprite graphics, and lots of complex moral choices with no clear-cut "best" option. Possibly a tad violent (being that you're plotwise expected to kill anyone who defies your organization and won't submit for punishment). And most of my gender-related issues with it are subtle and complex rather than blatant and obvious. I am really happy about art that doesn't feature pointless cleavage, even to advertise the game. I'd just like to encourage things to keep moving in the right direction.
