Please see above where I compared it to Asheron’s Call.
It leaves a terrible second impression too! :)
Yeah, okay, I got into the spirit of the game and I gave it a fair shake. I get it: you set out with your backpack and do whatever you want, choose your faction, your character build, etc. It’s pretty cool. The feeling of adventure and the music are nice. Still, I did one of the storylines and I think that’s going to be enough for me.
It’s not really what I expected, though. It’s basically a CRPG with Souls-like combat, which is a fine thing to be. However, the game sells itself with its survival elements, yet the reality is that 99% of the danger comes from the clunky, yet unforgiving Souls-like combat. With a little foresight, tents, campfires, cooking and alchemy are entirely unnecessary. Food is everywhere and you’re really never more than a 5 min. run from a city.
What would be awesome is a Neo Scavenger game, but in true 3D. Oddly enough, it seems like a lot of the elements in Outward, including the lore, would totally fit. Maybe in Outward 2 - Forward?
FAKE EDIT: OMG, enchanting equipment is the most godawfuly complicated mechanic. I mean, it’s a cool DLC mechanic: customize your favorite items, yay! But how can anyone figure this out without a wiki? Do you get a tutorial for it when joining the merchant-wizard faction?
I haven’t bought the DLC (yet- I’m a sucker for this game though, so I imagine it’ll happen eventually), but stupid and weird and complex system with no tutorial? Pretty much par for the course. Question which one of the four completely different magic systems did you use on your playthrough? None of them really had explanations, either.
I went with Rune Magic… and yeah, I looked up the actual spell combinations. :-( The rune sword and rune trap are basically the only two spells I’ve ever used, but boy are they good.
My build was:
Faction: Blue Chamber
Skills trees: Wild Hunter - Mercenary - Rune Magic
Weapons: 2H Axe and Bow,
The DLC is pretty nice: it’s a fifth new area, a huge post-apocalyptic city filled with radiation corruption, so it’s basically a medieval Fallout mod. There’s a fourth questline, two new skill trees, fist weapons, new plants specific to the area, large new dungeons and a bunch of new super-endgame weapon types you’ll never actually use.
The downside is that the DLC isn’t that well integrated into the main game. The area can only be accessed through caravan NPCs and the loot tables don’t seem to have been updated so that some of the new items show up elsewhere.
Speaking of the DLC, it’s on sale on Xbox this week as part of their Add-On Sale for $15 ($5 off). I picked it up at that price, but who knows when I’ll get to it.
MOAR DLC?
Town building! You can have your very own ugly-looking city!
Base game is 70% off on steam at the moment. Haven’t played yet, but looks good at that price.
Is this game any good? Only 128 posts in this thread does not seem to bode well. I am very concerned that they decided to put this right in their Steam mini-description: “Outward is an open-world RPG where the cold of the night or an infected wound can be as dangerous as a predator lurking in the dark.”
Yeah… dying of infection is NOT something that interests me. Can’t imagine how that would be interesting gameplay to anyone.
I’m also really turned off by the alien landscapes and enemies.
I like it but I only paid $6 for it and got that much value out of it co-opping around with a buddy. I don’t know why you’d even consider it if the landscapes and enemies turn you off, though. The ambience is a big part of the game.
I’ve only been playing for a handful of hours and for me the hybridization of survival + RPG is indeed what interested me. No, I don’t like getting an infection or catching a cold and it’s not all that interesting (ie debuffs) but the point is to prepare ahead of time by brewing teas, cooking up certain foods, dressing properly, etc to stave off and/or cure ailments you may come down with while out adventuring. That part is interesting to me but if sounds like a chore to you, you may want avoid this game because that’s only the beginning of the challenges you will encounter. The game isn’t necessarily punishing but it does reward being prepared and that takes up quite a lot of your time.
I played it quite a lot when it came out and I really enjoyed it up to a point. The reason I stopped playing was because it didn’t take me all that long before I had the best weapon, best armor, best spells in the game. I’m kind of goal oriented in sandbox games like this so, once I felt I had maxed my character out, I no longer had that drive to keep on playing it.
I think they just didn’t pay enough attention to development of the game from mid-game on. Maybe that’s changed now with additions? I don’t know, I haven’t been paying attention once I uninstalled it.
A buddy sold me on this game by describing how it’s not an open world game with a million icons. There’s not even a minimap. And it has survival elements. And you’re not the legendary hero come to save the world. So I bought it for Playstation. It took 5 minutes with the dear-god-my-eyes-are-bleeding tutorial to wish that Sony had a decent refund policy.
Hahahah, I bought it on Epic Game Store, and that was my reaction too. Not the refund part, it didn’t occur to me to ask for money back, but that tutorial is so off-putting, it’s like “why would anyone play this”.
I think it’s more fun in multiplayer. The console can do split screen, right?
It can, and maybe I’ll boot it up in a few months and play it with my daughter that way. But I was also scared I’d lose my Demon’s Souls reflexes and didn’t want to put in the time right now to learn to efficiently navigate the game’s systems and clunky UI.
And the tutorial really is one of the worst things I’ve seen. It’s seriously like something out of a high-school game development course: hideous, endless, buggy, clunky, tiny text, ugh. Just the absolute worst first impression. I don’t think I’ve seen a tutorial like that since the days of bargain-bin shareware floppies at the local game store.
Huh. So this got a “Definitive Edition” this week for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Includes all the DLCs, and remixed so the stuff they do is now in all the zones, plus upgraded graphics, etc. I think you get automatically upgraded if you own the original (or maybe you had to have some of the DLC, too? reports are conflicting). In any case, I’m downloading the (free) new edition now on my XSX. It isn’t a great game (especially with stuff like Elden Ring around), but I enjoyed my time with it, jankyness and all- it does some cool things with systems (skills, several completely different magic systems, etc). I bought both the DLC, but never got into them- looks like I waited long enough!
I had the base game for ps4 and I just couldn’t git gud. I got frustrated and quit. I’m so very tempted to give this another shot, though. I really wanted to play something different than I usually play. How are the visuals/performance on the XSX?
I only just did the beginning/shipwreck bit. They seemed ‘better’, but still not AAA or anything. I remember the opening town being literally the worst-looking part of the game (like EQ1-level bad) , so I’m reserving opinions until I get out into the wider world.
The game isn’t a looker, but there is some good atmosphere and the occasional nice detail, like the slow gradient of the grass color changing to purple as you get closer to the source of mana at the mountain.