Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Nov 5, 2021

  Wanted to post a review to counter some of the comments about 'clunky combat' and such. At 80 hours into the game, I get how things fit together reasonably well. First, combat in this game is hard as nails. In may ways the combat mimics Dark Souls.. it is very hard to get through a fight without getting hurt. You must be very careful and know when to push an attack. All mobs, including your own character, have a stamina pool which defines what happens when you get hit, and when you fall down. Get stamina below a certain point and a character will be staggered for a moment on hit. Get their stamina to zero and the character will fall down. If stamina is still high, then the character can hit at the same time as being hit. This means just wildly throwing attacks in a fight will get you killed or very seriously injured. So facing just one opponent without this knowledge will get you killed fast. Facing two opponents makes for a very difficult fight, facing three? A stratospheric amount of difficulty! This means all fights have weight, and much care must be taken to carefully separate an individual from a group so as not to aggro the entire group. There is absolutely nothing casual about the fights in this game. One thing you can do to help with all this is use block to prevent getting hit.. but guess what, just blocking and getting hit will do you no health damage, but you will take stamina damage.. so you can't just stand there and block.. further blocking is directional..and enemies WILL try to get behind you.. a very dangerous situation requiring you to manage WHERE the enemies are at all times. Another thing you can use is dodge.. but again, you must spend stamina to do this...There are things you can do to improve your stamina recovery rate.. but all that does is give you a bit more time.. you can still run out of stamina (same with health here). All this works because each attack animation must complete before you do something else. So start an attack while you can BE attacked will most likely cause you to take a hit (the AI is good at recognizing this). So some level of counter punching is very important (there is a stealth component also.. so you can get a couple free hits in). I start many fights with either a bow strike or sucking mobs into trash to 'even the odds'. You can also chain attacks, following up weak hits with strong ones.. but knowing when this is safe to do is a real art.. The mobs have the same restrictions as you.. while they are attacking they are open to being attacked.. so figuring out how to take advantage of this is at first a real struggle. And each type of mob has a different set of attack animations as well as attack speeds. And once you add area of effect spells into the mix things get a lot more difficult. Dodge is your friend.. but spending stamina wisely is the key here. Button mashers HATE this game.. and for good reason. Further, there is an expectation that you will build up your cash patiently and explore everything to find more loot. In this sense this game feels like an old school RPG, where exploration is king. This is the most interesting game I've played in years.. a truly wonderful gem for those willing to dig in and really learn. One choice they've made in this game is a simple difference in games of this type that has huge consequences. The map of the world is uncovered from the start... but there is no 'I am here marker'. So you must learn the actual world and how it relates to the printed map. And the quests don't guide you with markers. You must puzzle out the truth from the description and figure out what it means. One hidden mechanic at first playthrough that makes this game great.. you can choose how much fighting you really want to do on the open map. Once you've cleared out all the enemies on the open map, you can choose to reset it.. you do this by NOT entering the zone for 7 days (basically sleep in town and never exit to the main map). You get repopulated mobs and a lot more open world fights. This works for the main maps and all the dungeons.. so you can choose easy or hard for anything you prefer to do. SUPER HIGHLY recommended if you are willing to put the time in. Combat is always very dangerous, and will totally keep you on your toes. Call this a 'dark souls type looter/old-school real time RPG' and you have it kinda right. I hope this company makes more games like this. This one is a complete gem.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 15, 2022

  Outward is a strange game. You can think of it like an open-world souls-like with survival elements, but the game is not kind to folks who may already be familiar with souls-like combat or survival games. The world is populated with enemies but, in most circumstances, there isn't a clear benefit to fighting them. You'll stumble across dozens of ingredients without a good way to identify what they're for or how they'll help you. You'll walk into an area and start dying very rapidly from weather or status conditions that you've haven't had a chance to learn about yet. When you die, you're likely to end up in a bizarre situation that you didn't get to prepare for. Like all games, Outward needs you to learn how to play within its ruleset, but it doesn't do a great job teaching those mechanics to you. Yet, I still recommend the game. If you get past those early hurdles (and if you don't that's okay, too; there are lots of other great games) then you'll be free to experience the charm this game has to offer. That charm comes from the environments, the dungeons, in planning ahead for your next journey and possible fights along the way, in constructing a character build, and even in the lethality of combat and the death scenarios. Exploration is king in Outward and there's a lot of cool stuff to see and find. Exploration, more than any other game element finances your character growth. If you need that exploration and growth to be in service of a clearly set end goal, you may not find this game as fulfilling as others. It can offer a few concrete goals, such as the main story or tough boss fights, but they feel a bit separate from the core gameplay loop. As an example of this separation, you can choose when to continue the main quest after a clearly punctuated intermission. To compare it to another game, it's like choosing when to do Bleak Falls Barrow in Skyrim (just a similar example; playing Outward is not like playing Skyrim). In Skyrim, a significant element of character growth is tied to completing that quest. But in Outward, there's no such gatekeeping. There's perks to completing certain quests and doing them well, or in siding with certain factions, but you can finish most of your build and go nearly anywhere without progressing the story at all. In fact, at the time of this review, I haven't actually done much of the main quest. ^_^; If you're not sure whether this game is for you, here's what I'd recommend if you're willing to give it a quick try before a possible refund: play the opening sequence, get to the point when you can leave the first town and then go explore for a bit (all easy to do within 2 hours). Don't worry too much about the quest you've been given; it can be a bit stressful and it's not very representative of the rest of the game. You can try the tutorial first, but I'd recommend to do that after exploring (it's always available), since it can take a bit of time with all the info it shares. Here's some tips that may help you. Outward is a survival game in the sense that everything you do costs something: resources and weapon durability are common to other games, but you'll also spend other things like max health and stamina, especially in fights. If you sleep to recover those, then you'll lose max mana. It can be frustrating early on when the first enemies out the door are wailing on you and you're only getting weaker as they hit you. But, enemies don't necessarily have anything useful for you to loot, and since there's no character experience, it's often better not to engage. You will eventually have to fight, so when you feel up for it, shadowbox with your weapon to get a feel for its timing and range, then practice on enemies outdoors, or better yet, lure enemies into each other so that you can see how they behave. If you don't like your weapon, there's one of every type lying around in the first town. The most difficult thing to adapt from other games is that enemies don't stagger when you hit them, at least not at first, and the AI will see your attack as an opening to counterattack. If all else fails, just run away and recover. When you die, because dying is a near essential part of the game, you'll probably end up somewhere you don't recognize, weakened, with debuffs and maybe enemies nearby and ready to attack. Mercifully, the only things you may lose upon death are time (in the in-game calendar) and possibly a bit of money. Losing time only matters if your doing a timed quest. You may not have your stuff on or next to you after death, but look around and you'll find it soon. Defeat scenarios are meant to be a bit stressful, but accept that you can always recover from them and that mindset can help pull you through an otherwise dastardly challenge.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2022

  Outward follows its own vision for an RPG, a spicy strategy in today's market, making design decisions that that first glance may seem counterintuitive, but work together to achieve something special. This game is targeted at an older audience and thus incentivizes us to play slower, look around more, read more, and play more methodically and thoughtfully. Ultimately it transformed the way I played RPGs and has become one of my favourite games of all time. Initially, like most, I fought the game. I complained about bag space, skill slot space, tough/cheap enemies, long distances without fast travel, etc. Truly, what I hated most was not being able to pick up all the loot I want. Money is hard enough to come by! But weirdly, as I played, something started to change. Now that I constantly had to throw away items for bag space, I started reading item descriptions more, looking at weight/money ratio, how the item looks, what I might need it for in the near future. And as I did this I started to develop a more personal relationship with the items I was carrying. I knew each and every item in my pack, what it was for, when I would need it, what I might replace it with. Somehow the devs found a way to deepen my love for loot. My other annoyances followed a similar pattern. e.g. many will tell you combat is souls-like. I also used to say this and it's true on the surface, but really it's a shallow comparison. In Outward preparation for a fight is king, reflexes and reading animations is secondary. Anyway, the short of it is, don't be hasty. Like me, you might end up loving something you might have hated. Shoutout to the 4-part (now only 2-part) review by Ratatoskr on Youtube. Peace
• gamedeal user

  Nov 15, 2022

  I've owned the game for a while now and all comments i've seen(Negative and Positive Ones) are pretty accurate. It's an old school RPG a little bit clunky, but quite fun. Progression take quite some time and feel exhausting on the long term if you don't have enough hours to spend on a single game or you are a casual player with full time responsabilities. Here's the best advice I can give you that i haven't seen in the comment section yet : -Use the 𝗗𝗘𝗕𝗨𝗚 𝗠𝗢𝗗𝗘 that allows you to do pretty much anything. It helps you tweaks some features in-game to your taste for maximum joy. Vanilla + Debug = Almost ∞ pleasure. Good Luck Adventurer
• gamedeal user

  Nov 16, 2022

  This is a fantastic game, but definitely isn't for everyone, let me explain. First off: It have very little voice acting, it does exist but it is mostly just text, which can be tiresome after a while. Second: There is almost no tutorial, the one that exist will only cover the basic and is even lacking in those regards as well. All the advanced stuff you have to figure out yourself. Third: The game is hard and unforgiving, oh you got attacked by a hyena and got bit once? And now you have an infection and your bleeding? But you don't have bandages or antiseptic? Welp, guess you better run like crazy towards town so you don't bleed to death, but be careful as every stamina expense takes away some of your maximum stamina until you get some sleep. Fourth: It is very slow pace, rushing into combat will be a sure way of getting killed, even just rushing out into the wilderness without the proper clothes for different environments or potions to deal with poison and infections will also get you killed. A lot of the game is preparation and figuring out solutions to problems. Fifth: No saving, all the choices you do is final, even if you die it doesn't give you a game over and let you retry, no, if you get beaten down, you will respawn somewhere else with a lore explanation of how you survived. For example, the first enemy i faced was a bandit that beat the shit out of me. And lorewise it told me i was captured by the bandit. so i wake up in the bandit camp where is now must sneak out. I failed this, and the same bandit beat the ever loving shit out of me again. So lorewise it told me the bandit threw me out of the camp into the river as he thought i was too much of a hassle and i wake up coughing up water by the river bank behind the bandit camp. On the positive note, you feel very free when you play this game, it reminds me of Skyrim, from the get go as soon as you spawn, you can go anywhere, and do anything, don't wanna do the main quest? Sure thing, it's up to you! The main quest itself even encourages you to walk away and explore. It also feels very personal and cozy, making a fire by the river, putting up your tent, boiling water to clean it, grilling meat from the ostrich bird you just felled and sleeping so you wont get exhausted. You get very attached to your character. I like it, maybe you will like it too.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 5, 2023

  This is a good game, but made for the hardcore audience ONLY. Big on SURVIVAL, very, very little crafting. This game is for people who like to struggle. 1. You are a NPC loser who can manage a kick every 15 seconds 2. You have no player attributes (I.E. Strength, vitality, agility, etc.) 3. You don't know how to craft anything except worthless junk 4. No manual saving/loading even in "Normal" mode 5. Seriously you are weak: even a hyena will kill you and "not-a-chocobo" is still a threat 6. Most enemies travel in pairs, also there are giant shrimp that can shoot hyper beams at you from the start of the game 7. You can learn to use magic, but at the permanent sacrifice of max health and max stamina 8. Mana doesn't regenerate on it's own, and your max mana has a temporary decrease every time you sleep; the only way to raise the cap again is to use mana, which again, does not regenerate 9. I use the term "magic" loosely, the first spell you get is accurately named "spark" because a zippo lighter would be more useful 10. The map is an actual map; you have no GPS. That's pretty neat if you wanna exercise your brain, but most players probably don't want to do that work themselves In order to survive, you must: -Steal EVERYTHING that is not nailed down, even if it is right next to someone. -Avoid combat at all costs until you at least have a shield+1H weapon -Pay for training; the only way to get permanent stat gains (limited options even then) -Scrounge everywhere for the tools to fish and mine, then begin a very, very slow grind to get money to learn how to craft and cook on your own. -Do not care about time; you are allowed to repair your items for free! But only the items that are ON YOUR PERSON, and it takes 12 hours of repairing to restore a broken tool to full. Got a two handed weapon? 12 hours. Got a pickaxe? Another 12 hours. Got a fishing harpoon? I hope you're ready for 1.5 days of repairing, because that's what it's gonna take. -Fortunately time is meaningless (Aside from the initial deadline of 5 days to keep your house) because while you are a weak NPC that needs to sleep and eat food and drink water, everyone else in the world is immortal and laughs at the thought of ever having to move or "close shop for the day". Some gameplay issues: 1. Combat is exceptionally clunky. You have about a 4 frame window to counterattack the weakest enemy in the game. Think Dark Souls reeling mechanics and remember you are a weak NPC loser. 2. The world is beautiful (forgiving some weird ground graphics glitches), but very sparsely populated with resources. It takes hundreds-thousands of those resources to afford training and equipment. 3. The game includes a free-form crafting grid where you can combine up to 4 items in slots. This is ultimately pointless because you barely get resources that are worth experimenting with. Besides which, the resources that can be combined are heavy, and you have limited space, so this is really a throwaway mechanic and does nothing for progression. 4. Given the amount of gathering you need to do, the default keystroke should be "tap to gather". Instead you must hold the key/button for 2 seconds. Not a big deal right? Well when you're gathering thousands of things that kind of adds up. Not great. 5. There's 1 sidequest in the main hub and it's worth 70 money, where a good piece of armor will cost you 300-600. Maybe just a few more one-time quests to help a player get enough money to get a set of armor would make the game less grind-y. But then again that might defeat the purpose of this game. 6. Probably a good idea to tell players they only have 3 key skill unlocks in the entire game and there's no way to get more. Maybe also helpful to list what those are and where they are, so players can plan out their builds. Despite being a very different experience from the Skyrim-like game I expected, it's a unique experience in it's own right. I've got 8 hours in and I've barely scratched the surface, but that's also because it takes that long to progress. Possible I just suck at this game, but dismiss me at your own risk. Still worth the money when this game is on sale.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 11, 2023

  DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THIS GAME!

  I know... if you are reading this you are probably thinking about buying this game, you are an avid RPG player. Outward looks so appealing to you but you are not sure if it will fulfill all you want in an Open World RPG Survival game and most of all, you are scared of the "Souls-like" tag right there! You love roleplaying, you love survival, you love immersion, you love huge diversity of items, places, enemies and also a good and FAIR challenge... I started playing Outward very recently (some people could state that I don't know the game very well) however I will still try my best to convince you that: yes, this game might be for you!

  1) About the Difficulty:

  Ok, the game is difficult alright! But I wouldn't say that this is a "Souls-like" difficulty! The beginning is really harsh, you will be overwhelmed by most enemies outside the gates but seriously, if you have played other "old school" RPGs like Risen and Gothic, you will probably know that you never start a game killing demons and dragons... everything demands a preparation and planning, Outward is on that category! Even Skyrim, for example, if you play in Legendary Difficulty and go outside with a weak armor, you will be killed by a mere Giant Mudcrab! You will realize that "Ok, I need to prepare! I need better gear, maybe some skills/perks and potions". Dying in Outward doesn't mean you lose the game (unless you play in Hardcore), you will wake up in a different location and the outcomes of your death depends on the circumstances of your defeat. If you are killed by Hyenas you will wake up in their Nest, if you die by bandits you wake up on their Camp and so on... that much I already learned! Hyenas won't steal your gear but bandits might do so! You can recover all your lost items usually in the place where you wake up! If you can't find your backpack next to you, just look around and you might find your items on a chest... you can consult the Outward wiki, this mechanic is very complex but at least, I hope you understood that the game is not really difficult, its not unfair, it just demands that you prepare for things! I find games like Conan Exiles way harder than Outward and that "Souls-like" tag is misplaced, in my honest opinion!

  2) About the Survival:

  Being brief... its a standard survival mechanic. Hunger, Thirst and Sleep, they do affect your stats with buffs and debuffs depending on your conditions but its nothing really complex. There are diseases in this game, so far I didn't got any trouble with that but I already noticed that there are concoctions that heal you and apparently some diseases can be cured by sleeping and keeping yourself well-nourished!

  3) About the Roleplaying:

  There is a Character Creation and Customization Interface but nothing too much detailed. You are pretty much free to do whatever you want! Some places are restricted to be accessed only after quests but overall, you can go anywhere you want. So far, I've been farming Silver to build my strenght the best I can! Right now I am roleplaying as a fisherman, because I've realized that some fish can be sold by a good price and I am slowly getting a good gear to become an adventurer and later on, maybe join a Faction which I am not sure right now... maybe the Holy Faction! The game constantly reminds you that you are not a hero, rather, you are just a commoner supposed to find your place in a harsh world and at the very beginning you will learn that! When you go out of your house, there will be a mob demanding you to pay lots of money in compensation of the bad deeds made by your grandmother! In the world of Outward, the descendants must pay for the mistakes of their ancestors and that is just the beginning of a whole world of unforgiveness!

  4) Hints:

  Well, so far I can tell you that Fishing is a good and safe option to farm Silver, your only expense is a Harpoon! My gameplay improved a lot after I bought a Flintlock from the merchant at the gates. I suppose you could use a bow to kill enemies from high-ground but at least for me, it was not a good strategy... Bandages and Rags helps a lot! Invest in Weapons with high Impact value, they are better to stagger enemies and helps you to hit more times! So far, this is all I can say...

  5) How this game could improve:

  What I am mostly missing here is a Workshop! Outward does have a Modding Community and you can find some pretty interesting mods in Nexus, however, I would still enjoy more if we could have a Steam Workshop for Outward! It could help engage more people in the Modding scene! So far, this is all I have to say about Outward (I'll update this Review if needed). Again, do not be afraid to play this game! Its not as difficult as it portrays itself and its not unfair as some negative reviews says! Just be open-minded and have patience!!
• Spazzyphantasm

  Aug 8, 2023

  I wanted to like this game but it feels like it was created just to waste your time. Travel is a hassle. You get a compass and a map which that should be all that you need. But the maps I experienced were very poor quality. They are so resolution when it comes to the information they give you. They show you an abstraction of the game world rather than anything reliable. Is this grey patch on the map an impassable mountain? You can't tell, walk over here and figure it out. The maps are also too large and are not very densely pack so you're just running all the time. Traversal feels both great and terrible. The control of just running around is very fluid actually, however you cannot jump. Which wouldn't be an issue if the world was constructed in such a way that supported this. There are situations where having no hops is sorely missed. I will mention there is a supply crate by the crashed boat on the first map that you can get soft-locked if you approach it from behind. There is a small gap you can fall into and be stuck forever. You either kill yourself somehow or pray you can trick the game by loading back in and walking out of the hole as you Y coordinate seems to be just high enough on loading in to get out sometimes. If you could jump this would not have happened. You can also fall off cliffs to your death. You can also comically slide down hills at a snails pace softly hit the ground and instantly die. If vertical movement is not meant to be a part of the game, this should not be something a player needs to worry about. Put up an invisible wall like in the towns if the drop would realistically hurt. Nothing is worse than a hill being slightly too steep, resulting a death and another wasted 5 minutes getting back to that same point. Harsh punishment does not make a game difficult. You start out quite feeble in this game which I would not mind if the game didn't seem to want to grind any progress you make away when you lose a fight. It's bad enough you get put into a random location when you are defeated sometimes, but you also have 1-3 status effects that weaken you when you wake up. Making it much more likely a stray enemy may just one tap you while you are trying to tend to yourself. This stray enemy may even throw you into a dungeon forcing you to jump through even more hoops just to get back to what you want to be doing. The game even took my bag from me at one point not sure why it usually places you bag near you, Luckily the scenario I was given on death resulted in a slight breeze being enough to kill me, a chicken approached me while I was looking at the map hitting me once. I then spawned at a campsite with my bag returned. I'm sure there is a point in this game where you become stronger and some issues are lessened. It seems that the game is more interested in barring progression with enormous punishments and an imbalanced early game. The only thing that I regret it that I gave it more than 2 hours. The tutorial dangles all these cool possibilities in front of you and I bought into it. I value my time too much to play a game that doesn't show it's players the courtesy of realizing maybe the players don't want 50% of their play time being watching their character slowly run from place to place. If you value your time but want a similar feeling game just play Dragon's Dogma.
• Nidhogg

  Aug 24, 2023

  Apparently this game doesn't think saving is necessary. It happened two times now that after playing several hours I find myself AGAIN at the FUCKING BEGINNING OF THIS SHIT SHOW!!!! FUCK YOU FOR WASTING MY TIME!
• gamedeal user

  Aug 27, 2023

  if you're like me and saw a youtube video praising this game/someone told you its good don't waste your time.