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Outward very early impressions

So, have the flu and this game came out today and that gives me something to do.

1. Character graphics are ugly for $40 game.
2. Combat is typical action type: roll around like Geralt and then swing your weapon as you come out of the roll. Magic is cool-down based and is very slow compared to melee.
I haven't found ranged weapons yet but they exist as I've found several arrows.
3. You are a survivor of a shipwreck that happened about 1/2 mile from your home town.
4. You are a pariah of your village, but most people will still help you out.
5. Quest givers don't have exclamations above their heads, you will need to talk to everyone. There seem to be actual directions instead of quest markers.
6. Tons of crafting recipes so far and manual crafting is possible.

Sounds interesting, I'm considering to buy it as well. Trying to skim some more info on it.

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Originally Posted by crpgnut (Post 1061562383)

I haven't found ranged weapons yet but they exist as I've found several arrows.

It would really be superb trolling from the devs, if only the arrows exist. :biggrin:

Refunded for now.
Was really looking forward to this but I think if you go the souls-combat route you really have to nail it.. and outward simply doesn't. It's not Conan Exiles level of clunkiness but coming directly from Sekiro, Outward feels really, really bad.

If combat gets patched to be a little more responsive and feel a bit more impactful I'll gladly re-buy it in the future.

Combat is more like in risen/elex than souls games. there is a tutorial at the menu which is made really nice, takes around 30 minutes but explains everything; i played little so far but dont know if i will like all this survival stuff in the long run.

Didn't buy as so far noone claims it's fun playing solo. Till it happens (or not):
https://steamcommunity.com/app/79426…0325123921086/

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Does Outward have a story?
Yes, one questline per faction.

Am I forced to do the main quest?
No, but you will be missing out on a lot of content.

Is there friendship and romance?
There is friendship but no romance.

Will my friend and I sleep in the same tent or separate tents?
Separate tents.

Does Outward have mod support?
No, unfortunately.

I read it as coop game with no sex and no chance of modding it in. Booooooooooooring.

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https://steamcommunity.com/app/79426…85838063629501

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Do enemies respawn in this game?

Yes they do, after you left a region for 5-7 days the enemies respawn (and chest loot too)

Amalur 2?

'nut mentioned uglyness… The game was made with Unity which explains it.
Seen some very odd bug reports, for example someone says normal tent isn't working but luxury tent does. Whatever that means.
Skipped all threads on steam that discuss combat, don't care about that, sorry.

I dont like it so far, feels like a cheap mmo.
-inventory is a mess
-you dont appear on the map
-written replies arent the same as spoken replies many times which is fucking retarded
-world is huge but empty and you need to walk/run alot

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Originally Posted by porcozaur (Post 1061562419)

I only finished the first real quest outside the starting city but I think I'll enjoy this game.
I agree on the points you mention, but I would put the fact that you don't appear on the map as a plus. I, personally, like it that way. Some other minuses:
- AI can be a bit stupid at times (enemies running into walls when running away from you, for example)
- Game looks like it is from last generation and my 1060 would crush it but no, it drops frames sometimes and on ultra settings it dips below 60fps at times. Dropping it to very high keeps it above 60 fps 99% of the time with no visible drawbacks, but micro-stutter is present at some moments.
- I don't know how death works in the game. I "died" in a cave but was respawned with full health and all equipment in the same cave. That doesn't seem punishing enough for me. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel it hasn't been explained well.
For the pluses:
- No map markers. There is compass but you only get told what to do and where to do it.
- Food/water/sleep needs seem to be balanced well, at least to my taste. You won't die if you forget dinner but will be punished if you skip lunch and go adventuring without food.
- Although the game doesn't look all that good, the art style is appealing to me.
- Darkness is darkness. You need lantern or a torch in caves. Good thing is that you can put a lantern on your backpack and have both hands free for weapons (but you'l need a good backpack).
- Backpack mechanic is quite fun - backpack slow you down in combat and you can drop it at any time (very quickly, there is a button specifically for that). Just remember to pick it up after the fight is over.
I haven't played enough of the game to judge the character development or the story. Skills seem fun from what I've seen in the tutorial and there are combos (cast a fire rune of some kind and have bonus damage for fire spells while you are in the rune's radius).
Overall it's enjoyable but needs polish. It seems rushed to me, but it seems like 90% of the game is done. That is my impression from playing for two hours so take it with a grain of salt.

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Originally Posted by Ivanwah (Post 1061562441)

- Game looks like it is from last generation and my 1060 would crush it but no, it drops frames sometimes and on ultra settings it dips below 60fps at times. Dropping it to very high keeps it above 60 fps 99% of the time with no visible drawbacks, but micro-stutter is present at some moments

Seems there's quite a bit of talk about poor performance. I've been reading up on open world design, and the skinny version seems to be that it throws up so many technical challenges, that it really takes proper graphics engineers to tune the performance. They might just have aimed low with the graphics, and are relying on brute force to overcome inefficiencies.

My 1080ti runs the game without a hitch. Buttery smooth. Game is promising, really seems like something I'll like as I play more. I enjoy the Gothic-esque beginning where you have barely anything and need to survive. World seems fun to explore and large and you get a compass but no map markers, which is really cool. It seems to be exactly what I was hoping for.

Well, the game has little hidden treasures here and there, which I love. However, there is a ton of walking/running with nothing at all going on. It is also easy to avoid most combat and that's a good thing because melee combat sucks ass in this game. The economy is pretty brutal too and the game absolutely doesn't want you to collect loot. 65-80 pounds of gear is max, so this is much more survival game than rpg from that aspect.

I find the game just interesting enough not to quit.

I'm just wondering how you are supposed to collect any loot at all, once you wear heavy armor.

Better/upgradable backpacks probably; btw when does it save, i dont see any sign on the screen.

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Originally Posted by Ripper (Post 1061562445)

Yes, the game is made by a small team and they probably are not that experienced. The game is far from worst optimized game I played, and is very much playable on weaker hardware, while still looking decent enough. I've seen games look and perform much, much worse than this.

No GOG release, sad. That, and the fact that there's no swimming/jumping and the aforementioned respawn make me hold off my purchase for now.
It looks promising otherwise, so hopefully they can tweak further and add more features down the line.

As for the respawn, is it very noticeable? Does everything respawn in full, or is it more of a gradual subtle respawn (like in Gothic 3)? I am okay with it if it makes sense in the game world… Clearing a cave from monsters doesn't mean no others can take up residence in it at a later stage, of course, but it should be subtle enough. And rare enemies should not respawn at the same rates as "regular" critters.

Also, is there (a lot of) real estate options to set up shop, or is there only the one you start with?

Its good that the major choice is about 2h into the game so replaying would be easy but the beginning is boring; one save slot sucks big time specially when its automatic. you have no idea how tough a monster is when you see it, and many have range spells/attacks whatever, so if you run from it, it hits you from 1km away lol.
Also i have stutter in the open areas, really annoying; ill wait for a few months of patching and maybe some trainer to remove all this food/sleep/drink crap.

And yeah no jumping trololol, you cant climb a 5 cm ledge.

The game's checkpoints system smells like Assassin Creed clone.

https://www.pcgamer.com/you-never-di…tory-stronger/

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you can't die in Outward. The RPG auto-saves your game constantly so you can never rewind time and reload an earlier save. And when you're defeated in combat, you're not killed but instead you wake up somewhere else on the map.

Well AssCreed has an explanation for this save system (you're reliving someone else's life in a virtual world) and if died the game revives MC somewhere close to the place of death, but Outward…

Yes, Outward is tagged as survival game on Steam so there is some logic to have such checkpoint/respawnMC system, but cmon, the game is not Ark nor Rust. Wasn't some recent thread pointing out that survival elements are watering down RPG aspects in hybrids?

Respawns are indeed weird. For instance, I died in a trog cave and I respawned right next to the quest goal and got rewarded a very nice weapon for dying. I did not find this weapon on another toon that completed the dungeon w/o a death.

Oftentimes, I will die outside and be dragged by a town member to the gates. Sometimes I have my backpack, but not always. When you lose your backpack, it will often be nearby your respawn point but sometimes it is where you fell.

Graphics look like Morrowind with the GE mod They're old but okay. The real problem with the game is the price point. It should be $20 not $40. I'd suggest picking it up once it inevitably falls to that price. The game won't be sustainable at $40.

However, the dungeons that I've visited have been pretty good. They're just aren't enough of them. Loot is fine though you really shouldn't be picking up every little thing. Most used weapons and armor are worth 5-6 coins, so pickup lighter stuff instead. Food items are light and sell for a couple silver each. If you mine a gem those sell for really good coin.

Crafting shines! It is the make or break for playing the game imo. If you like crafting stuff, the balance is near perfect. You never have all you want, but generally enough to make it.
I try to save my poisons/traps/elemental effects for tough fights I can't avoid. I generally learn this by respawning.

Probably the best early review from Steam. I had fun reading it, describes game major aspects as a partial playthrough - here's hope professionals learn from this style:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/zackri…mended/794260/

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Character creation, 5 faces to choose from, none good, no body customization. Made me frown.

Beginning tutorial and start of story: shipwrecked, scrounge for things, townsfolk tell you that you owe them a blood price and if you don't pay it in 5 days you'll lose your home. Cool, I like the short intro, get me into the game, I want to explore!

Finally leave the town with a club I made and all the starting materials I could get. A weird bird attacks me, I almost die in two hits and I'm bleeding out. I smash the bird in the face, and it runs from me. It's too fast to catch, and walks onto the side of a mountain that I cannot reach, and is frustratingly out of my range. Lame.

I keep bleeding. It doesn't stop, so I spend what little money I have to buy linen to craft bandages. It takes all the bandages I bought to stem the bleeding and my health takes forever to regen. I go back outside, another big chicken attacks me, I block and dodge and don't get hit, it too runs up a mountain and I can't get it (as the npc's are less restricted in movement). I can't jump or jump attack, it's out of reach above me. More frowning.

Hyenas show up. I know that one bird almost destroys me so I run, right into bandits, and the hyenas and bandits kill each other. I loot the bodies and realize that this is probably the only way I'll be able to get loot because I can't actually kill anything without catastrophic costs in time. You see, to heal I need to rest, but I have a limited time-frame to get a large amount of money, so I can't rest. This puts me in the position of forced suck. I shrug and spend an hour wandering around trying to get things to kill each other to loot the bodies and make money. Not ideal.

I randomly die on a spike trap because I was crossing a bridge and my camera was faced up as I was navigating trying to escape from some awful creature. When you respawn from death your stats are severely restricted, which you must rest for hours in order to restore. There goes more time. Still can't kill anything.

At this point a friend joins me, nearly 2 hours in. And thank God too, because the difficulty of doing even simple things in this game is absurd.

We head out after he gets situated. One of us dies fighting bandits, and we realize we can rez each other. Nice. Except your stats go to a fourth of what they are normally, and only 17 hours of rest will fix it.

I get tired of running from♥♥♥♥♥♥ even though we find some better weapons and armor, and I suggest we get magic. We go to a mountain to get it. We spend a few hours trying to get through the dungeon. We take turns dying back and forth because the monsters inside kill us incredibly fast and we use each other as bait. Even simple encounters with one creature are brutal and unforgiving. Every hit is a massive drain on resources as you don't regenerate without eating or resting. We both end up dying a few times together and get transported back to the beginning. The amount of time spent sleeping, finding food and water after dying is obnoxious. Simply trying to survive in this game is a constant burden and when you die and respawn in dangerous areas with almost no health and your max health penalized by 75-80% with no way to regenerate it outside of sleeping literally 15 to 17 hours is nuts. Because then you're hungry and thirsty. Out of rations and water? Time to run out to forage♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm too stubborn to quit so we keep going.

We finally find out way through the maze of death and misery and find the place to get magic. Yay. Okay now I have fire powers which is awesome. And for a short glimmer of time I found joy. Magic was awesome, it actually did damage, and with two people you could really position a foe well. We manage to start making some money.

My friend wants to investigate a place because we're feeling good that they game is actually playable now. We talk to some people and they lock us up in a mine and force us to work as slaves. He loses everything except a loincloth but fortunately, due to a bug, I have my gear. I kill the guards with fire magic as my friend uses his body as a meat punching bag and dies horribly. We get out, but now he's barely alive.

After we leave the place, for some reason, winter came. We end up getting attacked by a lighting mantis on our way back to town and my buddy dies, and I die from cold trying to rez him and make a camp fire (I should have made the fire first).

The game tries to throw us a bone and has a monster creature rescue us and we find the best stuff we've found so far in his cave. I make the comment that the game is trying to keep us interested by making 1 death out of a 100 beneficial. Would be cool except now we're in an awful position in the middle of winter with no health, needing to rest, but with no food or water in a frozen wasteland filled with monsters that can kill in 4 hits.

We die again trying to make our way to town because the game spawned us so far away from our goal. Not that we are weaklings at this point, as we murder many bandits before they finally claim our life. We are taken prisoner in a camp. Half of my gear is put into a chest and the rest is in my pack on the ground. We spawn naked in a camp surrounded by guards. The moment we try to pick up stuff we're rushed by guards and killed instantly. Then we spawn outside the camp with all of our stuff still inside. We're naked in the middle of a frozen wasteland with a sliver of health that we can't regen because you need to sleep to do that and you can't without a bedroll.

We charge into the camp to try and grab our stuff, and after dying several times finally manage to grab all of our possessions before dying again and spawn outside with everything. Every time you die, the game tells you how you somehow manage to find the strength to pull yourself somewhere and collapse, or you're saved by a friendly stranger, or people think you're dead and dump the body, or whatever. This is supposed to make dying interesting. In the frustration of potentially losing all of the gear that took hours of work to get, I skipped all the messages and basically only read them if I think I'm being captured and need to strategise what to do if I were to wake up naked.

We wander back to town, constantly stopping to make camp fires to stay alive, over-encumbered and our stats are constantly nothing, we are also disease ridden from the cold and monster which have bitten us. It's past my time limit and they sold my house and I'm homeless. We have to sleep near the forge on the sidewalk for warmth. We spent or discarded most of what we found only trying to keep the most important or expensive sounding things. The merchants only bought a few things off of us, the rest is worthless and we make just enough to upgrade our backpacks and buy some food so we can sleep literally 36 hours straight and it still doesn't repair our stats fully.

TLDR: This game has potential, and I did have fun, but it's almost impossible to play single-player and the completely unforgiving nature of LITERALLY EVERYTHING gets old fast. I'll change my review if I start having fun. Ciao.

Well that seemed like a knowledgeable review. Game sounds wretched