Outward Definitive Edition

enjoyed everything except Sirocco questlines (Caldera is still pretty cool). Its not really a souls-like, maybe around 60% souls like? But overall, good first time experience.

bag despawed after death even though the loading screens say you are supposed to see it on the compass. respawned me in combat with different creatures than what i had died to the first time, each death skips a few in game days so i auto failed the first quest. do not recommend. (im aware its my skill issues)

1. this game does not respect your time as you will spend the majority of game time running from point to point in boring and empty worlds to do what is essentially fetch quest best reserved for early-2000s MMOs

2. the amount of story in this supposed role playing game is shorter than a one page summary on your phone's screen, written in the prose and vocabulary of a 6th grader

3. combat is extreme jank , worse than Piranha Bytes RPGs

Great game, plus absolute legends for adding couch coop when almost no other modern titles have that option.

I like how this offers no level up system but actually has you try and play the game and learn new skills and such

I;m having a blast playing this game but the missions are very badly designed and let the game down badly.

Some of them have permanent negative effects, some can end your character's run altogether and many operate of timers with permanent negative effects for failure. Reading the wiki is essential to play the game and avoid these - which is unfortunate.

Other problems are the bad UI and feedback during combat - but these can be fixed with mods. Basically, this game is not enjoyable in it's shipped state and/or doing research.

But it definately has a charm and it is satisfying to try different builds and defeat bosses.

I wanted to write a review on this game some day so i am doing it now.

The good:
This game has something that some would call SOUL.
The devs did put a lot of heart into it and made some fun mechanics.
I also like the lore of the regions and factions. ( but i dislike the quests)
The magic system is pure FIRE. There are a lot of combos you can do between different spells that cause new effects.
You can also combine classes for crazy combos and the limit of 3 breakthrough points balances it as well.
I think in case of breakthrough points less was more, for that reason i agree with the limit.
I also think some of the crafting and cooking is very nice.

The bad:
The game has a lot of walking and the game punishes you for running because of stamina burn.
I think that is very bad design that just wastes a players time.
Let us run outside of combat without stamina burn. Stamina burn from running just forces you to camp more or carry more stamina burn tea. Its just annoying...
We have already a lot of stuff to manage (Sleep/Food/Drinking/Weather/healing/disease/corruption)
It just adds another thing to it if you don't want to walk everywhere.
Another bad thing are the time sensitive quest.
That might be a personal opinion of mine but i think time sensitive quest that give you perma debuffs are just bad and not fun.
It forced me once to restart my character. I personally find that horrible.
Also the main base game quests until ancestral peacemaker are just lame.
On top of that the voice acting is just weird. They tried to save money by just making the voice actor say the first 2 lines of a dialogue box and then the rest is just silent.
I personally find that dumb i would rather have full voice acting OR NONE AT ALL.
Oh yea also why can't we choose what to repair on rest? Why do i have to equip it in my hand to repair it?
Just a small annoyance...
Also why is the UI so empty of information.
There is a mod called combat hud that basically shows you buff timers and buffs/debuffs.
It basically fixes this. Its really annoying having to open the Character menu to see the timers.
Why does the base game not have more hud info? You are giving us the info in the character tab anyway. Why do we have to press an extra button to see it?
Another bad thing is the limit of quickslots. I think they should have added at least 5 more quickslots that you can only bind with consumables. That would have made the game much better.

Conclusion:
I like the game it has its charms but it has so many small dumb flaws that you have to fix through modding.
I recommend buying it when its on sale and please check out the quality of life mods before you play the game. Its basically like skyrim.( a fun game that needs to be fixed through mods)

This game has an INSANE amount of depth. I am barely scratching the surface 14 hours in... Outward feels like what Dark Souls 2 could've been in many ways, especially the dungeons and the need for lanterns and torches.

My advice is to play this blind - this game teaches you through experience, which you get by getting beaten up by stuff you didn't know was a thing until suffer through them.

Your character is dumb, weak and broke; and it can actually get much worse.
Your time in this game is not supposed to be perfect. Some days you will lose, and some you will win, but mostly you'll lose. There are no save states, so if things went bad you can't load a previous save to fix them - you'll have to unscrew them manually.

The moment you realize that despite all the shit you went through, you still managed to survive and get strong - is when the game starts getting very addictive.

Combat feels clunky and stiff, but it's very fitting for the overall experience and atmosphere of the game.

its a game about managing inventory and resources, and does not want you to "save" your consumables. It wants you to consume them! If you play slowly and with purpose, and expend your food/water/potions/traps while you do, you'll have a much better time!

It's a decent game, a lot better with co-op. It's quite tedious and gets unnecessarily annoying at times, there are a lot of fillers. However it does a few things well such as inventory management, food, water and sleep needs. Camping system is neat as is cooking and alchemy. Specializations could use some work, some seem garbage while others are OP. The Sirocco DLC is stupid, complete waste of time that is simply there to drain your hours for no gain.

This game is best enjoyed with friends, but I can't get mine to play anything with me for more than like 2 or 3 days before they run off and buy something else to only play once so like 300+ of my 343 hours at the time of writing this have been solo. I really enjoy the game. The replayability is great, and there's so much content to do for each playthrough. Also the music is really nice. 5 stars. 10/10. Chef's kiss.

The world seems like it interesting to explore but the combat is just so purposefully obtuse its not fun

要是有脑机接口，这玩意绝对是第二异世界人生。一切都太真实了。你就是个普通人，没有高贵的血统，也没有逆天的背景。所以外界的一切对你来说都是非常致命的。被野兽咬几口就感染了，防御几次攻击就失衡了，学个破魔法也要牺牲自己的生命。作为普通人，你要尽可能的活下去，认真规划好每一个战斗。反正我是乐在其中哈哈哈，天天埋陷阱坑boss

very good game two play with a friend
I really like the Backpack mechanic and the fighting system.
The world is beautiful.
There are many interesting places to discover.
Also you don´t have a map that shows you where you are on it.
It´s a nice game. I can only repeat.

Very cool, but DON'T LOOK UP ANYTHING!!!

Biggest charm for me playing CO-OP was us figuring stuff out along the way, from recipies to weapons and mechanics. Looking stuff up would ruin a BIG part of the experience. Also, damn I suck at combat alone.

One of the best co-op experiences I've ever had, and that was only with the base game. Came back for the definitive edition, and loving the additional DLC content. Best played without looking up anything about the game and enjoying the thrill of discovery and learning about the world the hard way.

Weird game with a very steep learning curve. Nothing in the game tells you that Jam on bread is absolutely critical to your success.

Tips:
Boil bugs.
Fish a lot.
If you aren't sure what it does, magic isn't for you.
Drink water.

Game gets a 6/10 for being a bastard.

A stellar experience that captures the true spirit of exploration and adventure. No game made me feel this like a plucky explorer in a dangerous world. Not only is the setting highly creative and detailed, but the openness is organic and rewards player ingenuity without handholding. So you truly feel like you have progressed, not just mechanically but mentally.

This game is just amazing. It could be called an 'adventure simulator'. It might be a little clunky in combat, but combat isn't the point. The adventure is. And the music... Oh my God the music! One of the best OST out there!

It's difficult for me to recommend this game, not because I didn't like it. In fact, I do like this game, and that's why I have 80 hours into it. But what felt like a novelty at first, becomes tedious after a while. This game is "hard", not due to difficulty, but because it doesn't have any quality of life features to it.

I will say there is a lot to do, and a lot to customize. I enjoyed the combat, the crafting, and the equipment.

There are some clipping issues, no jump (which is weird cause you can dodge roll), and you will be doing a lot of running as travel, which gets bothersome at some point.

Sold game. No jumping in game is a bit different but the mechanic of combat is enjoyable. Will say the traveling gets annoying after awhile, at least there is auto run for the long journeys. Many different play throughs and character build customization so you can put a ton of fun hours into it.

Great Game; I was very hesitant at first I didn't want to play a game that takes muscle memory to win because it is so difficult. That said this game is challenging but most everything can be solved by planning and just playing cautious. The magic system is weird but you get used to it via trial and error and probably the most powerful way to play. The Bows and Daggers are fun all while actually being an awesome way to beat anything in the game. I love the split screen factor and its why i bought the game originally to play with my kid. He is only 7 but he has a blast too, he struggles with some of the stuff and stays away from magic other than summoning a ghost. He likes being a tank with heavy armor and shield he loves just blocking everything. WARNING THE WEATHER IS DEADLY!

This game is something else. It truly gives the vibes of actual surviving, and not being the main character of the story, only a hapless npc. My only problems are:
- Not enough side quests in the areas.
- No matter what you do, your character will look like a diseased molerat.
Otherwise it is a pretty decend game. 8/10

it's a unforgiving survival game with hard combat big open regions to explore and solid build crafting based on weapons and skills and not xp farming. it's one of my favorite survival games and co-op is great! lots of stuff to do and places to explore the only thing i'm not a huge fan of is time based quests but that's also part of the unforgiving survival mechanics. honestly solid 8.5/10 overall

its got a high difficulty curve but once you are past it; its an amazing game. having a friend to assist in fights is the only reason i got past it my self. i'd describe it as a souls like but focused on survival instead of combat

A pretty amazing game all things considered. I remember playing the original version and enjoying it,but it was always lacking. This version fixes just about all my problems I had with the original. As you can see from my playtime as of typing this I genuinely enjoy the game. While the three brother DLC is a little meh since there's a lot of grind involved overall this game has been a blast. It rewards trial and error as well as experimentation and knowledge. The more you learn about the game its mechanics and perks the more your able to travel. The easier your runs become. My first run ever I lost my house and kept spam dying in the winter, after that I decided to play it a bit slowed and grab certain perks that didn't require a breakthrough. What turned into some of the hardest fights in the game for me became somewhat of a joke. Not to mention the modding scene for the game also puts a fun spin on it once you get tired of the base game. The amount of build variety, weapon designs, and lore in this game has me praying outward 2 is here swiftly. If your on the fence about Outward I recommend trying it especially if its ever on sale again. Don't be afraid to look things up if you're really worried about finding items or even builds. This RPG is about having fun not suffering through it for bragging rights. This game is a learning curve that once you've mastered the basics you'll dominate the game easily. Often negative reviews for this game tend to be the difficulty, the lack of true fast travel, or they don't understand how to properly build their character.

Well, this is equal part survival and rpg, quite interesting take on both genres, though it's far from brutal realism of stuff like Green Hell, so game is far fully rpg. Though you'd still to have to watch out for hunger, temperature, rest, bunch of afflictions... start is especially rough with any wolf, bandit and big bird being a mortal threat. Inventory management would be an issue all thorough your adventure, as weight you can carry is quite small, even with best travel bag. Lots of mechanics are quite peculiar for rpg - got to drop travel bag before fight to avoid issues with dodging and maneuvering, mana only becomes available after accessing ley line and sacrificing some of your physic, so you'll lose a bit of strength in exchange for mystical powers. Also half of magic is not very strong and needs magic circle of element in question to empower them.

There isn't much in terms of looks, and wasn't even in year of release, even less now, thought it shouldn't be that jarring to the eye.

Audio is okaish, nothing outstanding but serviceable.

Plot is great\good (though maybe closer to good level), though it might not seem to be so at start, but bunch of concepts, bit of branching, look at situation from perspective of various factions is pretty nice.

Learning how things work on your own in Outward is very fun in the early game. Once you have the basics down it becomes difficult to figure out what the game wants you to do next, but the early game is very strong. Hopefully Outward 2 makes it slightly easier to figure out what the players goals are, without resorting to a guide or tutorial.

Good game that forces you to preplan your combat encounters

I just dont get what people find in this game...

On paper we thought its the perfect coop game, RPG, classes, detailed combat, exploration and looting and all with a friend? Sounded perfect!

Wrong...

There are so many design choices that make the game so incredibly tedious, that it just kills all fun and joy.

We needed a shitload of mods just to make it bearable, but here are many of the awful design choices we had to "fix" with mods:

Most classes are made up of passive or extremely situational skills that dont feel impactful at all, you are also limited to 3 classes out of 11.

You only have a single action bar of 8 slots for active abilities, which is not enough, since more than half of all abilities require a specific buff you need to have, so you also need to constantly open your skill book to buff yourself before you can use an ability.

Oh did i tell you the buffs have 3-5min cooldowns and are consumed when you use the combination ability?

Did i also tell you that the ability has also sometimes up to 6min of cooldown and barely has more impact than a normal attack?

The map doesnt really show anything, including the player position, but its not like you miss much, each map seems big but its just incredibly empty.

Enemies dont really respawn and there are only a handful in every area, so it always feels dead and empty everywhere.

The quests are generally barely more than fetch-quests you find in bad MMOs or repeatable quests in other RPGs.

Your carry weight is incredibly small and things are incredibly heavy, so you can barely loot anything, especially when you want to use more than one weapon.

The coop part didnt feel well designed either, since the coop partner gains no quest progress or achievements, you only earn gear and potentially abilities.

All in all the game is an incredible disappointment and i really dont get why people recommend it to others.

We fought our way through and 100% finished the game in almost 65 hours.

I feel robbed of valuable lifetime after finishing this game.

Dont waste your time unless you hate yourself and your coop partner.

I wanted to like this game, but it fights against you all steps of the way. Sometimes, those struggles are interesting, such as backpack and equipment management are well executed. But mostly, they are frustrating in ways that do not educate you how to play better, as any failure is severely punishing.

The WORLD is empty, this is mostly seen in the cities/towns, where only a few NPC's will actually interact with you. Through 30 hours of playing, the only story I've done is to complete the starting area.

One of my biggest gripes, is that there is no built-in encyclopedia. Every enemy is deadly, I need knowledge before fighting them, since dying is so severely punished. If you're only playing the game, each new enemy will murder you, and teleport you to a random location, confusing you further.

The COMBAT is fine, it holds up relatively well. Plenty of variety, melee/range/magic. Except for the fact that
enemies will chase you until the end of the world, so if you want to test if you can beat a foe, you can shoot an arrow at it, then have it chase you around the entire map until you die.

The REGIONS are not great. You can go from the starting region into the Marshes, and not be able to kill a thing. Difficulty should be linear. The most interesting bit is the map, which provides you no indication where your player position is. I love that concept, really fits with the theme.

The spoken character dialog, of which there isn't much of, doesn't align with the subtitles.

All of these complaints could mostly be solved by a modding patch, and it isn't unlikely that I won't give it another attempt in the future.

This game is a lot of fun. I know you could solo and have a good time, but it really shines with a friend. AND it really can suck your life away cause there's a lot to explore and it's just hard enough to be satisfying without a grind-vibe.

My brother told me to buy it. At First i was hesitant, because the game is not for everyone.

I was positively surprised, playing in CO-OP is a cool adventure, but Solo is boring as hell.....

Combat is neither Good nor Bad , survival part is good , but the World feels empty sometimes.
Graphics is not bad, could be better tho. Overall progression/combat/gearing up is kinda Souls-like.

This combination might not be for everyone i understand .
Solid 6.5/10 from me

There is a lot to be said about this game. There are some systems I really like. Unfortunately, most of the systems I was most looking forward to, had some major flaw.
There's no fast travel, meaning you need to walk everywhere, with no map markers so you'll need to navigate as well. I liked that idea, until I realised the map is inaccurate, the world design feels arbitrary and lifeless, and there is no jumping or climbing, and sprinting is discouraged, all leading to boring traversal. The travel is punishing and walking is slow for immersion - fine. Give us a horse.
The world feels vast... and empty. There are a dozen or so interesting things in the first map alone that most npcs should know about and just don't mention. The writing sets the world up a developed set of societies living in dangerous lands. I cannot fathom how anyone gets anything done when there are bandits outside every city gate, and everything but the city interiors are long lost ruins.
The death scenario system sounds great, until you die two steps from a city gate and get dragged halfway across the map instead two steps back into town.

Things that do work: the resting and repair systems feel good and fair.
The magic is hard. Really hard. If I didn't know better I would say the game doesn't want you to use magic. Every kind of magic has several steps to casting a spell. This being in addition to the arduous task of acquiring mana in the first place. Magic feels earned and powerful because of this.

In conclusion, as some people have already said. This game feels like it has the core of some very good ideas. Ideas I was really looking forward to. But it fails to execute most in some crucial way.

I love this game, but it will not tolerate not being taken seriously. You WILL lose fights if you aren't smart, and from what I've seen, this game doesn't do a Game Over screen on normal mode. Instead, you get dragged off to be held prisoner by intelligent forms of life, and you have to find your way out and get your stuff back. This game is rad as hell.

Overall: 9.5/10 to 10/10 game.
Survival aspect: 8/10
Graphic design: 8.5/10
Monsters: 9/10
Lore: 9/10
Armor/weapons/magic/cooking/alchemy: 9/10
Fighting system: 8.5/10
Multiplayer: 10/10
Singleplayer 8/10
Hardcore > Normal
Mods: 8/10

This is the game I dreamed and imagined as a child. Now very much enjoying it as an adult. Download the multiplayer mod so you can run more then co op game play. Invite your friends and family and enjoy exploring an awesome game.

Had a great start and seemed promising. However, as you leave the very first settlement you will soon discover that nearly the entire world is just empty. No loot, no enemies, no npcs to interact with, just nothing. I spent the last 2 hours of my time played looking for anything to do. I hope it gets worked on, I enjoyed the brutal combat style.

This game is not only an acquired taste, but a game which you have to stick with for a while in order to appreciate it.
However, it is also truly unique in the best sense, and will engage throughout your time with it.

If you find that you always need to feel challenged, and often put games on the hardest settings on your first play through, this game may be for you. Not that this game is necessarily 'hard', but because what you lack in those other games is a sense of engagement that they naturally fail to provide since those games are too afraid to scare you off; this game is not afraid tell you to pull up your socks and pay attention.

Note: This is an indie title made with only a handful of people, I think it's like 3. There is a bit of jank and I have some qualms with how some of the mechanics are handled, however I will give it a pass since there is really no other game that manages to do what this game has done. Best of luck to it's sequel.

Hardcore and not for everyone but incredible class fantasy, build variety and exploration if you can look past some jank. One of my favorite games of all time.

Also this game genuinely has the greatest magic system I've seen.

Great survival fantasy rpg, abit difficult at start, but when you learn mechanics its great. I was dwelling into the lore in this game and its huge. Amazing questline, long and with multiple outcomes. World itself is beautiful, outlandish and then it struck me:
"They never forgot the destruction of what they believe was their home, and are thus very slow to change. They call The Scourge the "Earth Beasts" and many believe their appearance signaled the beginning of the destruction of Aurai, just as they believe the Scarlet Moon was destroyed. They are, however, perplexed as to why it stopped."
I think the shattered moon on sky is Earth and this is either moon we know. They say in game lore about learning things from Father , Weaver etc. Also you can find many out of place industrial constructions from metal and signs of technology. Most probably magic in this game is for real nanotechnology etc. Anyway lore is big point in this game. Will i play it more? Probably yes, but squishiness of character is abit problematic sometimes with bosses, you can be very powerful due to skills and potions, but it takes alot time. Game is abit too slow paced for me for fantasy rpg, but its only my opinion. I anyway highly advise to check Outward if you search for a game for longer. For me its The Long Dark survival, but Outward is very close in my heart.

So I tend to avoid games with this mixed of a reception as the steam reviews might suggest, but this thing is incredible. The vast majority of negative reviews are either a) It's too hard or b) It doesn't have fast travel - personally I find the difficulty great, no save scumming with interesting defeat scenarios which might result in failing a timed quest, the stakes are great and forces you to act carefully. Outward encourages cheesing whenever possible, every fight is a possible death so run away, set up traps, fire arrows from on top of an inaccessible rock - I find all these cheesy wins so gratifying somehow. And then the fast travel problem, sure it might be nice but again it adds real stakes, travelling is a big decision and feels really significant, and I find the world pretty enough to enjoy wandering through for hours.

Don't want to call this criticism invalid, it certainly alienates some players used to faster paced constant action and stops me from recommending this to everyone - but I would encourage looking past the mixed reception as if you're the right audience this is an 11/10!

This game has been my favourite for years, i have many hours on PC and PS4. I love how many different types of builds that can be made, and the challenge that is surviving. The combat is hard, and unforgiving, but with some patience and a little prep, any fight can be taken on. This game truly shines in the Co-op mode. I am constantly looking for friends to play with because each adventure brings it's own problems and entertainment. Take your time to explore, and enjoy the game.

So much of this game was so close to being great. So many incredible IDEAS for mechanics, but all poorly executed. Every good thing about this game always has a huge caveat. I was only able to finish the game in co-op, because talking and playing with my friend was how I coped with running across the maps for 70% of my game time. My friend built a tank-type character with some of the best armor in the game and the best shield, 175 HP, and would still be killed in just a few seconds. You'll be knocked down and stun-locked while an enemy continues a long chain of attacks that keep damaging you and keep you from taking any action whatsoever. You're forced to travel between regions over and over to finish fetch quests, rotting all of your food in the meantime. We enjoyed playing this game together, but multiplayer really saved the experience for us. There were so many annoyances along the way that once we finished the game and took a look back at our experience, we realized how much of our time was wasted by a game that clearly does not respect your time. Survival mechanics are decent, until you get caught in the boring foraging loop. Enchanting is incredibly creative, but then you get bored of it quick and don't even bother experimenting. The skill system is unique, but the combat very clearly was not built for a lot of builds. The limiting inventory is a breath of fresh air, until you realize that without picking up everything that isn't nailed down, you're not going to get the money you require for anything. Travelling is an adventure, until you realize that there's no point in fighting anything in the overworld and you may as well sprint past everything to the zone exit. While we had fun in the first region and the early game, the rest of the game suffers tremendously. I can not in good conscience recommend this game to anybody.

P.S. Don't even bother with The Three Brothers DLC, available after beating a faction storyline; There's a bad town-building minigame that takes way too much time, forces you into way too many loading screens, and gives you rewards that don't even matter, considering you've already beaten the game and most of its challenges. The mechanics are not good enough to carry into an endgame.

This game is Dumb, its way too easy to die. The combat sucks, once you die, you go back to town or get locked up or dragged somewhere else. Too hard to buy shit you need. Constantly die and then need to rest and go to bed to regain full health and etc. avoid this game, its dumb.

If you actually read through the game's tutorial, it takes you around an hour to complete it. I had to play the very beginning of the tutorial, quit the game and only try it again a couple days later due to personal reasons, which left me with exactly 100 minutes of playtime when I finished the tutorial. I was lucky that Steam allowed me to refund the game despite having 2.5 hours of gameplay.

From the tutorial alone, I had two thoughts about the game so far: this game does NOT feel good to play, and it may have interesting features. My 50 minutes of actual gameplay proved this right. This game is, and feels, janky. Stiff. From moving the character to attacking with your weapon, the animations are not responsive and ugly looking. The moment you attack an opponent, you notice just how much the combat lacks in impact and feedback. If not for the very subtle blood VFX and hitstop (or screen shake, can't quite remember), your only feedback of dealing and receiving damage would be the GUI. While Outward clearly tries to play into realism, it has such boring, weightless animations that I would not be surprised if those were Mixamo animations or bought assets. Search up some Outward gameplay on youtube and you won't even need to play the game to see it. Looking at it now, I see why the only video in the Steam Page media does not show combat at all.

Now, if you don't mind janky, depressing controls, the game does have some features that seemed fun. Other than inventory management with a weight system, your backpack would also affect combat:
• Having a backpack equipped would slow down your roll (and most likely reduce invincibility-frames), so you'd want to drop your backpack by pressing B before engaging in combat (and, of course, remember to pick it up after you're done);
• You could carry a torch or lantern in your offhand, or hang a lantern on your backpack;
• Every melee weapon that I've tried out had a string of two basic attacks, with an alternative one that changed depending on your last attack. All the alternative attacks I've tried seemed to have the purpose of repositioning, but nothing special, flashy, or good looking;
• There was a variety of helpful skills for combat, some which depended on other skills to prove actually useful, such as setting an area (Sigils) of magic that changed how other magic skills worked as long as you were inside that area.

In the end, Outward seems to have interesting ideas and concepts, but lacks in how it feels. Played for less than three hours and had no fun at all. Would not play again.

Where to start... this game seems like it had a lot of time and love poured into it. The problem is a lot of that love came from people who don't seem to understand game design or what makes a great game. I understand wanting to make a game challenging, even brutally so but the way this game handles it by debuffs, passage of time, and worst of all making you spend 30m+ to get back to where you died makes me wonder if any play testing was actually done. Every punishment or penalty feels like it is designed to not only consume a lot of time, but make you bored while clawing your way back.

Enemies sometimes have absurd amounts of health, hit hard, and pursue aggressively. The only reprieve is that the AI's pathfinding is super jank and can be exploited to the point you wonder if its the only way the devs intended you to win some of these fights.

I feel like I am playing an early-access game that is still in an alpha-state. Not only has this game "released" but has a "Definitive Edition" which implies a major, post-release QoL, visual, and bug fixes. Which is weird because this game often feels like a high-effort, asset-flip. The movement and camera behavior feels like something out of the early 2000s which I think contributes a lot to the clunky feeling.

The jank is just tolerable enough to play but the time spent grinding and the cost of some items is often puzzling. I have been playing this coop; if the difficulty is the same in single-player, I think this game would be absolutely unplayable.

I tried really hard to like this game(as you can see from my playtime), but I wouldn't say that pretty much any of it was particularly fun. I tried to stick it out because I know a couple of friends that swear by it, but as of the time of writing this I would describe my time with the game as an abusive relationship I was always hoping would get better.

I spent hours improving my character, building wealth and equipment and skills, trying to learn and get better at the game, and all I have to show for it is frustration and misery. Even after almost 4 dozen hours playing the game the only thing I can reliably accomplish is fighting the enemies in the starting zone.

Lemme give you an example to explain my frustration with this game:
So I decided I wanted to be a hybrid melee caster, kind've lean into a paladin-esque build. So I go to the magic place where you can gain the ability to cast magic: At the cost of maximum health and stamina, permanently. Okay, I'll just trade a little bit for a little mana, since I won't be using a lot. Then I do a cross country adventure to learn the ability to bless my weapon with holy lightning- sweet! Costs 12 mana. But uh.. Sleeping reduces your maximum mana by up to half. Sleeping by the way, is the most reliable way to recover from losing maximum health/stamina from consuming those resources, so as a melee character you tend to need to sleep. A lot. So my 20 mana is always 10. Not enough to cast the spell- but even if it were, the spell can only be cast if I have another buff which costs me ~8 mana. So any amount of sleep makes me unable to cast my spell without using consumables to get my mana back. Oh, and if you happen to die(Which you will, a lot) that reduces your maximum health/stamina down to ~25% until you sleep or use consumables. I spent 40 minutes farming consumables to try and actually use my abilities, and burned through them in 5 minutes to a series of deaths and being dropped in worse locations after those deaths and was left with nothing to show for that nearly hour of gameplay. Skill issue? Absolutely. That said I've had these spells for over 10 hours of gameplay and I've used them less than ten times because I NEVER have mana. Now sure, I could go DOUBLE my mana and then be able to use my skills one time for every time I fully heal but those skills aren't powerful enough to justify MORE permanent loss of health and stamina.

My only option at this point is to go back to the starting zone where I can confidently win fights and grind money for hours to upgrade my gear and buy new skills OR go spend two hours running around avoiding fighting anything so I can use one of the cheese strats to build up money until I have everything I want but based on my experience so far even if I had the best armor and all the skills I'd probably still lose all my gear to a "your stuff got stolen lol" death event the first time I dared to fight anything that isn't a bandit with a machete. I'm at the point where I have no expectation of enjoyment, and only expect the game to abuse me every time I try to push outside my comfort zone, and I'd rather just play a game that doesn't skill check me every few minutes and then punish me by making me weaker, burning my consumables, half the time dropping me somewhere harder than the place that just killed me, and OCCASIONALLY taking my valuables and hiding them somewhere I need to google and then fight through when I fail one of those skill checks.

Really wanted to love this game as an open world adventure in an interesting world, but while all the basic ideas are there the execution falls really flat.

I like the idea of this game a lot more than playing it. Having to lug around a backpack of supplies like Samwise in Lord of The Rings, brew my own potions, maintain my gear, be prepared for the weather and even take proper care of my injuries and illness. But at every turn the actual execution of these ideas feel like chores.

You never have enough space for supplies so you need to forage, right? But a lot of ingredients for 'common' necessities are mostly in specific areas and far apart. You can't forage while travelling because you need one specific item from a few specific areas to create your basic necessities, so you end up needing to stockpile without the space to.

The combat demands that you meta game your enemies. Enemies have a stagger bar, if it is over 50% they have infinite hyper armour. If it is less than 50% they will stagger to the lightest attacks in the game. This ends up with you just baiting enemies to attack and literally sprint out of range and sprint back to poke away at their HP and stagger until they are below 50% and you can just attack spam. Later in the game the only real change is that you have skills or ranged weapons that hit a lot harder, even oneshot.

So if melee feels bad how about ranged? Well if you pick any ranged option you immediately add to your list of chores. Farm for more ingredients and make ammo or farm for more money and buy ammo. Delegate more of your limited weight to carrying ammunition. Want a gun? Well they have long reload animation so you're once again encouraged to stockpile another bunch of weight to have multiple guns pre-prepared ready to blast. Then after a fight you slowly reload all of them to be ready for the next fight.

Well it's a fantasy game, what about magic? Exact same issue as guns, but worse. For starters you have to sacrifice your MAX stamina and health for every bit of mana. So surely magic must be worth the sacrifice? Absolutely! If you're fine with doing more chores. Spells need everything from resources, setup time, mana/sleep management and a silly amount of walking and exploring to unlock anything more interesting than a small fireball. Your first "spell" is spark, it makes your character do a snap animation and cause a small spark. If you do it while inside a magical sigil it becomes a fireball. So how do you make sigils? You mine specific stones from specific areas and add more chores to your weight delegating. Your ultimate reward? Before any fight you need to stop, set up your sigil, do a slow cumbersome snapping animation and if the enemy only almost died you sprint in a circle avoiding them until the burning kills them. Rinse and repeat with different flavours and colours.

I could go on for ages. At every point where it feels like an adventure climaxes in some way, like unlocking a new weapon type, learning magic, learning alchemy and even finding gear. The excitement is overruled by the realisation that I have more 'stuff' to manage to survive in an empty, near barren world filled with small farmable points of interest to engage with a combat system where I mainly kite slow combat animations until I have enough distance to spam my own slow combat animations. It never feels like my arsenal or skill set expands in any meaningful way. You fight the toughest enemies later in the game the exact same way you felt like you were cheesing the earliest bandits and hyenas, but with slightly more flashy effects or different cumbersome melee animations for more damage.

After 21 hours of single-player and co-op, I have a singular fond memory of this game where the game caught myself and my friend unawares with its injury and weather system simultaneously and we had to claw our way back to town in a suddenly hostile environment with my friend dealing with a worsening infection. And every time I boot up the game since I just recall the amount of farming, cheesing and busy work it took to even start our first failed adventure and the knowledge that at the hypothetical successful end of said adventure, nothing of interest was waiting.

If you're content with not being able to play through every last piece of content in a single playthrough and enjoy the finer mechanics that most games would make entirely optional, this will be your dream game. It's a harsh game that will force you to relearn your approach to playing video games, but doing so will open a whole new realm of opportunities for exciting emergent gameplay. Even if you don't currently think that this sort of game would keep your interest, I would highly recommend that you at least give this unique adventure an earnest attempt, with the foreknowledge that failure is not the end.