This is a review of a game "Outward". Outward is an open-world role-playing game developed by Nine Dots and published by Deep Silver. It is actually made by a small team of ten people from Nine Dots studio it's been in the making for quite a while around four years to be exact. The game can be played single-player or multiplayer both locally and online.
What is the Game like to play?
You start off by creating your own character. You can choose from a small selection of races, faces, haircuts, and hair colors. You can choose their gender give them a name and that's it. It's not the most in-depth character creator I've seen but it's okay. The first thing to know about your character is you're not the messiah you're a very naughty boy or girl. Actually is your grandmother that's the naughty one. Your granny screwed over the family years ago and left you with a huge debt to pay off and that's where you start the game from. You wake up on a beach as your ship has crashed and you basically have to make it back to town and then you're confronted by lots of shouty people basically they demand that you pay your blood debt of a hundred fifty silver coins within five days. If you don't pay it they'll repossess your house then you'll have to sleep in the inn or in a tent or out in the wild on a bedroll. So it's a bit of a harsh beginning and the first part of the game sees you rummaging around frantically for scrap and other things that you can sell. It's a very different type of role-playing game you're just some average person with no special lineage, no special powers or anything the only unique thing about you in this game is that you're in debt and you to pay off. Once you pay off your debt or not you can focus on exploring the four different regions in the game ranging from woodland areas to arid deserts and up as various other ones.
The game doesn't really give you any guidance in terms of what to do at the start I mean there are various storylines associated with different groups but you have to talk to people to find these things out and it takes a while to figure out what exactly is going on in this game. so what is the game like to play well the first thing to say is outward is not like any other RPG on the ps4 that I've played it's a hardcore game in terms of its difficulty and in terms of the way it gives you almost no instructions or guidance from at the beginning. You literally have to figure things out for yourself and that process will end up with you dying many times. In terms of the controls on the Hulk, they're quite easy to learn you can set up eight hotkeys and you can really rotate these depending on what items or skills you need to use. The combat controls are okay but the combat isn't one of the strongest points of this game it's mainly due to the poor animation and collision detection often, during a fight it's blind luck if you actually hit an enemy or not. It's not ideal because the combat is one of the most unforgiving parts of the game and when you die that opens up a whole other can of worms which I'll get into later. As well as being an RPG it's also a survival game in that you have to eat drink and sleep at regular intervals or you'll get the forties, you'll get tired and the combat will really become impossible. For example, if you're going on a long journey to fight some large creature or enemy and on that route, you run into some bandit even if you kill them the fatigue and damage you've taken in that battle is gonna affect you with further combat so you're better off finding some way to make a camp, grab some wood of a tree, start a fire, put up a tent, lay down a bedroll, eat a meal, have asleep and then when you wake up you'll be fresh and ready to rock and roll but sleeping in the wild also has its dangers which I'll go into later. So, it's a hardcore RPG with some light survival elements.
There are times where the game does feel like a walking simulator because the maps are quite empty a lot of the time there are some interesting parts but a lot of it is a little bit empty and bland. The combat as I said is difficult not just because of the collision detection you have a limited amount of stamina and it's affected every time you swing your weapon or you do anything. So, you have to bear that in mind in combat also don't fight with a backpack on because that's a rookie mistake if you're being attacked drop the bag then fight it doesn't mean you win you probably won't but it does help your stamina. You can also use magic in outward but first, you have to go on a pilgrimage to a mountain to acquire that ability. You start the game with no weapons no armor which is really helpful not but over time you'll gradually raise enough silver to buy some decent gear. Honestly, before you've got a full set of play armor I wouldn't bother venturing out too far because you're gonna get your ass kicked there's a wide variety of weapons you can find from swords, Baron arrows, Pike's, axes, and many other variations. The game has a lot of different enemies you've got your standard human soldiers and bandits there are wild creatures that roam the land larger oddities in the caves and dungeons and lots of bizarre and random stuff. Pretty much everything in the game is dangerous if you don't go into battle well-rested and prepared you'll get killed or badly wounded which will end up in you eventually so make sure you're ready for combat otherwise you'll just keep dying and getting nowhere fast.
Let's talk about the random events, When you die or when you sleep in the wild there is a chance of a random event upon death you'll get a message on screen it will say something like some kind soul took you back to the tavern or some scoundrels kidnapped you and locked you in a prison. You never know what you'll get so if you die that may not be the worst part I had a particularly bad string of luck where I died I ended up in a town full of these really aggressive knights who just hated me I couldn't find any of my gear and they just killed me again then I woke up in a dungeon with lots of enemies but no gear in sight. In the end, I just ran away without my backpack or weapons and I just headed back home. So basically, I had to start the grind again to repurchase the armor the weapons, and all the other stuff that I'd accumulated. The same can happen during sleep in the wild but usually, it's not as severe I mean I didn't mind these random events you know it gives an extra element to the game had some more danger but honestly after I got screwed over about three times consecutively it really made me want to stop playing the game. Which brings me onto my personal experience without a word this reviews took me weeks to put together because after the first few weeks of playing at the word I absolutely hated the game I felt completely underwhelmed by it it just felt far too harsh and unforgiving and I didn't get any enjoyment from outward in the first two weeks of playing I got so fed up I just left it for a while then eventually I did come back and start a new character and that was when I started to get some small enjoyment from the game because I'd done the hard yards the first time around I knew how things worked so in combat or survival I took things more seriously I took it slower and it meant that I actually made some progress in the game and got some kind of enjoyment. I wouldn't really say it was that enjoyable the second time around but it was better because I felt like I knew what I was doing but even then it was still a little bit the whelming. so as a single-player game, it's okay but it's really not the best way to play the game.
If you want to get any substantial enjoyment from Outward you need to play this with a friend. Whether it be online or split-screen playing co-op improves the game experience tenfold. The big problem with the game is it's very obtuse and unforgiving for new players so if you've got two people playing from the off it means you've got two people trying to figure out how the damn thing works and as I said it's a fairly sparse empty game world on the whole so having a friend there to share it with it makes it a lot more interesting. Also, it was really refreshing to see a developer had a split-screen mode in an open-world RPG and you're not tethered to each other you can travel along with the map independently the only limitation is leaving the region you can't go to another one without the other player but the maps are very large so if you want to split up you can but personally, I wouldn't advise it. I'd say stick together work as a team that's the key to success here. You can revive each other I in combat and you can share items and it's great having an ally when you're fighting enemies it just makes the whole experience less intimidating. One last thing to mention on the gameplay is the map system you can't see where you are in the map in the game you just have a map and your eyes to look around you have the landscape so you have to look for landmarks and orientate yourself in the surroundings. Initially, this is quite tricky but honestly, I quite liked it as it felt more like you were going on an adventure into undiscovered lands but be warned it is very easy to get lost in this game.
Graphically, Outward is not very impressive the graphics look a little bit like a mediocre PS3 game. The character models are okay but everything is a little bit wooden and clunky in particular during combat it's really horrific how bad things look and it's not just the visuals that are affected, it is the agile combat as the graphical collision detection sometimes makes no sense at all. The environments however are the most impressive part of the visuals. The world is full of fantasy structures and landscapes you have areas with pink and purple grass that look amazing. There are sweeping hills, marshes, sand dunes, they're not triple-eight quality but they really do look nice, So overall, the graphics are good environmentally but the character models are poor. The music is a mixed bag some of the tracks are really well suited and soothing music for the journey other tracks feel a little bit out of sync to what's happening on the screen like there is this one particular track that sounds like a generic end credits music it's very loud very overpowering and it plays every day in certain areas and it just bears no relation to what's happening and you can't turn individual tracks off so you just have to live with it but apart from that, it's a nice music on the whole borrowing just a couple of dodgy tracks. The sound effects vary in quality quite drastically some of the combat sounds are awful but then again some of the other effects are quite nice it's really not consistent but it's a low-budget indie game and it feels like it's been patched together in some ways as if they ran out of time or ran out of money. The voice acting is decent at times but not all the sentences are recorded and it can be a little bit choppy like you're chatting to some guy he says the first line then the rest is just silence again they may have run out of studio time and the budget for that but the stuff that is recorded is pretty good. The ambient sounds are a little bit hit and miss again there were times where there was no ambiance at all and it was just complete silence I don't know if that was a glitch or not but in other locations there is the ambience and it is quite nice and soothing to the environment but as with the whole game it's a little bit of a mixed bag.
What's Good and What's Bad
What's good: The game feels like a genuine adventure. The survival elements accentuate the game experience. The game has split-screen local co-op and that's the best way to play the game. The game is enjoyable eventually but you have to put in a huge amount of time to experience it.
What's bad: The graphics and sound are very inconsistent. Sometimes they're very good than others they're absolutely awful. The tutorial mode could have been better handled I think if they'd included it in the main game over the first few hours it would have eased people into the game and giving you more a sense of enjoyment early on. The random death events can be a game-breaker if you're particularly unlucky. The combat controls are good but the collision detection makes each encounter feel more like a random event than actually a controlled fight. Outward has no real sense of achievement even once you complete the faction missions or complete the game it's like the game just passes you on the head and says well-done move along. If you're looking for a big payoff you're not going to get it here but then again you play as an average during this game so you're never going to have I saved the world moment.
What is the Verdict
Outward is not a game for everyone in fact it's not a game for most people I'd say out of every hundred gamers out there 10 gamers would enjoy it and 5 of those 10 would probably love it but it's a really hardcore game and a hardcore audience so it's not for most people. It has a good amount of content and it will take around 50 to 60 hours to complete but I don't think a lot of gamers would make it that far. The game is quite obtuse in how it treats you from day one. so who would enjoy Outward? Hardcore RPG fans would enjoy, that people who have a lot of time and a lot of patience, and also gamers who like co-op experiences that are quite challenging. who wouldn't enjoy it? I'd say if you're a casual gamer you'll hate this if you're a mainstream gamer you'll probably struggle if you're a gamer who only has a limited amount of time to play games and then this is definitely not one for you you know this is not a mainstream game this is not even a fringe game it's an extreme niche game for a very small group of gamers but for those gamers this will be fantastic so I guess it depends what type of gamer you are that will dictate if you'll enjoy this or not. It was a huge struggle to get any enjoyment out of this game but eventually, I did have a solo player but playing co-op was where I had the best experience with Outward so before you buy this game just think about what sort of games you've enjoyed in the past. If this game sounds nothing like those games then give it a miss but if you're up for the challenge and you've got time and you've got patience give it a go but be prepared to die about 5 million times.
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