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details matter. find what you personally find enjoyable. fokus on whats important for you instead of listeing to what other people say.
some reviwers take thier time and are very detailed in what they say and write. these are by far the most insightful for a game i noticed.
outwards score isnt even LOW at all compared to alot of other indie titles out there. the game is controversial of course and often you have mainstream players try outward out and then complain that the game is NOT mainstream like they expected it to be. then you have the idiots which compare this indie title with small devteam to games like the witcher 3 and stuff.
which is simply silly and not a good comparsion to make in the first place. as that is the same stupidness as compared a 200 bucks boat and a 3 million bucks boat and then claim the later is better.
my only current gripe with outward is the silence regarding future updates/dlc content or if the game is done for. we have not heard anything for too long by now. its concerning.
which boils down to MONEY aswell. voice acting is expensive. thus they had to limit it.
also be glad its not TRIPLE AY trash. it would be dumbed down and made silly easy to play and beaten to cater to as much buyers as possible to get the money back at all costs. which was the downfall of alot of once great series and game names.
once your beloved franchise goes triple AY its only a matter of time before its no longer the game you once liked. all for the sake of inclusiveness and makeing as much money as possible. as once a game has triple AY budget the suits make the descisions. not the devs anymore. and the result is a bad or medicore game. plenty of examples of this out there.
Outward isn't perfect, far from it, and it's okay not to like it.
He's not at all friendly to new players. That's not a good thing, it's not a true gamer thing, it kills the game itself.
I still play and like the game because I insisted a lot, A LOT to give it a chance, but it shouldn't be like that and it's totally understandable if others don't have the same patience.
Outward is a game full of potential, but full of bad design choices.
We know the biggest complaints like:
Combat.
We know that melee is slow, doesn't respond well to commands and you'll only be able to survive if you have good equipment because if it depends on your experience, dodge, run or block, you won't get very far.
I really like the huge variety of skills and equipment you can assemble, but the game only has 8 quickslots.
Traps are much more necessary than they should be.
They're boring, I HATE to be setting them up, but in some situations I'm forced to use them to take a chance and they'll pretty much do the job themselves.
CD of some skills are HUGE, awful to use properly, has to much cost.
Mana does not passively recover unless you spend something like items or breakthroughs.
Making items that recover mana sucks depending on where you are.
Mana burns whem you sleeps. Why :/
This is one of the many things and situations that limit or make it the most difficult for you to use the wonderful things they give you.
Travel
The beautiful world, the freedom to go wherever you want is wonderful, but
The world is huge and empty.
The respawn system has a "stock" of enemies, but it ends quickly. After killing 2x or 3x, it doesn't come back until you obey the 7 day global respawn
There is practically nothing to make your trip easier. There is no fast travel, no mounts or mules, no delivery system...
Even with sets that give you space/speed/stamina cost reduction, sets are too heavy and you are forced to take with you, in addition to the travel set, your main set + maybe something to defend against dangers (like cold , heat or poison) which only makes you have more heavy stuff to carry.
Chests do not share space. I just spent 3h transferring items from Cierzo to Berg and will probably have to do something similar when traveling to another city because it's impossible to quietly explore a place without having a house there and having a place to put your stuff.
You are obligated to either: not make any money, which is fundamental, because basically junk caught on the way is your way of making money, but you will be too slow with it, or, or take 30m doing several trips or walking very slowly.
Your stamine burns even out of combat. Makes sense in a real life cenario, but for a game only makes the travel a chore even more because you will likely avoid running or will only be able to run for a short period of time because your stamina has been destroyed.
Voice acting.
I personally don't mind, but I understand perfectly well who does. It makes no sense to dub part of the conversation. It was better not to have any dubbing at all.
Lack of information:
There is no bestiary. You don't know what the enemy is strong or weak or immune, HP, damage, etc.
I played a lot before I knew there was a melee combo system (combining strong and weak attacks, etc) until I saw it on the wiki.
Foods often won't tell you what they do and you don't know how much it does (how much does it heal? how long does the buff last? how long does the food spoil exactly?)
Does any buff tell you how efficient it is (20% resistance? 30%?) or how long they last unless you open the menu and how am I going to do that in the middle of a fight?
Skills need or can be combined, but it is not said with what.
For a game that is essential to prepare for a fight, you won't know a lot of important information.
You want to make a certain build, but it's impossible to know where the NPC that teaches you is. There is no logical place for this to make it easy to find or make your build easier.
Quests will not inform you if they are time sensitive, they will not inform you where the objective is (in the beginning the lady only gave me the direction to the cave of troglottites and only once and the quest in the menu did not say where it was), how to accomplish the objective and the consequences.
Among many other things the game doesn't tell you.
Going to the Wiki is mandatory for this game or mods.
Do I like the game? Yes!! A lot and I really wanted my friends to get excited to play with me, but they tried and were totally "kicked" from the game. I won't be blind to the problems it has, especially for new players. Lack of information, bad combat system and various QoL issues are not things for "real players" but things for bad gaming.
As I said, if this game solved these things, it would be 100/10
yes outward has issues but alot of the stuff you listed is literally just mainstream demands. like shared stash. that would make the game FAR FAR too easy if you got access to all your stuff everywhere.
combat could definitly be improved still but tbh expecting combat polish of a souls game or something like dragons dogma from an indie title is a bit much to ask i would say. as that is in the end nearly always a funding issue sadly.
the game not explaing things speaks for itself aswell.
another mainstream demand : HANDHOLDING. players which cannot play a game without handholding are already damaged by modern age industry. they are unable to use thier head to slove a problem and demand the game to tell them. some games do this so heavyly its insulting to the basic intelligence of a player.
fast travel does exist between citys. sure it would be better if you could pick your destination like you can in the new town in the dlc later but then they would also have to raise the cost aswell as it costs 300 per trip from there aswell. fast travel shouldnt be instant and free by clicking on a map like some games. that is literally nothing else but useing teleport cheats.
world is huge and empty well thats a common issue amoung nearly all open world games i played tbh. only games where i didnt have this was gothic 3 and morrowind, which to this day still have the best open world i ever saw. none of the more modern ones can compete with thier freedom and amount of secrets to this day.
not quest tracking etc another case of "i want the game to hold my hand" running after quest markers is the most boring ♥♥♥♥ i ever saw in open world games. its mindless. its boring. its uninterresting.
the game DOES inform you of most timers. BLUE TEXTLINES are there for a reason. the only exception is vendavel and well that quest is definitly a problem i agree but the rest? nope.
heck some quests even tell you you got 60 days before ♥♥♥♥ happens etc. in the questlog.
mods are not MANDATORY. neither is the wiki.
if the game did all the stuff you said there it wouldnt be outward anymore. it would just be an indie version of another boring mainstream title just to appease casual gamers. yet the market for these games is already overfilled with options. and on top of that the game would also be over more quickly aswell. and ALOT easier aswell. not all games need to be easy and not all games need to target the mainstream casual gamers either. and that is a good thing.
your friends decided the game isnt for them. they are simply not the type of player for it. which is fine. they didnt get "kicked" from the game. they simply couldnt adjust as the probaly never played such a game before clearly and are used to handholding and easier games.
@Idunnnnn: Thanks for the detailed reply, ya true it's definitely far from perfect.
Good point on the respawn, and the lack of mounts.
I also noticed there are too many layers of complexity in the game, guess too much for the average gamer?
If you were curious, most of your gripes are actually solvable :
Traps are not necessary, in fact I didn't use traps at all in any of my 4 playthroughs either, I found them weak & not worth the time / costs.
All stats regenerate with basic food, and you can use that mana detect spell + spark to drain corpses for free mana.
About dodging, I've found combat works well when you're ready to tank hits and have basic passive regens on, I usually am back to full health before the next fight.
You can restore most burnt stuff with basic teas, the game is actually quite easy once you learn all these things, but ye quite complex for the mainstream gamer.
Nice man, ya I heard a lot of people complaining about the voice but man I loved it haha
It's such a clever way for a small dev to save on budget (so they can put it on more important stuff), yet still give the NPCs a bit of personality and charm.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Thanks for the long reply, so many good points!
You know I do enjoy mainstream games a lot, but I swear the hate this game received was agitating. This is a hardcore niche game, it's aimed for a very specific audience, and at that it's pure gold. (reminds me of Gothic 1)
I wish there were games like this releasing few times a year, heck i'd buy them all.
Ah mate don't remind me of vendavel, almost ruined my 4th playthrough, but luckily I had an older save haha!
Being for "true gamers" is not an argument because Outward is not that hard, you are not going somewhere because you are playing better but because you now have items.
Obviously traps aren't mandatory and nowadays I don't use them either, but they make combat extremely trivial, you kill almost anything with them without having to do anything or they will at least do great damage to stability or bleed, etc. which help A LOT in combat. In the beginning, it was the only thing that saved me and allowed me to get my basic equipment until I didn't need them anymore.
There's a post here on steam from a guy who used 1 extreme bleeding trap and died for Royal Manticore. When he returned, she was dead and he felt quite disappointed because he wanted to fight her.
Before I could barely handle 1 gold minion, now I don't even try to dodge, I just shake my Worldedge Axe until it can't stand up.
I'm not saying this is horrible, it's very gratifying the equipment to give it a chance and you can still die if you're totally careless, but it doesn't have anything to do with difficulty because 90% of problems are solved by set, traps, skills, food, potions, etc than your ability to hit or dodge at the right time. This is still necessary, but only about 20%.
I understand very well that it is possible to do everything and solve every problem, but this can be boring depending on what it is. It is possible to work around the problem of only 8 quickslots by opening the menu and using the skills. This is cool? No. It is possible to take all the dungeon items with you yes, but it will take you 30m. It's fun? No. Is it possible to avoid damage? Yes, you can use traps, you can stay 3 hours just to kill an electric shrimp. Will it be fun? Probably not.
Can you recover burnt mana with tea? Yes, but seaweed only exists in Chersonese and fishing is pretty bad in all the other regions so eventually you need to go back to where you were before to be able to make these teas and so on.
I'm an extremely patient player and I love grinding, but other people not like it is totally valid.
And what you said still doesn't solve the game's lack of information.
I don't know how the blue text lets you know that the quest has some time to complete.
I don't know why you feel better and feel "true hardcore" and "i don't need you to hold myhand" because you spent so much time looking for the place you need to go lol.
The difficulty for me is facing enemies, getting lost in the dungeon, stepping in traps, falling from a high plataform, etc.
I doubt, I DOUBT, that you have ever gone anywhere to look for any information about the game outside of the game.
Remembering, I love the game. I love the freedom it gives me, exploring dungeons, going through hard times, but knowing that I won't be wiped out without a chance and I have a lot of patience for many things like getting into long fights or long walks. I'm currently 120h+ and I'm still doing my second faction quest and despite the little lore I still find it fun to do.
I don't say these things because I hate the game, on the contrary, I want it to get better and have a greater appeal to sell well and continue to be developed or developers to be able to continue working on their games.
If you notice, many people who put a negative review said they tried very hard to like the game. Admitting these problems and fixing them is critical because the developer needs to sell
I would find it interesting, who knows, for an option for each type of player.
Please, stop with the idea that criticizing the game means you are not a "true gamer". It's a silly argument.
The two big problems I found with the game were the combat, and the boredom. The combat doesn't feel good, or satisfying. Hitting enemies with a claymore doesn't feel like it has anymore impact than hitting them with a stick does. The longer travel maps feel pretty empty. There's really very few npcs on the map. Because of those two things, the "survival" and Role Playing feels more noticeably like "Bar management" than in other games with survival elements. All of it leading to boredom and burnout. I think a lot of players that give the game a fair shake, are probably in the same boat as me.
ill be blunt here with you :
FUN IS 100% subjective. thus you can NEVER ever rely on it to have an argument by default. when you go around and say its fun? no. and that is all you can say againist something that means you actually got no logical argument. just YOUR personal idea of what is considered FUN.
you cannot have an option for each player. every game i played that tryed this ended up beeing stupid easy. its not good game design. the developer sets a default difficulty. thats it. you balance and design your game around this. the souls games and sekiro proved that this concept WORKS.
the game not holding hands has nothing to do with "beeing more hardcore" it means just that it asks you to use your head way more which is rewarding as hell if you can do it. but when the games literally tells you everything and where to go and what to do in detail you can shut your brain off while playing. some people might like that and want a game to be this way. i do not. plenty of others do not. thus is very good not every game has this.
beeing mainstream IS BAD. especially nowadays atleast for a gamer. sure you make MONEY. if thats all you care for. but then sooner or later the suits take over due to GREED. and know what happens then? yes your beloved game series WILL go to ♥♥♥♥ sooner or later gameplay wise. happend countless times. games get dumbed down or made boring as hell just to appase the masses and sell as much copies as possible. at the cost of gameplay depth and player freedom. always.
like before you claimed its dumb that there is no passive mana regen. yet there is. multiple ways to get it even. you say you need seaweed for it etc. this is all false. there is many ways to restore mana heck there is even a breaktrough PASSIVE that lets you restore burnt stats.
there is multiple ways to get passive mana regen.
enchanting a circlet. weights 0.1 pounds. can carry around for free at all times even as a non mage.
philosopher breaktrough passive.
beeing very tired gives the SAME amount of regen as the above breaktrough. stamina penalty can be easy countered by eating stamina food or certain potions.
plenty of food that restores burnt mana aswell.
and that is just one example.
extreme bleeding got NERFED for the reason you posted. also only really works on bosses out the field which never respawn. on actual arena bosses traps or extreme bleed waiting is not a good option at all as you instantly get attacked when entering thier arena. so they are fine they way they are aswell since they are nearly useless on actual boss fights in the game. you seem to not have experienced these as of yet so your claims regarding traps are well partly to blame on a lack of expierence as of yet.
i did on my first run go in totally blind. i made mistakes. i got killed alot. but i LEARNED. even defeat in outward teaches you something as the game goes on. it doesnt take away your progress or anything. dying just steals you some time. thats it.
the only thing i looked up after i was done with my first character was what i missed mostly or what other results i could have gotten on the quests i did. and what legacy items exist as figureing that out by hand would simply take too long compared to other stuff in the game.
on my 2nd character i made great use of the knowledge i gained from my first playtrough. the game felt 10 times easier. and that wasnt cause i got GUD or anything. i simply gained KNOWLEDGE as a player compared to before. hence why i advise any new player to not look things up even when they struggle as knowledge makes this game easier. ALOT easier. so if the game gave you this knowledge by default it would ruin the first experience greatly. as that part is what makes outward standout ALOT compaed to other games out there.
not beeing able to loot everything is a common thing in many rpgs. nothing wrong with that weight limitation. the world isnt big enough to justify fast travel to begin with. outward decided to greatly limit fast travel options. this made gear with movespeed very useful compared to most other games with silly map fast travel.
people think outward should be more like game X. why? cause they believe it SHOULD BE SO as they are used to this or that system. but that is just thier viewpoint. not everyones and clearly not the one from the developers. they wanted the game to be like this.
a struggle to become good by LEARNING things. actually LEARNING THEM AS A PLAYER in your head. gothic was alot like this aswell back then. the game isnt about reaction or SKILL like souls for example. sure that does help you out sometimes but that isnt the core design concept either.
the game does warn you about time limits in every single quest aside vendavel. and i agree vendavel is a problem if you do not join blue chamber or talk to rissa youll never know about this timer at all. but thankfully thats the only case of the game not provideing you with a warning of a time limit. all other quests TELL YOU in textform or via the questlog that you got a limited amount of time from THIS point where the quest tells you about it.
you cannot design a game in a way to make it all inclusive playerwise without the game loseing something in that process. simply doesnt work. one persons "fun" is another persons worst nightmare. so which do you cater to? the answer is neither. you do what you as a dev have as a vision for your game. one side will like that. one will not. thats part of game design.
- Game is very no hand holding and slightly difficulty than normal. But no problem for me since majority of my games are Soul Like or Roguelike
- game design and game play are less mainstream. Just like I usually see in Roguelike forum about player scolding developer for not caring the "casual market" by adding option of avoid perma death
- Mindset of "I don't like the game mean the game is bad". So I don't play racing and sport. I won't review it because it definitely not my cup of tea. But some high self entitled gamer will think whatever their feel is the true-est and "they got their freedom of speech"
Not all of them are out there like 'QQ so hard QQ'.
The difficulty isn't gonna be an issue for anyone on the pc version unless they are caught in a cognitive dissonance loop because you can just turn the hard stuff off in this game.
But implying that people should love a game for it's uniqueness alone boils down to a question about why we have genres at all. People adopt expectations about what games are supposed to be like and the industry capitalizes on that. It's why we have a metric ♥♥♥♥ - tacu -ton of copypasta roguelikes and arena battlers. Negative reviews are often just repeatedly reinforced expectations not being met. For games that try to transform or transcend genre, the flack for that is always going to be higher than other games but, that doesn't mean they can't break through that to become icons - like M&B, Kenji or Pathologic.
This game also has the stain of the foibles surrounding the epic games debacle which meant 'real world' emotions being involved in critiquing it for a while. I'm not surprised in the slightest at the low score. I'm also not concerned that it means anything for future games in the genre.