Outward Definitive Edition

Outward is a game that does not respect it's players. Plain and simple. Example: - You find an enemy that looks tough. - You approach said enemy. - Enemy re-arranges your organs. - You think it's fine because at least you've learned how the enemy works now, you'll beat it next time. - NOPE, GET OUTWARDED. - You get teleported to a random place. - Follow the cursor Skyrim style until you find your bag (why even take it away if it's never a challenge to take it back?) - Take a minute of inventory rummaging to heal yourself. - Take another several minutes pressing W to reach whatever place you where before so you can get a second try. This is just a single common instance you'll find in this game, but this "design" permeates the whole experience. The game basically expects of you to either: A) Waste literal hours of your time into a "trial and error" so time consuming it makes MMO's blush. B) Skip said "trial and error" once you lost your patience and go online for someone who already did the trial and error. And at least if after either of these ones you found yourself in a point where the game became enjoyable, it could give it a pass as a rough experience. But the thing is IT GETS WORSE. Because once you understand what the game asks, you realize ALL COMBAT boils down to cheesing down enemies and 90% of NON-COMBAT is just pressing W to move in between locations. And this is without going into the GAME BREAKING BUGS, the PS2 era look in 2022, the abysmal customization and VA SO BAD it made me disable voices entirely. Yet they will ask you $40 for it. Shameless.

Outward is a very unusual RPG game with heavy focus on survival and lots of walking. The learning curve is brutal and since there is no saving mechanism, player has to live with the consequences of their failures. But once you learn how to craft OP weapons and utilize dodge / parry / stagger / traps / ranged attacks / buffs, the combat becomes fair, almost too easy. This game is my GOTY. Not many games can capture that wander-lust feeling like this one. Everything you see in the game is traversable and almost everywhere you go is some hidden loot in a dungeon.

Once you get into it, it is probably one of the best rpgs on the market. It is hard at the start, and leans heavily into survival, but if you persevere (which is what the game is about) you will find yourself immensely stronger, confident, and rewarded. Also, better with a friend.

One of the few games that turns you from a hobo to a hero. A fantasy game with a realistic survival mechanic. You're gonna get butt hurt by everything till you learn that running away is the best strategy. If you've always wondered how you would fare in an Isekai where you never get OP then this is the game for you.

I am leaving this review strictly because i see that it has "mixed" recent reviews. This game is INCREDIBLE. It is so unique and well rounded. I find myself thinking about this game at work more than any other game, and I don't even play it every time I come home. It's better with a friend but it's great solo. And controller split screen? come on. couch co-op beats everything.

プレイ前にレビューを読んでみると、非常に不便で縛りが大きく自キャラも極端に弱い問題作というイメージ。 実際にプレイしてみるとまさにその通りなのだけど、個人的にはそこまで違和感を持たなかったのは、 何かDAoCや初期FF11のようなMMORPGのソロプレイ時の感覚に近いからかもしれない。 最序盤の有効な金策である採取やアイテム拾いだとかはUOのReagents集めを思い出した。 Outwardでのプレイヤーはゲーム世界の中のただの1キャラというのもMMORPG的。 とは言え、ゲーム開始直後の時間制限イベント(失敗すると家を没収されて高額で買い戻す必要あり)や、 誰でも簡単に入れる要塞でキャラに話しかけたら突然捕まり身包み剥がされ強制労働させられる、 (確かにスタート街の門に居るNPCから注意しろとは言われたが)、 夜は真っ暗だが、ランプを付けてると敵に見付かりやすくなる仕様でホタルのような光る生き物にまとわりつかれたり、 序盤から難易度が高いというより嫌がらせな要素が続くのでそりゃ悪評価をくらうのも判る。 が、苦行の序盤とは異なり、スキルを学び装備やBuff(料理やポーション)が充実しつつある中盤以降はかなりプレイ感が変わる。 移動の際も速足装備や速足Buffを使えば快適。 レベル概念が無いのでRPGにありがちな単純作業レベリングの結果のレベル補正などではなく、 自キャラとプレイヤーの能力の本質的な成長を感じられるのも良。 ただ、振り直しが効かないスキルの詳細な説明がゲーム内には無いので、 外部サイトに頼らなくてはならないというのはかなり疑問。 ミニマップに現在位置が表示されないので最初は相当迷子になるが、 どの土地にも目印になる建築物があるのでリアル同様にそれらを目安にすれば結構大丈夫。 人間慣れればどうにかなるというのを実感。 このゲームにはパーマデスなハードコアモード以外ではプレイヤーの死亡というのは無いし(極一部の例外を除く)、 HP0になっても生き延びてどこかで目覚めるという感じで、基本的にペナルティは時間経過とケースによっては小銭の損失ぐらい。 なのでそんなに敗退を気にする程でも無いのだけど、 負けまくり前提なソウルライクのアクションゲームならともかく、 RPGでの敗退となると自分の準備不足や判断能力の欠如という結果を突き付けられるようで、 負けるという事の精神的ストレス的にかなり異なるから、そこをプレイヤーがどう感じるかはまた別問題。 ゲーム内情報が極端に限られる事や時間制限クエストに加え、(公式的には)選択ロード機能無しなど、 失敗しても何度も繰り返しプレイしてゲームを楽しんでね方針なんだろうけど、さすがにそこまでやってられないので、 外部サイトを参考にしまくってとりあえず1つの陣営でのクエストラインをベストエンドまでプレイ。 それで終了と思っていたけど、結局シロッコのクエストラインまで終わらせた。 恐らく序盤の下積み苦行生活との対比で、ここまで出来ようになった感を確認したかったからかもしれない。 ビルドはルーン魔法のTrapとLightning主体でBoss戦では各種HexやDrumを置いてのTormentという感じで、 終盤は近接攻撃もSigilもほぼ使わず。 それこそ20年前なら大ヒットの名作扱いにもなっていたのかもしれないが、 今の時代にコレでは怪作扱いされるのは仕方ない。 とはいえ個人的にこういうゲームもあって良いと思うので好評価にしつつ続編にも期待。

Outward is a game by Guillaume Boucher-Vidal made for Guillaume Boucher-Vidal. That's it! That's the filter through which you need to fit in order to enjoy this game. If you don't then you will bounce off this game hard, but if you do then you will find a special gem tailored to a certain type of gamer. I picked the definitive edition at 2$ (lol) after some nut-job reviewer I follow recommended it and I got waaaaay more entertainment out of it than I expected... because I am the type of gamer (or close) that this was made for. I like wandering and exploration - and those are the things that you will do in Outward almost all of the time. I like walking by some weird ruins and exploring a dungeon that they hide; I like finding some super heavy armor that I may or may not use and then slowly and painfully dragging it back to town to sell for way less than I had hoped for; I like gathering random ingredients and crafting foods and potions that a gobble up like a maniac before a difficult fight covering the left side of my screen in over 20 buff icons; I like finding some unfinished artifact that I can later upgrade in a certain spot using certain conditions. THIS IS ALL COOL TO ME and, obviously, to the game author itself. To some others as well I guess, since there will be an Outward 2 it seems. With that out of the way - if you step back and examine this thing objectively from what it offers ... it sucks... BAD! The mono-maniacal vision of how the game is supposed to be played trumps everything else; common sense first and foremost: - No, there is no sense to why the quests are so bare-bones and the npc's so cardboard. This is what the author wanted - No, there is no reason why half the story is related in out-of-game posts on the dev website. This is what the author wanted. - No, there is no sense as to why most of the mechanics in-game are not explained and it's just a bunch of icons that you have to guess. This is what the author wanted. - No, there is no reason to have so many timed quests. This is what the author wanted. - No, there is no reason why you have only 8 hotkeys and NO AUTO-RUN OPTION. This is what the author wanted!!!! There are reviews here made by people who call this stuff "realism" or whatever but I would not take those seriously since the definitive edition patched out a bunch of the "realism" already in order to make the game waste slightly less of your time and feel less like a chore. For example having separate stashes in each city is... not nice (this was one of the most downloaded mods before it became part of the main game). So do yourself a favor and use the wiki as well as modding the hell out of this if you are bouncing off of it since it's a single player game where the vision and the term "quality of life" live on separate continents. I used the Thunderstore launcher after finishing the main quest and added hud and multi-hotbars but there are a TON of others which fix almost everything about the game that is grating. I'll probably play a few more times through this exploring different skill tree combinations (only 3 of those per character as well but this limitation is more understandable) and different faction quests since there is a very cool legacy item upgrade system. I'll do this instead of trying Outward 2 when it comes out because I have the feeling that the author's vision has not changed and it will just be the same sandpaper experience at launch. P.S: I do not recommend "The Three Brothers" DLC as it's obviously unfinished and adds "grinding" for resources to this game because of course that's what was missing. On top of that all of the enemies were tuned with inflated stats and resistance ignore (???) so that you don't have too much fun with your late-game build. Very bad addition to the game with it's one interesting idea of city building made as annoying as possible

Ngl, it's pretty niche on if you'll enjoy it but totally worth trying cuz once it clicks it's so satisfying