Nice game concept, but the combat is way too crude and recovery is horrible[list]
[*]If you are reasonably equipped, going 1v1 against an enemy is a 50% win chance
[*] Enemies almost always come in pairs, making it tricky to peel them apart
[*]Combat doesn't work very well unless you lock onto your target, which prevents you from using side steps, evasion, and strafing tactics.
[*]Enemies have precision targeting, range, and timing meaning the player needs to develop a high level of proficiency with a very clunky combat system
[*]Enemies respawn daily/nightly, so it is difficult to keep an area cleared and make progress
[*]Not enough resources to make adventure worthwhile, since loot does not respawn, and overworld resources do not respawn as fast as enemies. This means you are always in shortage of bandages and arrows.
[*]Using a healing bandage barely restores any health, if you get hit ONCE by an enemy it tanks down 25% of your health (or more). When you bandage, you restore about 7% health.. so you would need 3-4 bandages PER HIT just to heal on the go. However, you are lucky to be able to craft more than a few bandages.
[*]Your character gets fatigued too quickly, reducing your maximum stamina. The day length is generous, but if you leave town at dawn, your character will be 50% exhausted before mid-day requiring you to sleep for 4-8 hours TWICE A DAY.
[*]Resting on a bed is how you heal and restore fatigue.. so if you get into a fight, you have to sleep AGAIN since there are not enough linen and bandages to stay engaged.
[*]When you rest in the overworld you have a chance to be ambushed, so instead of sleep, you have to post guard duty on watch to prevent the ambush, which cuts into your recovery time.
[*]Your items durability decays quickly with use, and you have to repair when you rest on a bed, which ALSO cuts into your recovery time.
[*]When you die, you respawn with 25% health in an enemy camp usually, with all your gear conveniently left nearby on the ground and in storage chests with only 1 enemy guarding you. So you have to get your gear back, re-equip, heal (yea right, like you have any bandages left), and either evade or defeat the guard to escape. If you manage to escape, you still have to deal with the 2 or 4 enemies that are conveniently waiting outside, and you are a long way from town. P.S. You can run, but the enemy just follows you forever.. so it's a bad gameplay loop.[/list]
Outward seems to me like a game designed for 2 player Co-op, and requires you to rest in order to heal, rest in order to repair, rest in order to recover from fatigue, and rest in order to prevent an ambush.. while resting. That is why I do not recommend this game. The combat is terrible, and the rest-for-every action is a stupid design.
As if this wasn't bad enough, your character has a VERY low carrying capacity. You start only able to carry 10lbs of gear, which is basically the worn clothing, a weapon, a couple tools, and maybe a few scraps of crafting mats.
You can get a small pack at the start, which allows you to carry another 25lbs, so you can now carry food, water, bedroll, campfire, and some additional tools. If you literally loot anything, you become encumbered again, and your movement speed is reduced proportionately to how over-burdened you are, until you just stop moving entirely.
You can get some items to upgrade, like a trader's coat that adds some carrying capacity, or a bigger backpack that gives you more capacity.. so that isn't a terrible thing. What is bad is the number of resources you will need to go on an adventure, and how much those things fill up your inventory and max out your capacity.
Does this resemble real-life camping and adventure? Sure. However, when adventuring outdoors in real life, one does not frequently encounter dangerous beasts and violent criminals in pairs conveniently appearing every 12 hours or so.
The game map is static, quests are linear, so once you learn the map, there is no new discovery,
There are a couple of quest lines to follow, which offer some alternative experiences with playthrough.
The loot is RNG, so you will have a slightly different kit for each character.
Character creation is essentially "Potato" with some of that weird 'patchy' 2D kind of hair graphic.
Voice acting is solid, and the towns and NPCs are somewhat immersive (they do not follow any life routines like eating or sleeping, shops are always open, most NPCs are not interactive)
Game has decent settings and options allowing for custom key binds and sliders for graphics and audio quality.
All said and done, the game was dirt cheap so I checked it out. I don't regret the purchase, since I got to enjoy the good parts of the game and I might pick it up sometime in the future just for lack of anything else to do. The combat and recovery is just so awful though. I really hope that Outward 2 addresses some of that clunky and crude design.
