Outward

Outward is harsh and occasionally frustrating, but it does what so few games do. It requires you to put real thought into the choices you make, and it makes those choices feel like they really matter. Most of all, it makes you approach each and every encounter as if your life depended on it—even though you never die.

Although certainly not technically impressive, the amount of fresh ideas, innovative mechanics and interwoven systems make this a survival RPG experience like no other. A punishingly difficult game that will reward those who put in patience and disparage fast play. Heartily recommended.

Outward mixes elements of survival games and the old school RPG virtues, but its creators needed more time and money to create a memorable experience. It is a big map, there are many things to do and it is a difficult journey. However, all that is not enough for him to work perfectly. There are technical errors. If you want a challenge and remember another time of RPGs, enter in its spell.

It's still a solid playthrough and unique enough to consider worth experiencing -- especially with a friend. The best case scenario is that Outward serves as a successful proof-of-concept that leads to an experience down the road that hits a bullseye where Outward just narrowly missed the mark.

Outward has two natures: there is the hardcore role-playing game capable to engage the player, but there is also one of the crudest titles of the year.

A difficult survival game with some interesting elements that is significantly hindered by tedious mechanics and a superficial world.

Nine Dots Studio's RPG will appeal to people who love fiddly systems and have enormous patience. But if that isn’t you then it'll simply feel like a time drain.

Cruel and unusual but I love it. Brutally difficult but still very fun. Has a few rare clipping issues

I was interested in playing this game because people told me it bore similarities to Gothic and Gothic II. It does but with some survival genre aspects that weren't to my personal liking. For example, there is a heavy weight restriction on character inventory and the food you cook or harvest expires fairly quickly. The game has seasonal cycles that require you to hold onto gear that helps you deal with hot or cold temperatures but considering you can't hold much, this is frustrating. There are few quests, as the game leans more heavily into the survival sandbox aspects rather than questlines. That said, you can mod the game to make it more like Gothic and that helped me connect with it more strongly. As the developer has said this was more of an experiment, I'm looking forward to seeing their improvements on this interesting RPG when they release Outward 2. Lots of interesting stuff in this game and this developer is definitely on my radar as a result.

Good game with a huge potential to be a great one, I just hope the dev group won't waste that

When I heard about this game I was very excited because it seemed to be similar to Gothic 1 & 2, however, I was ultimately disappointed because for the following reasons: - World feels too big, and a bit empty - No fast travel - No mount or some ability to move around fast - No manual save - Too small inventory limit - Janky combat - Starting area/home is on the upper left corner of the map instead of the center of the map - Story and characters are boring / almost no quests at starting area - Graphics are outdated On their own these issues wouldn't be big deal, but combined together they create this situation where it makes me want to NOT explore: - going too far is annoying because then you need to walk all the way back to the vendor on foot (since no mount or fast travel) - usually for 5-10+ minutes because it's on the edge of the map instead of center - engaging in combat is off-putting because combat is bad, meaning I can die easily because of unfair reasons, and I have no manual save to save and just try out to fight some enemy, and even if I win it just feels like a high-risk low reward, because I can't loot weapon + armor due to inventory limit - In case my backpack is almost full then I kind of don't want to explore dungeons either because why would I if I cannot loot anything? - Trying out different weapons/builds is not that much viable because even with just one extra weapon you are already over the inventory limit... So what is the appeal of this game? Is it a walking/hunting simulator where you just go out to nature and enjoy the beautiful view? Well no because the graphics are kind of ugly/outdated too, so... I guess it's more like a survival game? As a survival game, it's fine, there is a nice crafting system, you go hungry, and thirsty, have to wear adequate outfits for different weather, etc. so in that aspect, I think they did a good job with this game. All in all, I feel like I would enjoy this game much more if they made the following changes: 1. Fast travel to places we have already visited - maybe give us some teleporting stone or something like in Gothic for an immersive way to fast travel 2. Double the inventory size of all backpacks - 50 is too little for starting where you wanna try out different weapons and are unsure about build 3. Either add a mount (ex. horse or something) that we can ride, or add some easy-to-craft movement speed potion that would double our movement speed 4. Add a main chest that is "shared" between areas - ex. if I store something in the main chest in City A, I should be able to retrieve it from the main chest in City B But as of now, I can't recommend this game unless you want to play CO-OP because it really feels like this game doesn't respect your time at all. The fact that we don't have what would be the very simple quality of life changes that I mentioned above, leads me to believe this was an intentional decision by the developer because they want to target a specific audience, and I seem to not be part fo this audience. Disclaimer: This review is purely based on my single-player experience.

Finally decided to write a review of this... thing - for lack of better word. Others have said it many times already - the game is unpolished, has poor graphics (the landscapes aren't bad, though), and is, generally, a mix of interesting, but poorly executed ideas. For example, a system any Dark Souls veteran knows well - all actions cost stamina - is taken to the next level in Outward and completely destroyed at the same time. On the one hand, when stamina (health and mana too, for that matter) is used, your max stamina is sligtly lowered as well, until you rest or recover it otherwise. This simulates fatigue and is an overall nice touch. But at the same time, stamina regeneration, even with buffs, is so painfully slow, you have to run around te enemy in circles for about a minute after attacking and roll-evading a couple of times. Attacks and rolls are yet another matter. And I'm going to talk about blocking here as well. First of all, there is no "action interrupt" in Outward. Which means, once you started an attack, you must wait for it's animation to finish, up to a point of returning to the original "ready" position, before you can block or roll. In most situations it means getting hit, which can be fatal wit stronger opponents. Opponents, or rather, their AI, is yet anoter problem with Outward. The AI is totally stupid and behaves accordingly. Enemies rarely care about their well-being, ignoring player's attack and slicing you up as you are trying to bash their skull in with a giant axe. When they do react to player's attacks, they do it AFTER being hit - they get damaged, roll away, and enter block mode. They may keep blocking while you block or just wait for an opening and then unexpectedly open up and try to attack you just as you finally decide to break their block. As a result, you mostly win (unless an enemy is too strong for your current equipment), but are always left slightly wounded, forcing you to heal. But the things I wrote about above are not just individual problems the game has. I believe, they all stem from a mistake developers made, while creating the game. You see, as I already said, AI is less than perfect. Should Outward have a well-polished system, like Dark Souls or even some other, less hardcore slashers, AI would simply not be able to cope with the player. And I believe, developers, instead of perfecting AI, decided to handicap the player. Take bows, for example. Enemies don't react to player shooting at them (they only react to being hit), but when you lock on, the aim reticle starts dancing around the enemy, making it close to impossible to hit them while evading their attacks. While it's OK for melee enemies (just aim manually, that's all), ranged foes bacome almost unbeatable with bows. Magic. Outward as a nice system of spell combinations - in order to cast a powerful spell, one must combine it with another one, wich often requires physical items or special spots in te world to be cast. And it's great. Except it's only the player, who has to go the long way. All enemies, not only Elementals or Magical Creatures, but also humans, can cast spells without any preparation at all. An Ice projectile, which, for the player, is a combination of two fairly advanced spells is a trivial flick of a hand for a common bandit wizard (who even studied with the same teacher as the player). Add to that the fact, that a player has almost literally zero motivation to actually explore the rather empty world (as there is rarely any useful unique loot in the dungeons and you can earn enough money by revisiting the fairly easy locations from te game start), and Outward loses all charm it might have had. Overall, a poorly made game, that could have been way better if done by just about any other studio.