Community: Great.

Loading times: Minimal

Graphics: Great, but no over the top PC requirements.

Play time: Near Infinite

Stability: Chernobyl's Nuclear power plant.

Things to do: *A L L T H E T H I N G S*

Things to Avoid: Full time PvP servers

Bugs: Worlds largest known habitat for bugs.

Overall: 8/10


(the actual review)


Overview: Conan Exiles is a Multiplayer Survival RPG based in the World of Conan the Barbarian. You have been crucified for crimes you may or may not have committed, and are left to die, hanging from a cross in the middle of a desert. Long story short, Conan cuts you down, gives you water, and leaves you to survive.


--------------------------------Gameplay----------------------------------

The gameplay is an odd fusion of Fantasy RPG and Hardcore survival. The learning curve at first is a bit tight, but as you play more, the learning curve levels out. To survive, you must find food, water, and most importantly, Shelter. Sandstorms are frequent in the Exiled lands, and those caught outside in them will die out quickly. You start in the middle of a barren desert, with nothing around you but a few stones and branches strung across the landscape. You use these scarce materials to craft tools and clothing, as you slowly move forward through the desert. Eventually, you make it to a river, with animals, trees, and plants along it's bank. Here, you gather wood, stone, and food to start your journey. The first thing you'll want to craft is a campfire, and a weapon (as I learned early on, your axe is for strictly chopping wood, and does little damage) to defend yourself against the Hostile NPCs the dwell along the river bank. As you kill off the NPCs around your camp, you will level up. The more you Level, the more you earn Knowledge points, and Attribute points. Attribute points are used to increase certain stats of your character. Knowledge points are used to unlock selectable crafting recipes.

As you gather resources you'll be able to build your first base. Building is quite repetitive and requires alot of dedication and time to build a medium base, however, it's fun do do, and there's alot of room for creativity. Once you have your base built you'll get started on crafting important crafting stations to craft more power weapons and tools.

Combat is Action based, but very buggy. There are alot of different weapon choices, all of which do different status effects. Daggers cause bleed, bows cause cripple, Maces cause sunder, etc.

---------------------------------------Unique Features---------------------------------------

One of my favorite original features of Conan exiles is Thralls

Thralls are Enemy Exile NPCs that you capture by knocking them out and putting them into a Wheel of Pain After a while, they'll break, and go from being a hostile enemy out to kill you, to a submissive minion ready to do your bidding (Or just carry a metric ♥♥♥♥ton of stuff so you dont have to). After you've broken them into slavery, their fully customizable, you can craft weapons, and armor for them, as if it was your own character. You can even make them do certain tasks for you, but this depends on the type of Thrall they are. Cooks will make food for you, Fighters/Archers will help you fight enemies, and Dancers will remove certain Debuffs from you and your friends.


Another Unique feature in Conan Exiles is Encumbrance which is a feature that makes inventory management much more important than it is in other games. All items have their own weight, which stacks up with the quantity you're carrying. So if you carry to many heavy items, or too many of a single item, you'll be Over Encumbered which, for low level characters, will make movement much slower. Thralls come in great use when you want to haul big loads of heavy items without slowing yourself down because Thralls are immune to the effect of Over Encumbrance.



-------------------------Community----------------------------

I've only played on one server for the entirety of my play time, it's an offical server, but the community is great. Most are very tolerant and Helpful towards new players and Veterans alike, and toxicity is rare. In my first few hours of playing on the server, I had meant 2 people who had helped me greatly by teaching me mechanics of the game, and giving me powerful items they weren't using to help me progress easier. One of which even carried me through a high level dungeon so i could obtain special crafting recipes. While there has been an ongoing feud between a clan and a toxic player, the toxicity remains low, and other players often ignore it, and it doesn't take over chat very often.


--------------------------------------Bugs and Stability-----------------------------------

While Conan exiles is good game, and one of my favorites, the Optimisation is HORRIBLE. Glitches and bugs EVERYWHERE. Disappearing items, blank hits in combat, Pets blocking entrances, deers ascending into the sky for no reason, chat can be glitchy, player models breaking into blobs of messy textures, rendering issues, lag, there's just SO MUCH.

Aside from those minor glitches, the overall Stability of the game is the WORST i've ever seen, more crashes and restarts than RUST. Typically takes 7 -12 restarts to get to the main menu because it often freezes on the Nvidia or Unreal engine screen. Once you're in the server, it typically freezes 3-5 times for about 2 minutes each time, but after that, you'll be fine. Once you're in the server, the game rarely crashes.

Now Modding is a whole different thing. If you install a SINGLE mod that isnt installed on the server you're logging into, it will SHATTER your stability, causing you to have to verify game files and restart another 10-15 times to get back into a server. Modding for this game is AWFUL.

-----------------------------------Play time---------------------------------------

NEARLY INFINITE. the map is ungodly amounts of HUGE for a survival game, with tons biomes, cities, camps, caves, dungeons, and moutains to explore, conquer, and climb.

Alongside the massive map, there's not a damn creature in the exiled lands that you cant kill, loot, or enslave. There's Massive world bosses that you can find in the wild that give great loot and resources, but unfortunately most NPCs are hostile no matter what, this means there's cities full of people who want to kill you. But if you're strong enough, you can kill them first, or capture them. So if you want a city full of people that are friendly, you're gonna have to build it, and populate it with your minions. Along with that, there's so many things to craft and so many ways to build, you couldn't possibly do it all without putting hundreds of hours into it.

This along with the in depth Character Progression system, there's thousands of hours worth of play time in this game, just waiting to be spent.


------------------------------Conclusion------------------------

Though it has alot of bugs and stability issues, Conan Exiles is still a great game, and I reccomend it to anyone who's looking for a unique survival game. It combines the Nostalgic feeling and mechanics of World of Warcraft with the Hardcore survival and challenge of Rust.

Total Rating: 8/10.