Recent reviews by Postman Pat

it has been 10 years.

I hope the guy who made this has had a good life since. Thanks for your game!

I give it a recommend, but be warned.

This is actually a puzzle game in disguise. It asks the player to try and solve for mostly-consistent problems each run, with the different characters having slightly different timings on how their puzzle solutions work. It is not a "numbers go up brrr" game. If that's what you're looking for, picking this up blindly might be off-putting for you.

This game is top-shelf. Is it perfect? No. But it contains creativity and focus to deliver an experience and vision that is unique in "recent" gaming memory. There is nothing else like Outward, in the best way possible.

This game asks you to pay attention. It wants you to act like an adult. Its NPCs aren't fooled by leaving the area and immediately returning. You can't patronize your way into everyone's good books. The story is much, much richer than you first realize. Your first character will barely have a grasp of the world - because the world has several competing factions you might not even realize are really, truly competing in a living world.

There is a magic casting system that is second to none. You can enchant weapons for certain scenarios, bring different load outs based on the locations or enemy types. You can line a hallway with devious traps and not engage in combat at all. You can do it ALL in co-op with another player, which unlocks even more play styles and possibilities for adventure.

The artwork and sound is astounding. The story/lore is wonderful - enchanting, and unique. Nothing is quite like Outward. The sights and art and sounds are not found anywhere else. Sure, aspects of the game aren't perfect due to the obviously MASSIVE level of ambition by Nine Dots - but they did a wonderful job getting MOST of it across. Yeah, fine, you can't "see" the war happening, but you can talk about how it is affecting different factions and different peoples. You play a pivotal role in many different outcomes to the world, or you ignore them and they play out with none of your participation. The game truly wants to immerse you in its world and for you to invest in it. And you are rewarded handsomely for doing so with awesome dungeons and rewards, encounters, and loot.

Get Outward. If you play Outward and dislike it, you're wrong and you should just play longer. I promise you unless you're using guides or following walkthroughs you can roll you're 10th character and see sights in this game game or discover play style you never even imagined were possible.

Game is way better than it has any right to be.

It has translation problems, but as a management game that also happens to be a card-game auto-battler, it's great fun. Surprising amount of depth that seems to be well thought-out, with substantial variety to the game play based on player choices like what cards you will take into battles, what heroes you will run, and what the AI and you pick or ban in any given match.

I booted a HELL run up as my first journey and recently finished P league, but my first season in the first real league I only won three games. We bounced back strong the next season, though, and other than a couple games dropped in one or two playoff series, have remained undefeated in 3 straight seasons in each league.

Skeleton Gaming!

Re-made review.

With the recent new (old) faction arrival, the game has been made fun again. Yes, I still hate endless ragdolling and endless fog. But weapons seems suited to task now and despite complaints about content and resource caps, lack of customization options compared to HD1, the game is fun and worth the purchase price. 7-8/10 game, it gets a positive review!

Edit 2:
Changing this back to negative. Game's 1.0 is not substantially better than EA, performance issues remain (they did marginally improve, but this *should* run better than it does), they substantially increased the price (it's 150% the price of when a friend gifted it for me in EA) and now offer a bunch of cosmetic sets you can buy, too, to show off in the .... 2 different maps the game has to offer.

Yikes. Maybe come back to this in a year, but I have a hunch this game will not be getting much more in the way of support.

Edit:
Game improving. They just moved rtx to a setting you can control, which drastically improves performance (only running a 4060ti) and makes the game playable again. Many QoL fixes have come through since my original review, and they seem to be on the right path. I am changing this review to a recommend in line with the changes made and the direction the game seems to be going. It seems like slow going, but it is certainly improving. Even the weapon handling is no longer as mushy as it once was.

Many of the complaints below still stand - but now that some of the core performance issues are resolved (or are getting there) and we've seen a plethora of QoL improvements, maybe content is on the way in the future (enemy variety, mission variety, maps, weapons, etc) on the path to 1.0.


Original review:
This game is shockingly bad. I got it gifted to me, and I feel bad about it because it's so bad I will never play it.

Runs badly (I cannot even run a solid 60fps 1080p with FSR3 on a 5800x3D + 4060ti). Looks bad. Feels bad to play (player controls are loose, sloppy, and you feel like you're running through quicksand all the time). UI feedback is horrific to non-existent. Combat feels light and weightless. There is no content (there are 3 "maps" all of which are the same, really, and 3 'classes' to play as). There is no single player or "fill empty roster with bots" options. No offline play - guys - Unreal Tournament had these options back in 1999. The "base building" mechanic is an awful idea that allows the devs to eschew level design in favour of "here's some big open spaces." That same mechanic also destroys the possibility of there ever being variety to game play.

There's just very little to like about this game or that I can find redeemable when there are other horde shooters available, that are heads and shoulders better than this in every department - gameplay, performance, visual and audio design. Killing Floor, Vermintide, Deeprock, Gunfire Reborn, even Darktide despite its blemishes. I can't imagine recommending someone to buy this game in its current state, let alone playing it over other similar titles. All things considered I am surprised this is even on Steam in its current state. In 2-3 years they might have a decent game on their hands, but who knows what it'll look like then and what the playerbase or market share will look like at that time.

Game quite fun. Has many interesting interactions and build paths, and every one of the 62 different heroes can be used effectively which is impressive. If you don't plan to play it 'for fun' after beating the achievements, the base game content will keep you going for a 20-40 hour range depending on how fast you play and how quickly you learn interactions/build paths.

Bonus: solo dev, from what I understand, who has done a great job. Hope to see more of everything, basically, as the game continues development. Even if it were to 1.0 tomorrow - other than a few accidental bugs (mostly to do with really-big-number calculations in the endless mode [which are known and being worked on]) and a bit of ambiguity on exactly how certain enemies will target in certain encounters (can be learned by playing, though) - it's worth the price of admission for sure.

The GOAT. This game has the best first-person melee combat to date. It's also the best "pve horde game" there is. Runs great, looks great, plays well, very fun maps and events, a roguelike challenge mode for free, and the ability to kill Wutelgi.

Why did they drop this game for a ♥♥♥♥♥ Battle Royale REEEEEEEEEEEE

This game isn't good. While I respect the vision of the game, or the idea of it, it is laughably implemented and I can't help but feel like positive reviews of this game are largely a 'hipsterdom' thing. The game has poor settings controls (FPS flies off the charts, no way to control it in the game itself - you have to modify an ini to clamp frame rate, if that even works for you [it didn't for me]), the movement controls are piss bad - seemingly on purpose - and the "physics based combat" is actually "there are three kinds of swings and you have to weirdly move your mouse a little bit following one of three possible swing paths to fight." Dead Island had a better physics-based combat system, for reference.

That doesn't even get us into the level design, which is the same looking room copy and pasted a billion times. Look, if this game was released in 2022 and still in EA, I'd understand, but we're 8 - nearly 9 - years deep on this? Bruh. Come on.