Hey, you! Yes, you! Do you like PC RPGs from very specifically the year 2002? Have you played and enjoyed the Gothic series, or Arx Fatalis, or any other PC RPG that just is...like, fuckin' weird and full of obtuse mechanics? Maybe you played and enjoyed MMOs back in the days of Everquest, FFXI, or even early WoW?
WELL THEN HAVE I GOT A GAME FOR YOU, BAYBEE
Outward (2019) is one of the jankiest games I've played in...years, I'm not even sure how long. It's part open world fantasy RPG; you start out with a brief explanation that your grandma totally fucked over everyone and now you owe your village infinity billion dollars. I wish I was kidding, and I'm exaggerating a bit (not as much as you think), but there's a weird powerpoint slideshow that explains that you owe a "Blood Price" because of your grandma's transgressions, and now you're on an expedition to make money to pay off whatever shit grandma did...but oh no! Your boat crashed! And now you're back in town and everyone's pissed off at you for owing money and having not paid it yet! Which is weird, and mayyybeeee sexist (I'm still very early so I have no idea if "grandma fucked us over" ever becomes relevant to the main story but it FEELS WEIRD), but hey whatever!
No worries, if you pay off 150 silver or do a good deed (yes, literally) in five-in-game-days, the mayor won't steal your house! Go, gather supplies around the village and head out into the world to adventure and find, uh, fuckin'...ya know, money or whatever, adventurer (which by the way you're an adventurer now)! If you don't get enough money or do a good deed within five days, the game literally sells your house and you have to buy it back, which is really funny to me and also rules.
There's a tutorial that's seperate from the main game, but even knowing the buttons, the game is just like "alright, GO!" right off the bat. The game constantly auto saves and there are no manual saves. Every time you die, you don't get a game over screen, some weird shit happens instead. Sometimes it's a hunter from the first town finding you and healing you and dragging you back to town; other times it's bandits dragging you to their camp and stealing all of your shit and you have to bust out of prison and find all your gear. Sometimes it's hyenas dragging you back to their cave to eat you and you have to fight them off in the dark!
It's also partly a survival game (though admittedly managing these things isn't too bad in comparison to "pure" survival games)...in addition to managing hunger, thirst, sleep, and temperature (there are desert and snow regions), you also have shit happen like a hyena hits you and you get an infection (constantly HP drain) that will progress into a worse and worse infection, until you're losing 10% of your HP every minute. There's a crafting system, and food spoils if you don't cook it, and even then it still spoils eventually...you have to make medicines and potions to cure status effects, and you can upgrade your armor and weapons too.
As you use your stamina (say by running or fighting), your maximum stamina gradually decreases so you have overall less stamina available. Your stamina doesn't regen quickly like in Dark Souls, but it overall lasts longer than a DS bar does...but it regens slowly, so if a fight drags on you end up having to play super defensively while it slowwwwwwlllllyyyy regens.
Your inventory is broken up into equipped gear, your "pockets", and your backpack of which several are available. Your backpack has tons of carrying space relative to your pockets, but it slows your dodge roll to an unusable mess. So dropping your backpack mid-fight is A Thing™. You can switch weapons and set up 8 hotkeys to do things like spells or switch weapons, but if you keep a weapon in your backpack and then drop it, you can't switch to it mid-fight because you don't ACTUALLY have it. Bows have to be pulled back by pressing Square to go into aim mode, holding X to draw it back, and aiming with the RIGHT stick...do the math, this shit is weird. I'm sure default PC controls are better in this regard, but there's something quaint about the aiming being jank as fuck...it feels "right", ya know?
My first character got ambushed and dragged off to a bandit camp and I ended up losing nearly everything, so I started a 2nd character and did way better. I accomplished nearly all he had done in several hours in one or two...but then I realized I could do it better and started a third, and I accomplished MORE than my first character did in nearly 20 in-game days in ONE in-game day.
The main thing about this game, imo, is that you can play it co-op (in splitscreen, too!). It's been a super fun experience playing it with my friend who (like me) also loves him some janky PC RPGs. I've been going full on tank and using a shield and mace and shield bashing dudes to hell and back, and he's going pure damage and sniping with bows and getting bleed procs with an axe...our first night playing the game we were getting wiped by two hyenas, but now we feel ready for anything (which isn't true, and we know it).
I didn't even talk about magic!!! Magic does nothing, you have to combine spells to actually do anything! And you don't even start with mana, you have to go on a quest to get your mana bar! And you have to permanently decrease your health and stamina to even get a mana bar! And you have to fight pistol shrimp wizards and raptors to even get to that point!!!!!!
There's skill trees! You have to pay trainers, and to get past a certain point in each tree you have to use a "Breakthrough" point which you have 3 to start with and can never ever get any of ever again. So basically there's like 8 to 10 skill trees, but you can only get The Good Shit™ in 3 of them, and that determines how your character actually plays. There's no levels or exp! It's all gear and skill trainers!
This game really sucks, it's super janky and sucks. The combat is total garbage and it sucks.
But ALSO it's...like, all I've been thinking about (well, games-wise anyway, obviously 2020 has a lot to think about) since I started playing it. It's an incredible experience. My friend and I went to go check out this purple mountain and we crested a small hill near it and realized that it ISN'T purple; the grass near it is shimmering and constantly shifting colors and it was just...super fuckin' cool. It's a game that rewards exploration and patience and it's just...crazy. This game is crazy.
Then we went inside the mountain and got ambushed by pistol shrimp wizards!!!
Highly recommended. Play it with a friend. Prefer to suffer and die, and learn a lot! It's like stuff you've played, and not like anything you've played. The game was clearly made by an incredibly small team with a small budget and an insanely specific and intense vision, and I think they've realized it. It's really cool and it's done well for itself (at least 400k copies sold already and it was just on sale on Steam...).
Oh! There's factions! The story plays out differently depending on who you join. And there's 4 chests that you can put certain items into, and new characters can find them in those chests and they upgrade. This shit is W I L D
Oh, wait! An expansion just came out! There's even more stuff! I don't knowwwww I haven't even gotten that far yet! ahhhhhhh
Edit: And FWIW, the character "Generator" is maybe the worst thing I've seen in...hmm, 15 years? It's BAD. Just find something dumb and roll with it. Also the default character name is Jim. Here's a fantasy game with runes and crystals and swords and wizards and it's like...ey yo JIM fuckin' save us bruh
WELL THEN HAVE I GOT A GAME FOR YOU, BAYBEE
Outward (2019) is one of the jankiest games I've played in...years, I'm not even sure how long. It's part open world fantasy RPG; you start out with a brief explanation that your grandma totally fucked over everyone and now you owe your village infinity billion dollars. I wish I was kidding, and I'm exaggerating a bit (not as much as you think), but there's a weird powerpoint slideshow that explains that you owe a "Blood Price" because of your grandma's transgressions, and now you're on an expedition to make money to pay off whatever shit grandma did...but oh no! Your boat crashed! And now you're back in town and everyone's pissed off at you for owing money and having not paid it yet! Which is weird, and mayyybeeee sexist (I'm still very early so I have no idea if "grandma fucked us over" ever becomes relevant to the main story but it FEELS WEIRD), but hey whatever!
No worries, if you pay off 150 silver or do a good deed (yes, literally) in five-in-game-days, the mayor won't steal your house! Go, gather supplies around the village and head out into the world to adventure and find, uh, fuckin'...ya know, money or whatever, adventurer (which by the way you're an adventurer now)! If you don't get enough money or do a good deed within five days, the game literally sells your house and you have to buy it back, which is really funny to me and also rules.
There's a tutorial that's seperate from the main game, but even knowing the buttons, the game is just like "alright, GO!" right off the bat. The game constantly auto saves and there are no manual saves. Every time you die, you don't get a game over screen, some weird shit happens instead. Sometimes it's a hunter from the first town finding you and healing you and dragging you back to town; other times it's bandits dragging you to their camp and stealing all of your shit and you have to bust out of prison and find all your gear. Sometimes it's hyenas dragging you back to their cave to eat you and you have to fight them off in the dark!
It's also partly a survival game (though admittedly managing these things isn't too bad in comparison to "pure" survival games)...in addition to managing hunger, thirst, sleep, and temperature (there are desert and snow regions), you also have shit happen like a hyena hits you and you get an infection (constantly HP drain) that will progress into a worse and worse infection, until you're losing 10% of your HP every minute. There's a crafting system, and food spoils if you don't cook it, and even then it still spoils eventually...you have to make medicines and potions to cure status effects, and you can upgrade your armor and weapons too.
As you use your stamina (say by running or fighting), your maximum stamina gradually decreases so you have overall less stamina available. Your stamina doesn't regen quickly like in Dark Souls, but it overall lasts longer than a DS bar does...but it regens slowly, so if a fight drags on you end up having to play super defensively while it slowwwwwwlllllyyyy regens.
Your inventory is broken up into equipped gear, your "pockets", and your backpack of which several are available. Your backpack has tons of carrying space relative to your pockets, but it slows your dodge roll to an unusable mess. So dropping your backpack mid-fight is A Thing™. You can switch weapons and set up 8 hotkeys to do things like spells or switch weapons, but if you keep a weapon in your backpack and then drop it, you can't switch to it mid-fight because you don't ACTUALLY have it. Bows have to be pulled back by pressing Square to go into aim mode, holding X to draw it back, and aiming with the RIGHT stick...do the math, this shit is weird. I'm sure default PC controls are better in this regard, but there's something quaint about the aiming being jank as fuck...it feels "right", ya know?
My first character got ambushed and dragged off to a bandit camp and I ended up losing nearly everything, so I started a 2nd character and did way better. I accomplished nearly all he had done in several hours in one or two...but then I realized I could do it better and started a third, and I accomplished MORE than my first character did in nearly 20 in-game days in ONE in-game day.
The main thing about this game, imo, is that you can play it co-op (in splitscreen, too!). It's been a super fun experience playing it with my friend who (like me) also loves him some janky PC RPGs. I've been going full on tank and using a shield and mace and shield bashing dudes to hell and back, and he's going pure damage and sniping with bows and getting bleed procs with an axe...our first night playing the game we were getting wiped by two hyenas, but now we feel ready for anything (which isn't true, and we know it).
I didn't even talk about magic!!! Magic does nothing, you have to combine spells to actually do anything! And you don't even start with mana, you have to go on a quest to get your mana bar! And you have to permanently decrease your health and stamina to even get a mana bar! And you have to fight pistol shrimp wizards and raptors to even get to that point!!!!!!
There's skill trees! You have to pay trainers, and to get past a certain point in each tree you have to use a "Breakthrough" point which you have 3 to start with and can never ever get any of ever again. So basically there's like 8 to 10 skill trees, but you can only get The Good Shit™ in 3 of them, and that determines how your character actually plays. There's no levels or exp! It's all gear and skill trainers!
This game really sucks, it's super janky and sucks. The combat is total garbage and it sucks.
But ALSO it's...like, all I've been thinking about (well, games-wise anyway, obviously 2020 has a lot to think about) since I started playing it. It's an incredible experience. My friend and I went to go check out this purple mountain and we crested a small hill near it and realized that it ISN'T purple; the grass near it is shimmering and constantly shifting colors and it was just...super fuckin' cool. It's a game that rewards exploration and patience and it's just...crazy. This game is crazy.
Then we went inside the mountain and got ambushed by pistol shrimp wizards!!!
Highly recommended. Play it with a friend. Prefer to suffer and die, and learn a lot! It's like stuff you've played, and not like anything you've played. The game was clearly made by an incredibly small team with a small budget and an insanely specific and intense vision, and I think they've realized it. It's really cool and it's done well for itself (at least 400k copies sold already and it was just on sale on Steam...).
Oh! There's factions! The story plays out differently depending on who you join. And there's 4 chests that you can put certain items into, and new characters can find them in those chests and they upgrade. This shit is W I L D
Oh, wait! An expansion just came out! There's even more stuff! I don't knowwwww I haven't even gotten that far yet! ahhhhhhh
Edit: And FWIW, the character "Generator" is maybe the worst thing I've seen in...hmm, 15 years? It's BAD. Just find something dumb and roll with it. Also the default character name is Jim. Here's a fantasy game with runes and crystals and swords and wizards and it's like...ey yo JIM fuckin' save us bruh
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