Outward Reviews
Outward is billed as a survival RPG and that it is. The survival elements do make it an interesting adventure to an extent but sometimes it goes overboard and frustrates. The fighting is awful, the spells are too confusing and convoluted and as mentioned it’s really hard to give a crap about your character. Massive kudos to Nine Dots for embarking on a game of this magnitude and there is some great ideas here to make it stand out from the glut of other fantasy RPGs.
In a generation focused on quick thrills and stories about an all-powerful hero saving the world, Nine Dots Studio chose to focus on the story of the average adventurers trying to make ends meet, and the fruit of their labor is a resounding success.
Learning to manage the game's many systems is the biggest potential stumbling block players will face. If you're the sort to revel in micromanagement and extreme challenge and enjoy the thrill of actually exploring and living in a place rather than wandering from objective to objective, then Outward could be something special for you from the get-go. It's a hard sell otherwise, with such overwhelming depth, occasionally misfiring combat, and rather grimy visuals. Then again, perhaps that might be the best way to deliver the purest form of Outward, a flawed, aggressive beast that requires time and patience. It would possibly lose something in being too refined. It makes adventuring into something different and intriguing, after all.