Outward is a singleplayer/co-op open world game with a unique world unique lore, and some unique systems and is a rather beautiful and rich world all things considered ill be it a little cut and dry. And with a rather counter-intuitive mechanic...

Pros
- Its a good RPG open world game if you played games by bethesda you kind of know what to expect here.
- There is a lot of items. weapons, Armor, magic and skills to really do many a build.
- The Enemy variety is very solid featuring a colorful cast of many creatures to fight.
- A detailed crafting system both in cooking and in alchemy.
- The entire game can be played co-op and even supports split-screen multiplayer which is a rare but nice to see sight.

Cons
- The game is rather cookie cutter it falls into the Skyrim pitfall/illusion of nothing really dynamic the world and its events/quests is static so anything in it is exactly where you can encounter it loot from pre set drops is randomized but thats about it.
- The games enemies follow the unfun attribute of hitting like a truck and being pure sponge unless you are unrealistically kitted with way better gear then the enemies so often times you end up into situations that are just flat out unfair like I expect challenge but any big enemy is a hard no unless you have end game equipment or are willing to do a really drawn out fight that if you mess up once in the fight is lost and has to be restarted ALL over again.
- The reason for that is because the games unique mechanic of instead of dying and just reloading the last time you died or going back to a checkpoint your character is forced into a scenario after "dying" to wheve a story and throwing you in some random circumstance to explain the folly... But in doing so it does 2 things that are overwhelmingly bad 1 it derails what you were planning on doing because you got KOed and now your off in some place nowhere near where you last where. But also even worse enemies fully recover from the fight because time passes a long time so enemies recover when that happens you could have spent a lot on a fight and then "died" and now you have to do the fight all over again with no way to get back the spent resources or try again reasonably within a short period of time.
- Because you cant save/reload in this game which makes mistakes with prior noted factors extra punishing while your not on some time limit and can take all the time you need it makes the game full of tedium. It makes things doable but often times requiring it to go well the first time or your gonna have your objective ladened full of tedium. A single folly can essentially waste time and make what was originally a simple objective now very heavy in tedium both in doing and especially in retrying said objective.

While I understand many games go to the rogue like genre they give benefits and features that play into that. This game feels like a RPG roguelike thats trying not to be a roguelike and as a result it fails at removing that part of the genre or being a part of it. Overall 6/10 if you get it on sale and have a friend its fun but as a single player experience unless you can tolerate tedium wrapping every mistake you make or your a roleplayer who is willing to roll with the punches as they happen its not really worth it.



Additional Notes.
To further clarify the Roguelike argument what I mean is the game is trying to pull beneficial role playing esc features by using that genre without becoming it. But what ends up happening is it gets in the way of the more important element, the gameplay. I am saying the way the game handles death can be quite unsatisfying if not frustrating more then unique because of how it applies itself to the gameplay.

And I am 100% aware of R2modman the mod launcher and can mod Outward with it as I want but I am speaking from a vanilla perspective unless you play this game in Co-op or are a big Roleplayer fan who got this game on sale id say no.

Its only spared from the No because the game has and does go on Heavy sale making it a easy expenditure to get for you and a friend and also there is the Raid Mod which allows more then 2 players and allows you to turn this game into a multiplayer proper title with proper customize able difficulty scaling its how me and 2 friends are playing it and imo that's peak Outward.

As for Steam Deck it does work perfectly fine in vanilla. Windows, and Linux are cross platform and can join eachother but if you mod it with R2Modman on Steam Deck there is a bug with R2Modman that makes it so no matter how much you tell R2Modman the games directory on where its located it presents a invalid game directory argument on modded game launch.

Thankfully there is a work around me and my friends have confirmed works by midnightBlue for Steam Deck users that use R2modman which can be found here for those that wish to install Raid Mod with R2modman. https://steamproxy.net/app/794260/discussions/0/3389546207220282854/

If your a Windows user using R2modman all you gotta do is make sure

It pains me to say this because it could have been so good. I genuinely think this could have interested me as much and as long as other massive games like skyrim but there are so many little things that make me wonder if this game even wants me to play it. There are many times where i am tempted to come back to this game because the general aesthetic and the music and graphics and even the characters and story are so good. I would put hours upon hours into this game if there were just a few more QoL updates and some polish. There are SO MANY game ending mistakes you can make at any time and the game gives absolutely no warning or advice even. It is possible to rush through the early game easily and before you know it eventually end up in a spot where you are FAR (far) too under-leveled to progress and easier content has been changed or updated so going back and leveling most times is not an option. The game has several quests that can be permanently failed and alter the state of the game from that point onward. There are also multiple timed quests that change the fate of your character and the end of the game and the time limit is not explained or shown to the player clearly. There are many many more "invisible rules" to this game that make it so so so so unfriendly to new players or anyone who hasn't watched 20 hours of tutorials on YouTube (i am one of those people who has) Now If you are an anxiety ridden person (like me) and are already quivering in your custom baby seal leather boots, then clutch your pearls because this game DOESN'T HAVE SAVE LOADING. You can save your progress at any time by exiting the game or progressing but you are not able to access your saves within the game itself. That's right. Made a bad story decision and now your home village is permanently destroyed and useless without warning? Start over. Died in a dungeon and when you respawned the dungeon refreshed and deleted all your stuff? start over. Traveled too far out of curiosity and now you cant get back to previous sections of the game? Start over. Got too curious and wanted to check out that strange looking patch of grass and now you're infinitely free falling through the map with all your stuff? Guess what, start over. The only way off accessing previous saves is by screwing with the game files so you had better have a pc and be decently tech savvy or you're just screwed. PLEASE ADD SOME SORT OF SAVE/LOAD SYSTEM. Also some sort of spawn point mechanism would be great. Waking up with half stats in the middle of the night halfway across the map from where you died is EXTREMELY frustrating. Its fun, even interesting the first few times you die because you have to figure out where you're at because...there is no player location on the map. That bit takes some getting used to but I actually enjoyed it in terms of exploration and immersion. BUT when its your 20th or 30th time dying and even after buying a home you are forced to the wilderness EVERY TIME in a random location determined by how you died, it starts to make me feel like i'm wasting my time by playing this game because about 5% of gameplay is ACTUAL gameplay and the other 95% is just walking back to the last thing you were trying to do. I could go on and continue listing minor annoyances with the gameplay and UE of the game but I actually love this game. I continually want to come back and play again but I cant justify spending any time whatsoever on grinding and investing into a character that might at any moment have all of their items and progress taken away by some unpredictable glitch or soiled in some way by negative story outcomes that I can't see coming or reverse. With all that said I'd still recommend you get this game and at least try it and pray to whatever deity you believe in that you don't face the same glitches I did and that these devs use the money to make a QoL update or just make a second game entirely. The game just feels abandoned and unfinished but I would love to see how a project like this could go with better technology and more support.

An amazing co-op experience. I would definitely suggest playing the game with a partner beginning to end.
My favorite part is that death isn't really death, just an opportunity to see more of the world and have a more interesting adventure.