Recent reviews by [CoY]  Kwang

I was pretty confident that this would be a solid game, just based on how the old ones defined their own playstyle so well, but this was even better than I expected.

The old playstyle is still in force, keep moving and believe you are a badass. The new chainsaw will keep you in ammo, so long as you switch to it with some regularity so you are ready to pick up the next fuelcan you come across.

The game has a wonderful sense of humour. Granted, some people might find it more scary or gruesome than funny, but if you are an established horror fan, this won't be at all scary to you, and the subtle, wordless comedy moments will be free to shine all over you.

Great fun, good graphics, amusing little touches in the world and animations, etc. Really a very enjoyable game, especially if you like Modern-Wolfenstein style nonsense action.

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My only negative points are that:
- there are some stairs that you can't walk up smoothly, and in a game like this stopping against an invisible wall for a split second and having to jump without momentum can get you killed;
- the general difficulty seems extremely low compared to the original games (maybe I just need to unlock higher difficulties, but they called this one 'Ultra-Violence', and it's more like 'Please, Not Too Rough' used to be;
- and, the Checkpoints always come just after you finish an 'Event', not just before... Basically, if you care about collectibles, check the map constantly and GET THEM WHEN YOU FIRST REACH THEM. If you have to run back across the map for something, then you have to make the return journey AND clear the next fight before the game saves. If you fail the fight, you're going to have to cross the map again.

I'm not even going to bother - you have either been waiting for this your whole life, or you haven't.

In other words, you either have zero interest whatsoever in buying this, or you are going to buy it right now.

Creepy and Cute, Fun and Fearsome, Silly and Sad, Anxious and Adorable.

This adventure does so little, but achieves so much. The 'DiaOps' strips away the thick, unwieldy dialogue that some P&Cs suffer from, and turns almost every statement into an emotionally visceral expression. The simple, logical puzzles, are mostly '1 Key for 1 Lock' in style, but can still give you pause now and again, providing room for thought without ever being frustratingly obscure. The map is not expansive, but each location has a distinct feeling, allowing the game to represent many styles of character and community without sprawling obnoxiously.

The ending is a little abrupt, it might have been nice to explore a little more of the final steps in certain story-/quest-lines, but I can honestly say that the joy of this game is in the journey. There is something sublimely touching, in feeling the hatred shown towards Dropsy, understanding why those characters feel that way, finding a way to bring them peace, and earning another sincere and cathartic hug.

No, this is not related to the Aboriginal American Prey. Yes, that was an amazing game. No, that does not make this game any less fun.

However, this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ EVIL.

You can pick up and move environmental objects such as chairs and cabinets. You also have a Grenade which deconstructs environmental objects and turns them into crafting materials. IT IS TOO EASY, AND TOO SATISFYING, TO PILE UP EVERYTHING IN A MAP SECTION AND TRY TO DELETE IT WITH A SINGLE GRENADE.

Say goodbye to your free time.

A genuinely fun game. You kind of can do things in whatever order you like, but of course there are some things you need to do to progress in certain ways, so I suspect that most people complete certain objectives i the same order.

Crafting is pretty good. The crafting materials are divided in such a way that collecting and carrying them is very simple and easy. I do like games with specific components that work together in overwhelmingly varied recipe variants, but this system works well for this game.

My only complaint is the Audio balancing. Some speech playback is much louder than others, so it can be tricky to find a good balance where nothing is too loud, but where you can still hear everything clearly. I recommend subtitles if you like to experience every drop of story/lore/etc in a game.

I recommend the hardest difficulty. You don't get anything for it, but it encourages you to use more of the game's potential. Turrets, Grenades, and environmental dangers can be a lot of fun to use against enemies in a clever way, but if I were on an easier difficulty I would probably just mindlessly fire death at my crosshair room after room, rarely needing to use even a medkit.

One of my very favourite cRPGs.

Lively characters, stylistic cultures, and music which can be charming, tragic, and sometimes just silly fun.

The dialogue can be a little pedestrian, and it's easy to forget how young the main characters are meant to be (making them seem a little dumb at times), but I wholeheartedly appreciate their purposes. They are partly the results of tropes, and partly the cultivators of tropes - but they are valuable parts of a whole story, which is rich in hope and wonder, ideal for young children who like turn-based games, and refreshing for adults who are a little closer to their former innocence.

The enemies can be super weird, but in a fun way - I think. Some of them are pretty cool, some fairly traditional, and some just whacky. Perfectly in-line with the expectations of Dragon Quest fans, but in a different direction ;)

I also think they have some decent ways of handling otherwise overused conceptual adventure story tropes in slightly different ways.

If you can set aside your qualms over production imperfections and just enjoy a cute, well-meaning story - BUY THIS GAME.

I hope you grow up to be a true adventurer!

This review comes from the perspective of someone who almost always plays Co-op.

An extremely satisfying Fantasy Adventure Co-op. Brings to mind elements from MMOs, RPGs, and games like Kenshi, Dark Souls, and more, while still feeling rather like its own entity, balancing influences in such a way that the overall structure and style feels relatively unique. Harvesting, earning skills, and combat mechanics are all fairly simple and familiar, but there is enough of everything, well mixed, that the simplicity does not feel overtly dull or unsophisticated.

Recommended mod list at the bottom.

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The game can be pretty hard, mainly when fighting enemies who surpass your stats. Certain boss-like foes in certain areas can hit hard, and fast, taking you off-guard. However, once you have played a short while, you will acquired some protective gear and start learning the rhythm of your combat, and you will be able to start pushing through even difficult fights with patience and care. We have died plenty of times so far, but the experience was far from frustrating:

... because death, in this game, is handled with serious class. I do not want to spoil anything, because I truly think the 'respawning' mechanic in this game is awesome. However, I will give some non-descriptive tips to help you not freak out:
- DO NOT PANIC. You may have seen reviews where people complain that in Co-op, their bags disappear. I do not believe this is true in most cases. When you die and respawn, you may find that the Guest's bag is right next to them, while the Host's bag is nowhere to be seen. If this happens, take in your surroundings and consider where, in real life, your belongings may have been taken. Sometimes this will be obvious based on what you will learn has happened, but if there is no clear answer, just look around. Behind rocks, under trees, just out in the open - but always in the same 'area' that you respawned. Oftentimes you will find both bags are with you, but think about what happened in both cases and you will quickly realise why this disparity exists.
- STAY AWAY FROM LOADING SCREENS. I do not know if multiple deaths can delete your bag as they would in many survival games. So far we have not lost anything, multiple deaths sent our bags with us, the Host's simply being a little ways down the beach. However, because we died inside a place, we thought her bag was inside the place, and we charged into that damned breach 6 or 7 times, hacking away at the enemies within and being sent back out upon dying. Finally, we cleared the place and searched everywhere for her bag, but it was no-where to be seen. Finally giving up, and accepting that it had been despawned because we 'died twice', we trudged out onto the beach depressed, and sat in a corner to be safe while we took 5. Then, as the Host sat down, she saw her bag lying on the beach next to a large shell. It had almost certainly been there the whole time. We had to run past it each time we respawned and reinvaded the place we thought it was in.
- TAKE ENEMIES 1 AT A TIME. So far, in all the places we've respawned, the enemies have been pretty manageable. Often the thing that kills you is tougher than the things that are near you when you respawn, so take it slow, fight enemies 1 on 1 whenever you can, and you should get back to your bag with relative ease.

Ok, so while I love this game and enjoyed it a great deal in vanilla mode. I absolutely have to say: This game is great with mods, and there are many useful Quality of Life improvements available in mods that can all be installed through a mod manager - very easy, very useful.

1. go to Thunderstore.io - this is the official mod support site for Outward.

2. Download "r2Modman" - this is the mod manager for thunderstore.

3. Open r2Modman, choose Outward Definitive from the gameslist, click on 'Set as Default' so you don';t have to choose the game again in future, and select Steam as your platform (presumably).

4. The mods I most recommend are below. They require a couple other mods to work, but these will be automatically loaded into r2, so you don't have to search them out. I will describe the mods below if you are interested.

Must Haves:
- Action UI
- Ammo Stacks
- More Decrafting Recipes

Should Haves:
- Alchemists_sell_bombs
- DLC_Arrows_outside_of_Caldera

Might Wants:
- More Map Details
- Shared Quest Rewards
- Weapon Balance Patch

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Mod Descriptions

> Action UI <
A fantastic mod which improves the User Interface of the game. Allows Stashes to be accessed in their towns (so you don't have to run from the merchant to your home every 5 seconds to grab that thing you forgot you wanted to sell), adds a pretty durability warning display to the HUD, and my personal favourite - allows you to create and edit 'Equipment Sets' which can be added to the hotbar (so you can quickslot a sword and shield in 1 slot, instead of 2 - also, quick armour changes for RP nerds who like to be pretty in town!).

> Ammo Stacks <
Increases Arrow and Bullet Stacks from 15 to 50. Not such a big deal for bullets, but for a bow user who likes to drop their bag before battle, and prefers to keep lots of potions in their pocket, having to run back to your bag to re-equip arrows after 15 shots is time-consuming.

> More Decrafting Recipes <
There are a few very simple items in the game which cannot be sold or dismantled, such as makeshift torches and shiv daggers. This mod allows you to dismantle them, so you don't have to drop them in the Overworld and wait for them to despawn. The materials you get for this are negligible, and will not ruin the game economy.

> Alchemists Sell Bombs < & > DLC Arrows outside of Caldera<
These mods just allow DLC items a chance to spawn in the inventories of merchants and defeated enemies who exist outside the DLC regions. The better items will only be available in hard dungeons or late-game merchants, so it is somewhat balanced.

> More Map Details <
We mainly use this to see where we are on the map, though you could argue that having to decipher landmarks and figure that out is great fun, and a good part of the game. My wife gets lost too easy though, so we use this.

> Shared Quest Rewards <
So, we have been using this from the start, but I believe the default is this: In the Host's world, the Host is the only one getting quest rewards (or milestone achievements, btw) and the duo must go do things in the Guest's world eventually. This mod just gives the Guest a copy of all the quest rewards. Since my wife and I always play together, this seemed like a slam dunk.

> Weapon Balance Patch <
This mod is kind of fancy. It aims to take some of the Mid-tier weapons which are basically unusable when compared to their contemporaries, and tweak their stats so that they are worth considering for specific builds or strategies. Some have added effects, some have different effects, some just have minor changes to their damage, impact, or speed. This will not affect new players, we have yet to encounter any of the weapons adjusted. The mod seems to be very thoughtful and the author claims to continue balancing with updates, so I trust it will only improve the game's personalising options for us.

There are also many mods with new classes, skills, weapons, and armours - so this game is likely to have immense replayability for people who like to make lots of varied characters - but those are better chosen based on personal interest, so I will not recommend anyway.

Adorable, Charming, and FRUSTRATING. A great concept, somewhat marred by content.

If you like open-world life sims that kill a lot of time without much effort or thought, or if you are a quaintified Anglophile, or if you just love cats and dogs, you might like this game.

I plan to keep playing it, I really want to love it, but I must say my first impressions leave me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoyed.

I like the world that runs on a schedule, I like running around as an animal, and I like the American Protagonist being stuck in a very twee English setting, and it's relatively easy to make money through photography, but there are issues that make the game extremely tedious:

1. Combat is a joke.
- There is no real timing or positioning that can save you. An enemy runs at you, you hit Attack, it is basically RNG who gets the hit. Every moment is wildly inconsistent, when you think you have a reliable pattern of fighting, it stops working.
- Almost half the time I attack, my character spins around 30-100 degrees for no apparent reason.
- Almost exactly half the time I land a hit, it does not deal damage.
- When I do deal damage, it is very little. Pray you do not get the Attack Damage Debuff...
- When fighting an enemy who dashes through you, prepare for CTS.
- Combat takes a lot of energy. I started today's outing with plenty of energy, but passed out halfway through my 3rd fight, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was the medical bill expensive. One death in and I do not see how I can recover the balance of my wallet.

2. Inventory stocking is hellish.
- Want to buy some healing items? Better spend 30 minutes or more scavenging in random bushes and hoping beyond hope that RNG gives you the right materials.
- Need a specific cure for your debuff? Same as above but with rarer materials, some of which I have yet to encounter at all.
- Collect EVERYTHING you come across, because you will need to eat A LOT, and eating the same thing over and over (even though it's the only readily available product based on materials you can consistently collect) will earn you a debuff - even after only 3 meals (in my case).

3. Grinding a field full of corn with two beach pebbles.
- As stated previously, much of the scavenging is RNG, so when someone wants you to fetch for a quest, it could take 5 minutes, or 40.
- Carrying any kind of large item slows you down to all hell, and sprinting in this situation does not seem to speed up your movement in any immediately observable measure. Set aside plenty of playtime for travelling, even over a short distance. Also you will earn a nice fat debuff for your troubles.
- The only fast travel is to your home. God I wish you could FT to Shrines. Maybe I'm spoiled by other games, maybe this game is too brutal.

3 hours in and I have 4 debuffs, almost no money, and an inventory full of immediately useless tat (which will likely be useful later, but right now it's hard to imagine reaching later without suffering more setbacks). It's not even a case of 'restart now that you know what you're doing' - that would just resign me to another 2 hours of random item collecting. I may even end those 2 hours worse off than I am now.

Oh, and when I died from exhaustion in the middle of a fight during a 5 minuute fight against a low-level enemy, losing all of my money to the vet, I was awarded MORE illnesses, not cured of the ones I died with. Illnsult to injury. The sad part is, I wouldn't of died if I had paid more attention to my stats, but it was so gruelling to spin my camera around constantly while fighting the fox I couldn't focus on anything else besides keeping it on my screen.

I long for the day when I can update my review to a Recommendation, because I kind of love this game... For now though, I will be playing it in small chunks, and trying really hard not to be too frustrated.

Genuinely one of the best things on Steam. If you need more Co-op in your life, BUY THIS NOW.

I've been playing this for almost 5 years, and I am not yet bored.

Well thought out Co-op, using unique mobility methods to make each Class valuable as part of a team, and unique weaponry to make each Class enjoyable to most any player. Everyone has their favourites, but the Player Progression structure encourages you to switch it up from time to time, and it is always a pleasure to revisit the Classes that I do not play regularly.

Perhaps the best thing in this game is the immersive and highly atmospheric lighting system. Each member has a flashlight and flares- whose lights can be seen smoothly by the other players (always love that) - and the way that darkness is exploited by the behaviour mechanics of enemies makes the game one of the best uses of lightning on the market (even more so than many, many horror games, in which lighting ought to be much better utilised). I personally do not appreciate the lightning as much as I used to, having grown very familiar with the game, but I can still be surprised by hordes sneaking up on me when I am being lazy about lighting up my surroundings and listening for emerging monsters.

If you are a fan of Co-operative FPSers, you cannot do many leagues better than DRG. Even if you don't have friends to play with, the Server listings are consistent and relatively reliable, and muting annoying players is easy, so there's little reason not to join others at random.

Progression is pretty smooth. Earning XP on a Character earns you Player XP as well, until that Character reaches level 25, at which time you can complete one final group of missions to 'Promote' them, resetting their level to 1 without resetting their unlocks. This used to be just for the sake of earning more Player XP, and getting you to play other Classes, but nowadays these promotions come with rewards of their own, which is nice.

Map Generation is phenomenal. Procedurally generated Cave Networks change every 30 minutes or so, offering new shapes and sizes of Caves and Caverns, keeping the game extremely fresh, especially considering the fact that the general methodology of playthrough does not change that much. Mission types come in various forms, from simple Mining in a linear Network (Morkite Missions) to hunting down formidable beasts (Dreadnought Elimination) and new types of missions have been added pretty consistently over the years, including an Oil-Pumping style Mission with extremely fun Roller-Coaster-esque Pipe-riding mechanics to go with it! (Seriously, my Wife and I have a lot of fun building mad pipelines, both for riding fun and for defensive strategy)

The music is pretty cool... Now and again the Bug Swarm comes with a more juicy Electro-Metal theme (maybe because these Swarms are bigger than standard? I don't really pay attention to that) which genuinely gets me in the mood to crush some carapace, every time. Dancing at the Abyss Bar is a religious rite... Getting the Achievement for Dancing to 25 Songs is no chore.

Even when it's glitchy, it's great. Stepping on Barrels and being thrown into the rafters of the Space-Rig is not even annoying after 5 years. My impromptu cannon-quests have my teammates laughing to the point of tears so consistently...

Bears, Beards, Beeeeeaaaards! This may be the only place where I have any kind of actual complaint... As a player of Deep Fashion Galactic, I spend plenty of time playing dress-up, but I do wish there were more Armour choices and colour palettes for said Armours. Even with all the DlCs, I am hungry for more. However, the cosmetic components, such as Beards and Weapon Frameworks (3D Model Variants) are PLENTIFUL, and many amusing Dwarves can be formed. My personal favourites are my London Cabbie, Victorian Copper, Angry Santa (all of whose gifts are NUKES), Waluigi, Solid Snake, and Dr. Robotnik Loadouts, as well as an ever-changing array of creepy-ass monster people who I throw together between missions just to make my Wife's face twist up.

As you can see, I like this game... but just to re-iterate - Easily one of the best Co-op choices available without an emulator, and even with emulated old school Co-op games included.

If you absolutely need to slaughter human players to feel like you exist, you might be capable of disliking this game. However, if the sloppy PvP Desert of our modern gaming era tends to bore you, BUY THIS NOW. Even if you like sloppy PvP games, this is WELL worth considering.

Re-downloading in 2023 because nothing else can scratch this exact itch.

We need more Co-op games that can last longer than a few months. This doesn't even have a tree full of skills and equipment and it's still a more solid experience than the vast majority of co-ops that followed. I've paid for the full L4D2 package on multiple platforms, now across 3 decades, and I have never regretted it for a second.

If you haven't ever played this, come feel the scratch - and let the infection soothe your nerves to death.

I used to play Paragon ALL THE TIME. It may not be the most comprehensive MOBA, but no other title offers the same kind of immersive action perspective.

Personally, my favourite thing about The Overprime is that they have Bots in custom games already. My friend and I would spend most of our pre-bed unwinding sessions playing against bots together, so I'm just so happy to have that back. The AI is not as clever as they were in the original game, but those AI took time to get that clever and I have reasonable hopes that things in Overprime will only improve.

Speaking more objectively, I am really surprised at how well the game runs with high graphic settings. I am currently on a fairly shoddy Laptop, but I can push the graphics up much higher than most of the games I am currently playing on this machine - which is especially nice, as Paragon and now Overprime have graphic styles which i find very pleasing.

I can't speak on the paid content (such as Hero Skins) or the latency issues, which I have heard other people show concern for, but as a free to play game, you can find out for yourself if these issues affect you. I can say that a number of the skins I appreciated in the original game are available here, which I think is nice.

My only real complaint so far is that they made The Fey too human and cute-sexy. I liked her more when she was more monstrous / demonic looking, as Faeries are not all fun and games. On some level they should scare you, because mythologically speaking, they can ruin your life if they want to. As you can see, this is not much of a complaint, so I am more than happy to give this Remake a big ol' recommendation!