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Outward Definitive Edition
Outward Definitive Edition turns a journey through Aurai into a demanding mix of survival, missions, and exploration. It suits players who enjoy preparing for hazards and sharing difficult expeditions with a friend, while still supporting a complete solo route. Both named expansions and quality-of-life improvements are included. At the current tracked low of ≈ $1.05 from 
GOG, it is a strong match when this deliberate, challenge-focused style is exactly what you want. The Standard edition runs on DRM-Free for ≈ $1.05 at GOG, making it a fit for planned expeditions with demanding survival systems.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $1.992026-03Current Low Across Stores~ $1.99SteamAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
DLC
01About Outward Definitive Edition
Outward Definitive Edition combines role-playing and survival as you cross Aurai as an ordinary adventurer. Travel through untamed lands, take varied missions, explore dungeons, and respond to creatures and dangerous conditions. Play alone or share the journey through local split-screen or online co-op. The edition includes content from The Soroboreans and The Three Brothers, plus quality-of-life improvements. The Steam PC version has full controller support. Steam players rate it 72% percent positive from 24,765 reviews.
Credits
Developer
Nine Dots Studio
Publisher
Prime Matter · Deep Silver
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.992026-03-19 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 9 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Turkish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Modes and controls
The Steam PC version supports single-player and co-op, including local split-screen and online play. Full controller support is listed.
Language and audio
Multiple interface languages are supported, with the confirmed list shown live. English, French, and German full audio are listed.
03Frequently asked questions
What do you do in Outward Definitive Edition?
You explore Aurai, complete missions, enter dungeons, and manage sleep, hydration, illness, and environmental hazards.
Can I play solo or cooperatively?
Yes. It supports solo play, local split-screen co-op, and online co-op.
What does the Definitive Edition include?
It includes The Soroboreans and The Three Brothers content, plus quality-of-life improvements.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
I tried posting this several times, but it's not going through. If you see this more than once, blame Steam, not me. Or blame me, whatever you feel like I guess. Overall Summary This game isn't for everyone. That's literally the most important thing you absolutely NEED to know before buying the game. I for one LOVE it so far. A really good summary if you don't want to read my half review half rant is: "If you were to do something in a fantasy world, how would you do it?" And when I say "you" I literally mean as you are at this moment. Not "you, but like with a flaming sword, invincible armor, and a diamond horse named butt-stallion." It'd be tough. You might be homeless, get sick, and die to a single giant bird that you got too close to after walking for a few days trying to get to the next town over because you heard someone there could help teach you cool magic. That is this game in a nutshell. Complaining About Some Negative Reviews I feel like some of the negative reviews on this game are akin to buying a wired keyboard and then being mad that it isn't wireless. This isn't a perfect example, but what I'm trying to say is that it isn't fair to review something poorly just because you didn't do enough research (like reading literally one or two words on the box). It's Hard BTW This game is challenging. The very first sentence for the description is "No remarkable journey is achieved without great effort." That's not some philosophical mumbo jumbo. You actually have to put forth GREAT effort. Some people might not like that, and that's totally fine, but they very explicitly tell you that it's going to be hard. It's disheartening to then see reviews like "woah man, this is too hard. Thumbs down!" Why It's Hard, and Why That's Okay Beyond me just talking about negative reviews, and why most of them are just silly, I'll explain some of the difficult features in the game so people know what they're getting into before buying (and before leaving a bad review *cough*)... okay sorry. I'm done now. Well at least FOR now. These are some of the difficult features along with why they work in my eyes, and why they aren't just hard/annoying for the sake of being hard/annoying. Listed below. One more quick note... I could explain 90% of these with a simple "well it's because it's, like, totally more realistic this way. Uh, duh," but I'm going to try to avoid doing that. There's no minimap or quest markers. - The world is designed around not having these features. The developers know these features aren't in the game, and the world is designed around that. You don't need them. areas are designed in a way that you either know where you're going (if you pay attention to signs and roads), or in a way that you'll circle back around to that dungeon entrance pretty soon even if you forgot your way The actual map doesn't tell you where you are in the world. - Same point as above. There are MASSIVE landmarks that help you guide where you are and where you're going. If you can't manage looking at the GIANT city in the distance and being like "yeah, that's the city I gotta go to in this area," then this game's unique way of exploration is lost on you. It takes too long to travel places. - It's not that "I have to walk all the way there," it's "I GET to walk all the way there." You experience so many cool things while traveling and exploring. Even if you don't do anything with them at the moment, you can mark it on your map for later exploration. Also, it does not take that long to travel btw. If it was any shorter, people would complain about how the world feels too small because "I can traverse it in under and hour." Combat is hard. - Yeah, 2 decently equipped bandits with swords can probably kill a guy in worker's clothes with a hatchet. Players are going into these fights with the assumption that "I'm gonna win," and THAT'S their problem. Why would you think a poorly equipped dude could fight a 2v1 against decently equipped bandits with literally no training? Why not instead set a trap or two, or lure hyenas into the area to fight the bandits while you kick one down from behind? (There's more, but you get the point. Play smarter not harder. Use that brain of yours.) Magic sucks. - It doesn't suck. It's just not as simple as every other game. Once you take time to learn how to use it instead of expecting to press one button and decimate your enemies, magic provides unique ways to combat that you didn't even know existed prior to using it. Addressing Other Complaints, and Why They're Wrong With some of the "hard" things about the game out of the way, lets go back to common complaints (see, told you I'm back to this.) First things first. This game was made by ~10 people. That's it. You can't expect EVERY feature to be as fleshed out as game with hundreds or thousands of people working on it. That's one of the reasons why it's $40 and not $60. Character creation sucks. - It doesn't suck. It's just minimal... to start. The devs made it very clear (if you did any research) that character creation was minimal. The real character creation takes place WITHIN the game. Will you be a mage, a sword boi, a heavy armor spear lad, a swift archer and hunter, or a mix of all of the above? That's up to you to decide, and you get ALL game to figure it out. You don't choose one and go "welp, guess I'm stuck with this for 40+ hours." The graphics are bad. - Are there better graphical masterpieces out there? Yes. Are the graphics for this game "bad?" I don't think so, no. I've had my jaw dropped at parts of this game's scenery. The purple and rainbow grass below the mountain in the starting area is gorgeous (on Very High settings. I'll admit I haven't tried anything else.) The game's buggy or CO-OP doesn't work. - These issues will get fixed. It's been like 2 days. I'm in the discord server with the devs and I can tell you, they are working their ass off to fix these issues. The co-op bug is already fixed. They had that fixed for a full day before the update went live because their publisher had to approve the patch. Side note: these devs are committed to this game. I saw one dev (goes by Keos on Discord) answering the SAME questions asked over and over for like a damn week (even just hours before the game launched, this man was answering questions that I'm sure he's answered a thousand time by now). They want this game working as much as the players do. Voice acting is bad or lacking. - I wouldn't call it bad. I would say mediocre. Lacking? Maybe a little, but once again. 10 people and it's $40 not $60. They're charging you the price they know this game is worth. They know parts aren't as AMAZING as they might have liked, but then they adjust their price accordingly. How can you be mad at that? Conclusion I think that's it. How'd I do? Anything that you totally disagree with me on that we can totally fight about (or for me to ignore because I might forget to ever check this thread again.)Show moreShow less
14.8 hours at review1,136 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
In A Nutshell 🔵 Pros + Very good diversity of equipment, consumables, crafting recipes, enemy types and generic loot. + Decent amount of dungeons and explorable locations throughout the world. + Many class building possibilities thanks to a good variety of skills and talents taught by trainers. 🔴 Cons - WAY overpriced for the quality of what it offers. - Clunky, janky, inaccurate, unreliable combat system, especially in melee range and when using skills. - Absence of any game mechanic to speed up travel, leading to great annoyance and boredom, making players waste hours just to go back and forth between locations. - Many balance issues in class building, which can lead to overpowered builds, with absurd stats such as -100% mana consumption for spells, as example. - Player house stash is not shared, forcing players to lug all their loot to newly acquired homes every time. - Several quests with hidden, never-explained time limits to them, some leading to disastrous consequences if failed. - Rather obscure, uninspired, anonymous main quest-line and side-quests, with mediocre narrative and writing. - Terrible quality of life, suffering from dozens of small problems, forming a big one when joined together. - Numerous and frequent technical problems, ranging from flying ragdolls, to shader glitches, to missing textures. - Inconsistent graphical quality and performance, ranging from quite good to mediocre. - Survival needs are not impactful enough on the gameplay to become a core mechanic, but enough to just become an annoyance. Outward is an open-world RPG rather different than most games of this kind released nowadays. It mainly, and clearly, inspires to more niche variations of the genre, such as Risen, Gothic, or the more recent ELEX, to give an example of similar games. Being different than the mass is certainly a good premise when creating a game, sadly Outward manages to be such in some good, but many more bad ways, ultimately making the overall experience annoying and tedious because of its numerous problems. On the good side, Outward surely has an expansive game world, featuring dozens of locations to explore, with a mention-worthy old-school map that does not show player markers, forcing them to find the way using landmarks. Even if the locations are many, the space between them, aka the world itself, is mostly barren and uneventful, with enemies taking weeks to respawn (at best) and no random events or encounters, the only change being the passing of seasons. This makes traveling around very boring and tedious. Crafting and equipment are varied, with crafting being vital to get potions and consumables to counter the various illnesses, debuffs and dangers encountered. For the bad side, there is a whole lot more to say, unfortunately. Combat is very clunky and unreliable at the best of times, incapable of producing a consistent system especially in melee. After that, the absence of any faster travel means, be them caravans, mounts, magic or whatever else, combined with the general emptiness of the game world, makes traveling a long, dull, boring waste of time. In addition to this, other problems aggravate this situation, such as house stashes not being shared, forcing player to become improvised movers, heavy armor users being considerably penalized in walking speed. The technical issues such as glitches, bugs, stuttering, frame-drops and general instability are also a factor. In the end, Outward is a game with some good points to it, and that its developers sincerely wanted to be good, but its many design issues and technical problems simply prevent it from being any decent, especially for this price. I do not recommend buying this game, there are many other titles delivering the same experience at less cost and better quality. Liked this review, and want to see more of the same quality? Check out Tamaster's Review Archive to see all my Reviews in a single, convenient location. In-depth Feature Analysis 🎮 Gameplay The gameplay of Outward is divided in Exploration, Management and Combat. Exploration in this game is more close to old-school games, a good thing, with a map displaying all meaningful locations from the start (rather unusual), and not marking player position on it. Dungeons and cities need an area transition to be accessed. What makes exploration the worst part of the game, is the total absence of faster travel means, combined to the general emptiness and lifelessness of the game world, survival mechanics there just to annoy and not to be a "serious" core mechanic. All of this makes traveling around the game world a terrible, boring slog. Management is a core mechanic, since weight limit is a thing, so players need to be picky with what to loot and what to leave, often going back to cities to sell stuff and make money, or stash loot. Fact is, inventory space, especially early on, is too limited and forces players to spend most of their time lugging loot back and forth cities, without any fast travel. House stashes are NOT shared, which adds to this annoyance even more. Interfaces for management of inventory are adequate. 📖 Story There are three different main quests, one for each faction. Generally, they result mediocre, uninspired and rather obscure to understand, making the plot uninteresting for players. Overall, Outward is sub-par in writing and narration quality. Quests are nothing special, just a few of them feature any player choice, while most are linear with a single objective. 👊 Combat System Combat features a stamina based system, dodging, and several active and passive skills. Magic needs a special mention, as it is based on rituals and preparation, requiring specific items in one's inventory to cast spells and buffs. Other abilities need some buffs to be activated first in order to be used, but require no mana. While magic and ranged combat work fine, melee is very clunky and unreliable, becoming mostly a blow-trade between players and enemy, and a race to destabilize the other as quick as possible, without any weight or impact feel to it. Add janky animations, unreliable hitboxes, and the result is mediocre. 💰 Content & Pricing Priced at 40€, offering around 30 hours for an average play-through, while around 50-60 if one wants to explore everything and finish all quests, and offering generally mediocre, sub-par content quality, I do not suggest buying this game for any reason, not even to fans of the genre. Just move on to better titles of the same kind. 🔗 Balance & Challenge Class balance is not very good, as some absurd min-maxing is totally doable with the right equip, and achieve stats as -100% spell cost, 100% damage reduction, and such. Challenge level is medium. Technical Analysis 🎥 Graphics Quite dated graphics, with some good features and locations here and there, but generally plagued by glitches, technical issues and inconsistencies in quality between locations and models. For a 2019 release, sufficient, but just that. 🔊 Sound Average sound compartment, mediocre voice acting. Nothing worth mentioning. 🔩 Performance & Stability Random FPS drops, optimization issues, severe stuttering until another are transition. No crashes to report. [GTX 1080, i74820K, 16GB RAM] 💻 Artificial Intelligence Mediocre enemy AI often getting stuck and having rather random aggro rules. 🏠 Quality of Life Terrible, for the issues previously described. 🐛 Bugs & Issues Plenty, some even game breaking, and too many to be described in detail here. Conclusion Outward is a game with potential but with too many design and technical issues to be enjoyable.Show moreShow less
30.7 hours at review1,308 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I'm only 20 hours in and I keep dying every 10 minutes (I'm playing co-op with my 11 year old son, he keeps getting into troubles, dies, I try to save him and die miserably as well). But even after only 20 hours (of deaths), I can say that this is a good game, a really good one. It's strange to find a refreshing take on RPGs from a game that looks so old school (in terms of user interface, quest system, dialogues etc.) But this game is very different from your typical western RPG. The major difference is that there is no XP or level progression in the game, your character gets "stronger" because you, the player, become better at playing the game while improving your equipment, abilities, magic etc. That alone is a huge paradigm shift from your standard RPG where grinding is, more or less, the solution to every problem. This game requires a strategic and resource management approach instead. Much more Souls-like than any other RPG I have played recently. The co-op feature, that also supports split screen, is amazing and this is one of the few cooperative games where playing with someone else really enhances the experience, in a positive way (it's not just added firepower, it allows different strategic and combat approaches). The game is so unforgiving that playing with someone else really feels like living an epic experience. That being said, the game isn't perfect at all. Sound and music are forgettable, the combat system is no more than decent, the user experience is poor and sometimes needlessly complex, it's made with Unity and while it's incredibly good looking for a Unity game...it's still a Unity game, the character creation is the worst I have ever seen in any game, basically you are forced to create only ugly and deformed old men, etc. etc. But even so, it's a must play for any RPG lovers that want to try something that, from a gameplay perspective, doesn't follow the usual tropes of the genre. Update after 60 hours: I don't know exactly why, but this review is getting a lot of approval so here's a little update. Basically, I confirm everything I've said after 20 hours and there's more! As another reviewer said, this game really feels like a pen and paper RPG, where you can craft your own adventure. The main story is very light but there are a lot of dungeons and side quests that you decide to explore because you just want to do it, not because the game is guiding you towards them (quite the opposite). So you find a hidden place, it seems dangerous, you talk with your 11 year old Wizard son and decide that there could be a lot of treasures hidden in that place. You check your inventory for potions, fire stones, the conditions of your equipment, food, water etc. Ok, we are good to go, ready to conquer the dungeon, let's show them what we are made of! Oh no, its full of monsters but no panic! I'll keep them busy wihile you cast your fireballs, mini-Wizard! Invoke the circle of fire! We'll burn them alive! 10 seconds later we are both dead. It's amazing! Jokes aside, as I've said in the initial review, the game is really well made and balanced and the proof is that after 60 hours (and remember that you character doesn't level up, so he/she is exactly the same character with which you start the game) we die a lot less and certainly not as fast as when we started. This is because we learned different strategic approaches, we know our enemies, we know our equipment etc. It's really a great game for hardcore RPG fans, looking forward to buying the DLCs.Show moreShow less
21.2 hours at review1,067 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This game is good, but I wouldn't recommend it. Let's start with the good. You start out as sort of a loser, who is nothing special at all- but you are able to climb up and become an adventurer. The game does not hold your hand, It expects you to figure things out, like the magic system which is mostly about combining spell X with Spell Y. Put down a circle of fire using a Fire gem, If you cast 'spark' in it that 'spark' is now a fireball that you can launch at an enemy. If you are freezing to death standing in the fire circle helps warm you up. If you use your flint and tinder in the circle it becomes a wall of flame! Most spells work like this and it's very interesting and immersive- it does not feel like you are just pressing keys on a keyboard but you are setting things up and then making them happen. The game doesn't tell you everything. You need to figure out magic combos and items and crafting on your own. Some things have recipes, many things you just sort of cobble together. Finding out that you can use your flint and tinder on a sigil of fire to make a fire wall was incredibly cool for instance. The game also has a unique health mechanic where getting hurt lowers your maximum health so you can't just fight forever. However, here's the bad part, the stuff that just spoils the entire game. The game is based entirely around a sort of 'brutal' difficulty, Souls style. And when I said that it doesnt 'hold your hand' it generally goes too far. To the point where the game ends up being immersion breaking, tedious and unfun- and it also creates a community of gatekeepers who scream 'Git Gud' at any criticism of the game. But unfortunately for the devs of this game, for every one of those people there are probably ten who bounced off this game and never came back. And it really hurts because this game is SO CLOSE to being absolutely amazing. At the beginning of the game most monsters do 15-25 damage, you only have around 100 health and almost no armor, so you mess up two or three times and you are dead. This isn't really a huge problem- you can get armor that reduces damage by X amount per hit, and most armors also give a % damage reduction so those 20 damage hits are reduced to 5-10 damage and you have a good weapon now that can actually knock your opponents down, and you start to feel like you can actually survive, and that all the scrounging and scrapping for money was worth it. Throw all that out the window. The game then starts upping the damage by huge amounts, and it does not keep up with the armor at all. The second area of the game has common enemies that do upwards of 35 damage per hit in their combos, and they often come in packs. The big enemies do over 60. The game starts being incredibly mean to you during the 'death scenarios' doing things like dropping you into rooms with active monsters next to you when you spawn who can attack you in the dark before you can even light your lantern. This causes you to die again which puts you into another death scenario, which could be an identical scenario. Or if you are lucky it puts you into a 'puzzle' area with all of your equipment stolen by bandits, where one of the levers to open the chest is surrounded by poison water- and of course since they took all your equipment you don't have any antidotes or anything... And if you don't get your stuff back in 7 days then all of it despawns- and did I mention that when you die it progresses the day timer by anywhere between half a day and two weeks depending on what death scenario you roll? If you get ambushed by a group of monsters that you aren't prepared for it's not a fun fight to the death that you maybe can get out of by the skin of your teeth- it's basically instant death. The boss monsters also do so much damage that if you get hit by one combo, they will knock you down and instantly kill you. You won't get to fight them again any time soon, because who knows where the death scenario will throw you. In order to succeed in combat after the first area, you have to do a lot of preparations making sure that you are hopped up on every potion and buff you can, so that you don't instantly die (it will take two combo hits to kill you with 200 silver worth of buffs) and so that you can do enough damage to kill stuff quickly- and if you don't succeed, have fun farming all those consumables over again, and then walking yourself back to where you died from wherever the game decided to put you. You end up doing weird cheesy immersion breaking things, and that is the real sin. The game does SO MUCH to build immersion, and then ruin it by being so unforgiving and generally unfun. You never get to see all the cool things that the game has- because instead of maiming you and putting you in an interesting scenario the game just kills you, and then kills you again until you respawn in town. And then you need to grind all your consumables again. So the game becomes a game of abusing enemy AI and endless dodge rolling. Luring guys (who should know better) into traps and into other enemies to fight. Bringing a plant tent and then just resting to full health every time you die right there in the dungeon. Getting bosses stuck on terrain and killing them when they can't get you. It's not fun to slog onto a bag of health for 3 minutes perfectly dodging all their hits just to mess up one time and instantly die even with end-game armor. Maybe it is because this game was balanced as a co-op game and they expected that second player to help you out? Anyway, I have 100 hours of this on steam and another 150 off steam, and the thing that made this game GOOD is that I made a mod that added 50 additional HP to the starting skill Fitness (for a total of +75) and it makes the whole game infinitely better and more interesting. Now instead of instantly dying, I get maimed and get to decide how to progress from there. New monsters I dont have the attack patterns memorized usually result in injury if im careful, and only death like 60% of the time instead of 100% of the time. If I go into a situation prepared with all my buffs on I can usually muddle my way through, or at least come really close and it's great. I can clear dungeons only resting once or twice and not abuse resting in the plant tent 10 times. I can win fights by fighting, dodging, blocking and tanking, casting spells and using abilities instead of through cheese and abusing the limited AI. Sometimes I get hit with something and get a weird disease or start starving to death or freezing to death or whatever and then I get to slowly make my way home, 15 pounds of weight over-encumbered. Sometimes when I do that I still die because I'm at 0 stamina and get ambushed by bandits. With the extra HP I feel like when I die it's my fault- because I wasn't prepared, or I kept pushing when I shouldn't have, or messed up a few too many times. Without it it felt like 80% of my deaths were unavoidable garbage and I was forced to cheese everything. Outward unfortunately hits that 'SO CLOSE that it not making the distance actively bothers me, because buried under artificial difficulty is a REALLY good game that could be popular with a lot more people. I hope that they make some of these changes in Outward 2, but the reviews so far are saying they are doubling down on the worst parts of the game (probably because the toxic fan base they do keep 'likes' that stuff because it helps them feel elite when they trick an AI monster into walking into 50 bombs and then look up a build using a wiki) TL:DR Outward has a lot of charm, exploration and immersion, but that immersion is ruined by your character being overly fragile resulting in you getting forced into endless death spirals, and endless grinding for consumables. They should give the player more HP so that they can actually feel the consequence of their mistakes instead of just dying and respawning.Show moreShow less
99.4 hours at review1,267 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
So far pretty good Will update soon after more playtime. (3/26/19) Pro and con list near bottom. UPDATED 8/15/19 ** They have done a few updates, most of which were very good. The game was fun before, just a little unpolished maybe, but most of that is fixed up. The lack of end game content has also been taken care of adding to replay value (Hence why I'm updating the review.) There are a couple bugs that I noticed that still haven't been fixed. Nothing major, just the music glitch where it sometimes plays two tracks on top of each other, and the other one in certain areas where the lighting pops in and out. ** Before Impressions I read a lot in the forums about how people were getting major fps dips and complaining the frame rate is capped at 60. First off it's not capped at 60 you can change it in the setting by clicking on it and tapping right arrow key to raise it. (Set mine at 144) Another thing people have been saying is it doesn't run well. I have my settings set to all high except motion blur is off, Anti-Aliasing off (think it looks gross in any game my opinion) and everything else on high at 1080p and I'm getting great frames. never dropped below 60 stays around 70+. Specs Cpu: Ryzen 5 2600 Gpu: Geforce Gtx 1060 6gb Ram: 16gb DDR4 (Yes I had originally put DDR5 and got called out by TONS of people I'm SORRY it was a typo) Downloaded the game on an older 1TB HDD and loading times are FAST! First Impressions After tweaking every setting I can find, as I do with any new game, I instantly jumped into the tutorial. Using a mouse and keyboard to control my little dude around for the first time I instantly was reminded of Dark Souls 2. You can't whip around all over the place; the player character really feels like he has weight to him. The graphics were pretty decent, not AAA worthy but not "2009" like a lot of people are saying. The character model isn't pretty, but the environment is done super well. Wet things looks glossy, shadows are nice and soft etc. etc. Took me about 20 minutes to work my way through the in depth tutorial. I read everything twice. Gotta be ready for anything. You don't have to play the tutorial, or even all of it. You can skip it all together or skips parts of it. After the tutorial I started the real game. I was very sad to find the character creation is kind of a joke to be honest. Not a whole lot to do there but oh well I'm sure armor will be covering my face and body pretty soon anyways. It would be nice to have more options, especially for a game that's so lOOK AT ME I'M AN RPG. Intro slideshow quickly describes who you are, what you're doing, and touches on the culture of the "tribe" you are in. Short sweet and to the point alright cool. Starting the game I won't spoil it, but the story at least makes sense so far. Although the voice acting is not good at all. That's okay though it's the kind of voice acting that just reads like the first couple words of a line and then stops. Also there's no actual jump just a roll. Feels awkward but oh well. First combat situation almost killed me, but I did survive. So much for all my souls skills transferring over. Don't really have enough data for a for sure say on the AI yet, but seems okay so far. First Adventure Picked up a few quests and supply from town and exited the gate after learning a cool skill from the guard. There's no real LVL or CLASS you're branded with you just get better skills and gear. I found out the map doesn't pin your current location you have to look for landmarks and try and determine where you're at based on your surroundings. There's a built in compass on your HUD which makes it a lot easier. I followed the directions given to me for my quest to collect a magic mushroom from a damp dark dank dungeon. I wanted to use my battleaxe, but had to use my machete so I could hold my lantern because my backpack didn't have a lantern built in like one the tutorial. Found some murlocs in the cave that tried to stippy stab me with their tridents. After some doge rolling, hacking and slashing, and a little lot a bit of panicking I took them out. Bandaged myself up, ate some food, was feeling better. Not bad. Exploring Wow.. The game got better the more I played it honestly. A big open world, but a lot to do in it. Everywhere I go I find something interesting to do along the way. Also after playing more I really learned to appreciate the combat. I can confidently say I DO LIKE THIS GAME. The good, The bad, The sosoIDK Good ~ Character control feels solid ~ Music is nice ~ Good tutorial (that you can skip if you want to die) ~ Pretty environment ~ Really fast loading times even on an old HDD ~ Having fun so far ~ Lots of crafting options. LOTS. ~ Good Combat with lots of different weapons, skills, and magic. ~ Bad ~ No jump, no swimming ~ Not the best voice acting...? (At least it only reads first few words) ~ Character creation is poor for an RPG ~ A lot of invisible walls ~ SoSo/Idk ~ We will see if it has enough content for $40 ~ Combat is only pretty good. Roll/Slash/Stab no parry as of yet maybe it's an ability? ~ UI is good but it looks pretty old school, not a lot of HUD options ~ AI isn't as bad as everyone says. There's one enemy the hyena I was able to just hold 'A' and run circles around him, but that didn't work to well on a couple bandits I found. ~ Thanks for reading I'm going to get back to playing so I can update the review more I guess. Made sure to turn comments on because I do want to know what other people think and I'm not afraid to be told I'm wrong. Just don't be an a$$ I'll gladly discuss anything with anyone and answer any questions I can. Later.Show moreShow less
0.9 hours at review930 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Lots of interesting concepts at play here, but "realism" doesn't *have* to mean "busywork". Only consider if you have a very intense need for grueling realism and no other game scratches the itch. You might be better off with a modded Skyrim run, though. -- Heavy armor users get massively penalized. Melee users' main stat, stamina, is overexerted extremely quickly by wearing such armor. So, should a mage wearing magic-resistant armor have to exert more mana to cast, too? No, in fact, they get BONUSES to magic casting, which raises the question of why melee fighters have armor that nerfs their own build. Heavy armors also weigh a ton to haul around, slow you down immensely, get you killed instantly in any non-neutral climate, and if you run into any elemental damage type other than physical.. well, you might as well be naked. Not to mention, even if you try to trade with physical-dealing enemies, they can apply permanent debuffs that require resources to cure. -- 90% of the game comes down to managing inventory weight and running around in open space. If you have a quest that takes you from Abrassar to Cierzo and back, be prepared to cross multiple zones over 30 minutes of nonstop walking with no content between, 3 times, obsessively managing all the garbage you have to pick up (food, cures, ingredients, water, sell-fodder) along the way. Oh, and also worth mentioning, that quest (and all the other ones in your journal) have a timer which you can't see and can randomly fail if other quests are completed, so if you wanted to adventure at your own pace, tough luck. Enjoy permanent stat debuffs and lost one-time rewards. -- The game autosaves, hides your saves from you, and death can mean losing all your items and having to start from near or total scratch. While thankfully this never happened to me, it made all my fights exhaustingly boring, because there's no good reason to try risky fights. You should only ever approach an enemy if you are well and truly certain you can stomp them into the dirt, and thus most fights are a joke. If you want to run risks, be prepared to presumably throw your whole run into the trash because you're five days ahead with none of your items and are expected to clear a dungeon in less than a day, or be further debuffed. Either you roll the game, or you might as well restart. -- Grossly lacking in polish. Undervoiced dialogue (characters share voices and speak the wrong/only part of the lines), clunky controls (no jump, the engine doesn't know how to handle an airborne player. Just try stepping off a ledge), poor balance (movement speed is king, because you spend 99% of your time walking around on a timer and most enemy's attacks can be walked away from)... TL;DR: All in all, I kept trying really, really hard to have fun, but the game is just walking, inventory sorting, and cheesing. To give you an idea of how many people are immediately repulsed by Outward despite its reviews, 70% of players have never chosen a class (possible in the starting town), and 80% of players have never fully filled out even one of their 3 class trees (according to steam achievements).Show moreShow less
68.3 hours at review923 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
For years I assumed, because of the mixed reviews, that this game was a clunky, unfinished, frustrating mess that only people who still play old-school EverQuest would enjoy. I'm now thirty hours in and I'm having an identity crisis because this might be my favorite video game of all time. I normally put a lot of faith in Steam's review system, and it seems like it does a surprisingly good job of catering niche games to their respective niches. Factorio, Mount & Blade, Kenshi, all have Overwhelmingly Positive reviews in spite of--or probably, more accurately, because of --their quirky, off-beat, and not-for-everyone designs. Dark Souls, a game Outward is often compared to, is probably the quintessential not-for-everyone game--a game so good at being not-for-everyone that it spawned its own genre! There are countless games for whom their taglines also functions as warning labels, and whose Steam Reviews reflect a shared understanding of being "'Overwhelmingly Positive' (...if you're into that sort of thing)". With all that in mind, Outward's "Mostly Positive" status is completely baffling to me. It's not that I'm surprised that there are people who don't like it, just as I'm not surprised that there are people who don't like any of the games previously mentioned. Outward is an uncompromising, punishing, difficult-to-learn, kick-your-teeth-for-the-first-five-hours kind of game... also like the games previously mentioned. But, once again like Dark Souls et. al., I believe that Outward is brilliant in its implementation and execution of its systems, mechanics, and most importantly, its mood. Outward is like if Dark Souls and Kenshi had a baby. You're plopped into the game's world with little armor and even less context, with your choice of fishing spear, pitchfork, or mining pick as your starting "weapon," and you're sent into a world of roving bandits and rabid Chocobos. I think part of what people find off-putting about the game is that it forces the player to re-examine so many RPG mechanics that are taken for granted. We're used to being able to single-handedly wipe out a bandit camp from day one, to get stronger by grinding enemies, and to be able to heal back to full health with a couple potions. So when Outward shows up and says, "Every fight is going to be a battle for life and death, killing monsters doesn't make your character stronger, and in fact because you spent so much health/stamina on this fight, your max health/stamina is reduced until you can find a place to sleep," it's... jarring. But once I got over the vertigo of having nearly every RPG trope I'd come to expect tossed out the window, I began to see the deep intention behind the game's bucking of these mechanics. Outward is a game that forces you to play by its rules. In this day and age, the overwhelming sentiment with video game seems to be to let the player play however they want. "If I want to fast travel," the argument goes, "I should be able to. If you don't want to, just don't use it." Have you ever tried playing Skyrim without fast travel? It's terrible. Outward, being designed around its limitations, utilizes them as tools to uncompromisingly convey the feeling of being alone, far from home, in a dangerous world. Compare Outward to Breath of the Wild. Both games involve exploring a vast, beautiful, desolate landscape. The hot/cold mechanic is present in both games as well, adding a sense of immersion and danger to the exploration. I remember playing BotW and climbing to the top of a frozen mountaintop, gazing over the landscape and thinking, "Mr Frodo... This is the farthest away from home...I've ever been." Then having that bubble of wonder and danger popped by the realization that I could fast-travel to wherever I wanted at the push of a start-menu. In Outward, you have to find your way back down that mountain. You have to find your way back home once your last torch runs out and you start to get cold. Distance is truly distant . Danger is truly dangerous . The game isn't trying to be inconvenient, it simply refuses to sacrifice immersion for convenience's sake. That said, the game's never felt overly punishing, either. I've never come close to dying due to hunger, thirst, heat or cold. You can outrun most enemies, and being killed usually means being whisked away to safety with all your gear right next to you. Outward is a game dripping with intention. There are so many mechanics in this game that I've never seen before, that illustrate such imaginative concepts. I think the burnt health/stamina mechanic is genius in how effectively it answers the narrative dissonance of most RPGs allowing you to endlessly bandage yourself to full health. The survival mechanics strike the perfect balance of positive/negative reinforcement, punishing the player for not preparing for an expedition, but rewarding the player with significant buffs for being well-fed and well-rested, while simultaneously striking yet another perfect balance of being significant enough to matter yet not so important that you're spending all your time eating/drinking. And I haven't even started talking about what I consider to be this game's most brilliantly designed feature: its skill system. For years, RPGs have had an identity crisis when it comes to skill systems, and online forums often break down into honor duels whenever someone mentions the words: "respec potion." On one side of the debate, there are games like Diablo 2, Path of Exile, and Dark Souls. These games are like, "Big boys enjoy choosing skills that are bad, looking up builds online, and starting their characters over and over!" In the other camp we have games like Dark Souls 2/3 and The Witcher 3, whose skill systems are nearly identical, but with a tacked-on item that lets you reset all your levels/skills/talents. Personally, I think both systems are bad. On the one hand, looking up viable builds on a wiki undermines any sense of experimentation and discovery. On the other hand, respec potions undermine any sense of character-building and immersion. Outward solves this problem in a way that is so brilliant, it boggles my mind, allowing the player the best of both worlds: the freedom to experiment with weapons, skills, and builds, while also giving the player a sense of character identity in eventually forcing you to choose your own unique skill path that fits your play style once you've had time (as in dozens of hours) to feel everything out. This game is not without its flaws, and there are a few things I would consider indisputably bad about it: the music, while beautiful, becomes repetitive. The voice acting is rough (though easily fixed by turning voices off). The lack of recipe list outside the crafting menu is tedious, and the lack of inventory organization doesn't help. And while I understand that the devs want to force the player to make tough calls in only giving you eight quick slots for both skills and items, this ultimately just leads to lots of menu-opening. Some enemies have frame-perfect reactions to your attacks, which feels cheap. Beyond these admitted faults, I can absolutely see why Outward isn't for everyone. Well-established RPG mechanics such as XP, fast-travel, and healing potions are well-established for good reason, after all. It isn't merely Outward's bucking of these trends that makes the game stellar, but rather its unwavering commitment to its vision where its brilliance shines. Many games come close to the feeling of playing Outward, but nearly all of them gladly sacrifice their mechanics for the sake of ease and convenience. Respec potions, fast-travel, quest markers... all implemented so you never feel too lost, too in-over-your-head, too frustrated. Outward sacrifices all in favor of exploration, discovery, immersion, and adventure. It's the farthest away from home I've ever felt.Show moreShow less
28 hours at review485 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I bought this game because many reviews here and on Youtube went on about how it was a return to "old-school rpgs" and how it didn't hold your hand and was a great solo experience, if a bit rough around the edges. Well, as an old fart, I believed them and bought the game. after forcing myself to play it as long as I could, I came to the conclusion that they are either lying to themselves or I just don't get it. It is a boring, grindy, empty game, with a flimsy story, clunky mechanics and pretty bad fighting system. Maybe that's what they meant when they were talking about the old-school aspect of it..?Show moreShow less
4.1 hours at review789 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Please follow United Critics for quality reviews Outward Review – Fight for Your Survival What would be your first strategy for your survival if you found yourself trapped in a fantasy world? Surely, there’s not an option, but to fight. For those players who love to play RPG mixed survival games, Outward is offering tough gameplay like never before and guaranteed the fun-filled missions. You are survival and like a survivor, you should battle for your life and try to live alive till the end to become the master. Navigation throughout the world will be made from a third-person perspective, while a small map will help you in taking over the massive world and killing targeted enemies. RPG genre meets Survival Gameplay Outward brings a fully engaging RPG experience to you with a twist of survival, introducing complex challenges for avid gamers. Control an adventurer from a third-person view, who won’t only have to hide or defend himself from vicious creatures, but face the treacherous environmental challenges, defend himself being infected from infectious diseases, while maintain his health by getting asleep, hunting for food, and more. Most players would love to embark on an epic adventure across the set land contains a variety of cities and each city has dark secrets to reveal in itself. Explore Dungeons to reveal Dark Secrets There are numerous challenging missions that need to be overcome, but the completion of requirements in each mission is a bit tough. To ensure your survival, you should explore the world cleverly, interact with NPCs to gather required information, attack enemies using the stealth elements, and try to approach the last point to put the mission to its end and unlock another one to master. The game lets you navigate the environment throughout a set of missions while revealing secret dungeon crawling with brutal enemies. Survive Longer in the Dazzling World of Aurai The world is full of fierce beasts, challenging enemies, and lots of tasks that will offer you a tough time like never before. To overcome all oncoming problems, you need to be: • Clever • Cunning • Prepared If you have all the above-mentioned powers, then there’s no one who can beat you. So device diverse strategies to take on enemies and don’t try to avoid your basic needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, etc. Share Your Experience with Friends Like some other RPG-Survival games, you have an option to share your achievements and experience, as well as your journey with your friends either locally or online. It means you can invite your friend to be a part of your game to have fun together. Before starting the game, selecting your playable character is required and after that, you have an option to change the appearance to make it even more powerful than ever before. The Verdict Spell-casting and dynamic defeat scenarios are enough to make you entertain, that’s the most prominent thing several players are looking for in RPG games. The navigation of the wild environment will put your survival skills to test, while cruel enemies won’t leave you without having any fight. In short, a unique experience is ready with detailed graphics. Rating: 10/10Show moreShow less
164.3 hours at review478 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
The game is good, but the co-op will leave Player Two frustrated! There's plenty of well written reviews and the game is quite fun and honestly a refreshing take on the RPG genre again, being very grounded and quite realistic in it's feel. But dear god I am upset with this game in it's current state when it comes to Co-Op. I can live with the progress being only for player one. I can live with the NPCs chucking every relevant item to Player one. But: Player Two, do NOT hold on to anything in your backpack you cannot afford to lose! Either give it to Player One or stash it. You will lose your backpack to the void more often than you'd like. You die? Backpack is shown, but apparently ethereal or under the map. You set it off for combat? Player One still sees it on the back of Player Two so it's technically still on his back. Player Two suddenly picks up the bag of Player One, essentially deleting bag number 2 from existence. ALT+F4 when that happens. The fear of dying is okay, and if it was a legitimate thing that your stuff is robbed when you get knocked out (which happens quite often if you are not careful), then I'd be fine. But at this point, I am afraid of bringing anything with me in my backpack, as it'll just vanish when I am unlucky. For a game that slow-paced and "unepic", losing all your stuff you looked forward to sell/use/craft multiple times is an absolute buzzkill. I have a few other gripes but these are probably detailed in other reviews. Overall I cannot recommend it for co-op as it stands, despite it being rather enjoyable when it's your type of game.Show moreShow less
18.7 hours at review756 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.