Conan Exiles
Conan Exiles wasn't even on my radar as a possible game I'd pick up. I mean, sure, I appreciate the original movie, but I'm no huge fan of the property. And the idea of a multiplayer survival-ish game wasn't appealing.
Then three things aligned. 1) I felt like I wanted to play a crafting/survival game. 2) I learned as it came out that it can be played single-player. 3) It released at a sub-AAA price point.
So, I've been playing on-and-off as my Battletech playthrough wrapped up (at least for now), and... I'm reasonably happy with it. The survival elements are not oppressive, as you can get food and water without too much difficulty and the temperature extremes are pretty localized. There's a decent crafting ladder to climb, with multiple tiers of buildings and items. There are mechanics to capture NPCs and turn them into "thralls" to aid in crafting or serve as guards. The map is pretty large with some fair variety of desert, jungle, woodlands, icy mountains, and a volcano. For me, this all works to scratch a certain itch.
Mind you, considered as an RPG, it's pretty bare-bones. You do have some character customization through attribute points and feats, with an ability to craft a respec potion. But there is very, very little story or non-combat interaction with anything on the map. Combat itself is only so-so, with some wonky behavior and hit detection at times. Performance in general is often good, but can occasionally lag for several seconds. XP gain felt rather slow to me at points (though that is adjustable). And like virtually every crafting/survival game I've seen, it does a poor job of explaining a lot of details about crafting recipes.
And the game is still built with multiplayer in mind. You can see this in the hit point totals on boss-type creatures (people have made mods to tweak those) and just in the general feel that other players would add more life and emergent story/gameplay to the experience.
Overall, I think it's pretty good for what it is, though what it is might be a little bit niche. I feel I'm getting my money out of it, though.
Tangentially, I've gone through a mini-roller coaster mentally with the announcement of a new Fallout game mentioned in the last day or two:
"A new Fallout game, cool!"
"It's... going to be an online multiplayer survival game? Uhh... I think you lost me."
"Well, unless you can play it single-player, like Conan Exiles. That might be okay..."
Of course, it's far too early to see how that actually shakes out.
Then three things aligned. 1) I felt like I wanted to play a crafting/survival game. 2) I learned as it came out that it can be played single-player. 3) It released at a sub-AAA price point.
So, I've been playing on-and-off as my Battletech playthrough wrapped up (at least for now), and... I'm reasonably happy with it. The survival elements are not oppressive, as you can get food and water without too much difficulty and the temperature extremes are pretty localized. There's a decent crafting ladder to climb, with multiple tiers of buildings and items. There are mechanics to capture NPCs and turn them into "thralls" to aid in crafting or serve as guards. The map is pretty large with some fair variety of desert, jungle, woodlands, icy mountains, and a volcano. For me, this all works to scratch a certain itch.
Mind you, considered as an RPG, it's pretty bare-bones. You do have some character customization through attribute points and feats, with an ability to craft a respec potion. But there is very, very little story or non-combat interaction with anything on the map. Combat itself is only so-so, with some wonky behavior and hit detection at times. Performance in general is often good, but can occasionally lag for several seconds. XP gain felt rather slow to me at points (though that is adjustable). And like virtually every crafting/survival game I've seen, it does a poor job of explaining a lot of details about crafting recipes.
And the game is still built with multiplayer in mind. You can see this in the hit point totals on boss-type creatures (people have made mods to tweak those) and just in the general feel that other players would add more life and emergent story/gameplay to the experience.
Overall, I think it's pretty good for what it is, though what it is might be a little bit niche. I feel I'm getting my money out of it, though.
Tangentially, I've gone through a mini-roller coaster mentally with the announcement of a new Fallout game mentioned in the last day or two:
"A new Fallout game, cool!"
"It's... going to be an online multiplayer survival game? Uhh... I think you lost me."
"Well, unless you can play it single-player, like Conan Exiles. That might be okay..."
Of course, it's far too early to see how that actually shakes out.
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