This is the long version of my 1 star review

The game is supposed to be an rpg in 2019, however it has:

- No Attributes: Nothing to rise, nothing to make your character unique or have it strengths and weaknesses. Even in 1987, characters where already defined by their attributes. Here, you are the perfect default-every-one-the-same person, shallow and uninteresting (and ugly, but at this point, you don't care about that)

- No skills or classes to gain expertise: None to rise or choose, only buy with coin. It doesn't matter if you did something even once in your life. Sell your marmalade a year and be 'level' 100 without ever leaving the city, just buy yourself up - the game should be named 'capitalism'.

- No experience, you only leveling by buying with coins (as consequence, you do no role-playing). Either kill stuff to get coins or missions to get coins. Smart dialogs: not implemented or necessary, make coins not experience. The missions are even more uninspired as in those pay-to-win grinders - go to cave, kill all and grab mushroom. I had thought that we are over this for decades - well, now bad game design is clearly back.

- Inventory: It doesn't matter how strong you are (remember, no strength attribute anyway) only how many pockets there are, which defines: no - not the size, but the weight. So, no heavy lifting unless you made coin for some backpack.

- Actions: Opening that chest of yours (or any interacting), always hold 'action' for 3 seconds, because our own chest in your own home is.. I dunno have any explanation but bad design

- Water impassable: Remember Ultima Underworld from 1989 where you could swim? Well, here you can't - a survival rpg - water, is an impassable obstacle. And I'm not even thinking about something reasonable in 2019 like cold water that freezes you like in Skyrims Frostfall from 2010.

- No jumping or climbing: Remember Ultima Underworld from 1989 where you could jump? Well, here you can't - in a survival RPG - that 40cm rock on the floor is impassable.

- The map: Remember Ultima Underworld from 1989, where you where able to make notes in a map. Well, here - in a survival RPG, that requires you to take notes and figure stuff out - all you have are 5 different color markers which sometimes (by bug or bad design) displace themselves.

- Treasures: Remember how excited you where in other games to find that hidden treasure inside that hollow stomp, half drowned in the swamp or covered by camouflage? Here, all chests are in the same, dull, uncompassionate wall ruin scattered in some random noise pattern having no reason in most places to be there - except because of bad level design.

- The graphic is mediocre, in many places looks like it was just bought together in the Unity marketplace and dumped somewhere without any reason. The light effects, sparse as they are, are nice thou. Lighting is basically the only thing that is well implemented. It's actually a Unity-default. On the other side, many areas are even worse than games from the 90's. Empty/sparse and dull in normal, but this flickering in the desert - it's supposed to show blazing heat just only gives eye cancer. As a side-note, the terrain isn't even closed. Thousands of gaps in the floor where triangle vertices don't match look really unprofessional - and as such match the rest of this game all too well. There is also a reoccuring jagging while moving over terrain, like a latency, but without having network gameplay.

- The environment, one of the most important parts in a 'would-like-to-be' survival rpg is horribly cheap. It looks like someone generated a random noise in Photoshop and said 'height-map done'. Its all just a fanciless bumped terrain with seemingly randomly dropped things like a rock here for no reason, an enemy there with no reason, a bush with berries in the middle of the road/street, the most obvious evidence that they just placed objects in a 10 seconds work per random noise. Uninspired and lifeless. Most hilarious: the 'ducks' or whatever these little white bird-enemies are which really chase you from one side of the map to the other - no way they just loose aggro, waiting at the front door of your town for days for you to get out again. Lil' thugs, these birds.

- The economy is completely wrong. You remember, it's basically the only thing you have - no XP, no attributes, just coins. And usually, in an economy, things gain value if you put effort into creating something of higher tier. Not so in Outward. Here, basic resources are worth more than the crafted or refined items. Example: A tripwire (buy for 4 silver, sells for 1). After you bought the skill, you need 2 Iron Scrap (buy 3, sell 1), Line cloth (buy 1, sell 0) and wood (no cost) for 2 traps worth 8 silver, sell 2. If you buy the resources, you pay 7 for the resources, or sell them for 2. So crafting something out of them (which you bought the skill for) makes you make the same coin than just selling the resources - your skill and hard work, seemingly worthless. Similar, for example the Bolt Rag (buy 15, sell 4). You need to buy the skill (25 silver), buy the alchemy set (80 silver), the Larva Egg (buy 15, sell 4) and Line cloth (buy 1, sell 0). So it's cheaper to just buy the rag directly while selling after hard alchemist work, yields no profit. (remember - profit is all that counts, no xp - because they where lazy to implement even another number)

- The magic system, when you get to unlock it, is rather dull and unsuitable for the rather fast paced encounters. I've only unlocked the magic of the first map and beside the warm spell during 'so called winter', useless. Just trap-stab every enemy is faster, cheaper and because of the 'you loose mana during sleep' effect, if you need it, you don't have any anyway (random ambush).

- Sound: Last but not least the sounds. Some are nice - mostly the silent ones you don't hear at all. If you ever played an hour in heavy armor with this constant, monotone *bling-bling* noise without loosing your mind or just turn of all sounds (there is no other option than on or off) you are a tough one. This is another prove they never test-played it themselves. No one can be so ignorant to not notice this - unless you are a bad designer.

- Autosave only: Worth mentioning is also, that the game is autosaveing the progress, which, considering the bad design and missing documentation quite often leads to unwanted results and manually zipping the save folder to have a backup state to not start over.

I've played this for a couple hours, than to gather all the evidence tested this for even more time to write this review. I haven't seen much beside most of the first map, lots of the "so called jungle' with it's 20 like trees and a few minutes of desert - and both time frames are wasted time. At least it can be proud to be the first game of roughly 90 I bought here, I made use of the 'get-money-back' option. I can only hope, GoG will not pay them. I reviewed a lot of games rather low, but I must admit, the other developers, as bad as their games where, at least tried. The developers here? The never did.

I hope this review helps you to make the right buying decision - keep a distance of this 'product'.

Ultima underworld was released in 1992. The ultima series was at V in 1989, which was very much old school graphics. There's light years between 89 and 92 in terms of game development.

I ended up buying it for $6 with the $10 off coupon on Epic. I feel dirty now.

Just as a preamble: You went into a game you obviously had no idea about, never cared about, never tried to understand and now you are complaining about those facts. You went in with some expectations because you didn't do even the simplest research before buying the game, these expectations were not met and now your are annoyed. You might not like the decisions this game made, but they are still valid possibilities, in no way making it the "worst game, probably scam", almost everything you write here for example could also be said about Monster Hunter, a hugely popular and successful franchise. Also keep in mind, this is an indie game with a budget to match, made by team of just 10 people. You can't customize your character at creation, that's true. But over the course of the game you do customize your character and make it unique. There are many other games out there like that. There are skills and classes you have to choose from. Yes you pay with money, but that doesn't change the fact. And if you never leave the city, your gear will suck and you can only learn a very limited set of skills, so no, without ever leaving the city you can't be "level 100". Role playing has nothing to do with leveling whatsoever. Yes, there are hardly any quests, but that isn't the point of the game, it's about exploration. In that regard, it's really similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. What little story there is in Outward, i really liked (i played through the holy mission storyline) and it was a surprising change of pace compared to the other games i played in the past 2 decades. Yeah, the backpack capacity is based on weight, not on size. But are you really complaining about game inventory logic? The inventory of pretty much EVERY game out there makes no sense. I can't think of a single game where inventory really holds ups to real word logic. I can't even think of a game that takes it as much into consideration as Outward. Also, almost all good backpacks in the game can't just be bought, you have to find or earn them. Yeah, it's a bit annoying, with emphasis on the "bit". Many games don't allow you to pass water. Also, since you are so concerned with realism: You'd have to leave behind your backpack, armor and weapon to go swimming, otherwise you'd just drown. And what's the point of swimming somewhere if you can't take anything with you? You can't jump an climb, true, but i don't really miss it. Also: in most games your jump ability is extremely exaggerated. Especially if you consider you are lugging around a heavy backpack. Agreed, the ability to make notes on the map would be very nice and the bug wit the displacing map markers makes those markers useless. If you want to use magic, you have to plan for it, you have to build your character around it by choosing skills that compliment each other and gear that suits them. For example the cool boon (a skill you can buy in the conflux chamber which you labelled as useless) increases your ice damage. For someone focussing on ice magic it is a far cry from useless. If you go into the spell blade tree, you can consume that buff have your weapon make more damage and slow your enemies. You can also use elemental discharge to shoot ice out of that weapon, or gong strike for an ice explosion. Even if you don't go into magic, if your weapon deals frost damage, it will increase the damage of your weapon. All that is impossible without that "useless" skill. Also, there are several different forms of magic, for example there is also rune magic which can have several effects, like putting down traps, protect you or heal you. Is that all useless? And what do you mean by random ambush? If you sleep, you have to spend time guarding to prevent those ambushes, if you don't it's your fault alone. Never had sound effects annoy me in this game. And i think some of the music is very beautiful. So you can't easily save scum? Yeah, that's a design choice, and there are other games like that. Is Dark Souls a shit game because you can't save scum? I'd say a lot of people would disagree. So you complain about stuff that isn't true because you never found out about it because you didn't play the game enough to encounter these things. "Reviews" like that aren't really worth much. There is just one thing to learn from this "review": This game isn't for everyone, it doesn't try to cater to the mainstream, it's intended for a niche, to give an experience no other game does. You might like this niche, or you might not, but make sure you know what this game is about before you buy it, in contrary to this "reviewer".

Hi Andreas,
it is somewhat funny that most of the things you criticise are the things that I actually like about the game.
You are entitled to your opinion as am I, but calling this game probably a scam goes too far.

And some ot the things you said are also not quite true. You can make good money with crafting (just not with everything) and there is quite powerful magic. Also there is a point system that limits the amout of skills you can learn, the combination of them defines your "class" if you will.

Although I gernerally like jumping and climbing, the lack of jumping didn't bother me much, the map is mostly build with that in mind. You can actually climb with the dodge roll but there are quite a lot of invisible walls (whiich really bothers me to be honest). Swimming would have been nice.

After 2 hour of play I lose my backpack, the time passed really fast and i lost the lighthouse without having tried to play, and the only thing I can do is restart the game from the start, what would have happened if I've played 20 hour or 200 like I did in The Witcher 3?

Certainly the auto save is a bad feature as it is implemented rigth now! In a game like this the player should have the possibility to save whenever he wants and how many times he wants!

Hope the developers correct this in future updates because at the moment is umplayable.

Even if you lose the lighthouse you can just keep playing, it's not absolutely mandatory. You get another house with storage after joining a faction.

The only way you lose your backpack is by dying, not respawning in a town and the neglecting to pick it up for 7 days. Even if you lose, you can still keep playing, though I can see that it's bad if it contained any rare equipment. Usually the backpack just spawns next to you, you just have to pick it up again.

If out of any reason, the game bugs out and the backpack is gone, you can revert to an older save by going into the saves folder and deleting the last few saves (up to the point where you still had it). It keeps the last 15 saves as backups.

Yes I've found out of the older saves, solved this problem the game is not bad, it remembers me of morrowind and daggerfall

I complain about stuff which is true. So don't do shit-talk. Of course I write this from my perspective of what I experienced and of course of what I expected - also by what is written in the description - which is part of 'simplest research' - and it's a lie. Of course I also looked at some youtubes, but I honestly don't spend 20 hours straight for 'research' of a game. I read the description, and after playing, I feel tricked. Maybe they should have communicated more precisely, that their 'survival RPG' doesn't include anything vital, like fun, swimming, good sounds, decent graphics, decent skills etc except a 'non-mainstream' play style.
I wrote these, so others know, what to expect and what NOT to expect. As others here wrote, they are fine with auto save or the other 'features'. That's okay. If you, after reading my review say: "Yea, I don't mind about these points". Be happy. But now, you can at least read it up upfront.

I got a real crack out of this review, my favorite part is when he complains about there being no skills and the only one in his Hotbar is the kick lmao! I don't know how someone can spend so much time and "research" on the game and somehow miss the bare fundamentals.

apart from that you write complete nonsense which doesn't inform people of anything the game holds? You basically wrote all the negatives (that you could come accross in 2 hours of gameplay, lol) from your point of view and nothing else.

First of all, it was far more than 2 hours, and I regret every wasted one.
Second, If I would have found anything positive, I would have wrote it, but the only thing I really liked was the lighting, and I actually mentioned it.
Third, of course I am writing this from my point of view only. From whose pov should I write instead? Yours, the devs, the pope? This is about "my" experience with this product.

People complained that I didn't do research upfront enough and could have known better. But when I bought it, there where almost only 5 star recessions, which I still think at least some where paid, as it is impossible to like such a blatant failure. But even if some people like this, I think its important to inform others about the negative aspects, so they can make a rational choice if they gonna give it a try or not. If more people where more honest in their recession, I would never had bought it in the first place, and would never had to rage like I had to. Think of it from the positive side. Now more critical buyers will keep distant and won't write more negative reviews.

I guess a lot was tired from same formula most RPGs have. I know I am, since only one video on GOG's main page was enough for me to like it without any further research and checked positive reviews to make sure it actually works. And I really like it since I've bought it.

Yeah, climbing would be cool, since I like to do that in Breath of the Wild. But how many games actually have this mechanics? Even Skyrim don't have that, even though you could climb in hated by many Daggerfall.

I understand where you are coming from but such intensly negative reviews usually just make me ignore them because the OP either had technical problems or is just mad for whatever reason. A more critical well thought out review would have been significantly more acknowledged I imagine.

I appreciate the review. People today (cancel culture etc) can't accept that other people have points of view so they say you are wrong to have an opinion that doesn't line up with what they think.

I have already bought the game, and I agree with most of what you said. I am disappointed in the class/skill/magic system myself. I am not so careing about graphics being super high. I like Nethack after all.

A person buying wouldn't base their decision off of one review (you would hope). But if all you hear are people that recommend the game, you are missing balance. When I want to buy a weedeater, or appliance or anything, the first thing I do is read the 1 star reviews and move up. If all the 1 star reviews mention the exact same thing, you can bet that the thing, at least in many cases, has this issue. If all you read was 4 and 5 star reviews, you might not even know.

That said, saying the game is a SCAM just belittles what SCAM's are. This game certainly isn't nowhere near a scam. I actually, overall, kind of like the game (from what I have played of it). You make (some) valid points, but the game has some interesting pluses to go along with those (bad) points you mention. And I've said that without having to downvote your comment or belittle your opinion. Different strokes. I've read a book for instance, that advertised it was about this or that, then when I bought it, it immediately and continually started pushing agenda's that wasn't even mentioned. So I wrote a review to let others that were interested know. Most people could care less, but some probably read it and was thankful for the warning for what it was.

I try to be grown enough to make decisions based on my personal feelings/beliefs and the information at hand.

Admittedly I went into the game thinking I'd be fine trying something new. I agree that a lot of the systems seem outdated and ended up being annoyed by them too. But the two biggest problems for me were the autosave and the way time passes arbitrarily the first time you experience death, something you'd never know unless you die but once it happens it penalizes you in a way that I'm completely dumfounded by. I spent the first day, sunrise to sundown getting the 150 silver to pay off my house from selling items found around town. I know it was one day because I was struggling to finish after dark. I had just enough items to sell from exploring town but stuck it in my home chest and slept til morning before heading over to explore the storage/cave area. There was a button prompt for locking onto enemies and in an effort to figure combat out I got myself killed. No big deal cause I was in normal mode rather than hardcore and figured it'd just revert back to my last autosave when I slept. Instead it dropped me outside the storage area, which seemed even more forgiving.

I ran up to my house to heal up, ready to pay my debt before what I believed would be the end of day 2 (out of 5). A guard was already in front of the house, and told me it wasn't mine anymore which meant all the stuff I'd gathered including the 150 silver was lost inside. When I had died apparently 4 days had passed and I'd lost out on not only securing the house but more importantly everything I'd spent the last 4-5 hours doing. Uninstalled the game (deleting my save cause fuf this game forever) and come here to learn I could have just restored the save files manually by screwing around with the save files themselves -- wtf is even the point of having an autosave if that's the case?

I should probably also admit I rarely play games, and narrowed down getting this one on a sale sometime back, so that 4-5 hours was precious and now feels completely wasted on this shitty experience. To be fair, so was this post. But it's a better catharsis than throwing my controller through the TV.