@MaulTsir I hope you enjoy Outlaws. It really is a game that they improved a lot after launch. I played it a year ago and it ran fine on my base PS5 at the time. I think maybe it’s been further patched since then to run even better.
I like Kay and Nix as characters. And the SW universe is exceptionally well crafted. I think the art direction is its strongest quality. Well, I’ll just post a link to my thoughts when I completed the game, rather than repeat myself. If you’re interested: https://www.pushsquare.com/forums/retro_and_other_gaming/game...
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Thanks for the link to your thoughts, it was really good to see where you landed with the game and I always appreciate your honest reviews.
I'm 10 hours in now and having a blast, no pun intended. I really can't see why anyone would have a problem with the game in it's current state.
I did do a bit of early review digging, watched some release videos and read early reviews and it does seem the game is in a lot better place. Alot of qaulity of life improvements have helped it.
My thoughts on a few things so far
Kay and Nix - I saw a lot of the issues early on with Kay's looks, which is a bit weird I suppose, I mean it adds nothing gameplay wise, she looks like a ex drug addict to me but nothing at all that would make me think I can't play this. She's actually a really likeable character. I like the fact we are getting a sort of "newbie" rather than a full fledged experienced expert(Sam from Death Stranding) it's like we're learning every thing together. Her interactions with the outside world are quite funny, she's a good protagonist.
Nix is a great little side kick, I think his actions are useful, there doesn't seem to be any jeopardy when using him to steal stuff yet which seems a little to easy.
Gameplay - Enjoyable so far, main missions are obviously mostly sneaking about, but I don't mind that at the moment, the gun play seems decent enough when I have got into fights. Travelling around on the speeder feels brilliant and fluid enough
Story - So far it's an engaging enough story, nothing to scream about but also not the worst thing in the world, some early reviews really bashed the story, I guess they were expecting some sort of Jedi/Sith story or something but I like the fact it's set away from all that, at least for now.
Graphics and performance - Graphics are fine, I'm not really a Graphics gamer anyway so really no complaints from me.
Some jank when moving about every now and again and I've had the occasional npc speeder and ship pass through mountains/rocks and buildings, nothing game breaking, more funny to be honest.
I'm enjoying exploring and gaining skills so it's so far so good from my early impression.
@MaulTsir It sounds like it’s all lining up to be a positive and favorable time with Outlaws for you. I really agree with everything you’ve said so far. And the best is yet to come in many ways so if the opening hours feel good then you’ll like how it develops.
What do you think of the syndicate reputation mechanic?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution It's ok, makes you think about some of your decisions and puts a bit of weight behind them. I haven't come across anything that seems story defining yet, most decisions seem to just alter your reputation one way or another but not significantly enough to impact any story beats, or atleast not so far. You seem to be able to claw back any reputation you lose pretty fast by doing side jobs/handing in data to that chosen syndicate.
It does make it slightly less annoying when they are not trying to kill you when travelling through their territory.
I've yet to ever play a game where this sort of system is perfect or atleast brilliant, over games have tried this same sort of system before and other than locking you out of specific quests/rewards and having them attack you during the game it's hard to balance how much weight it has during the game. You can't exactly punish a player by ruining the main story, you can change endings mabye, dialogues, rewards but ultimately the games going to be driven the way the creator intends either way. It's a system that is ok shall we say but not the pinnacle on gaming, in my modest opinion anyway lol
@MaulTsir Yeah, I agree with you. It adds a wrinkle in the gameplay and makes you think twice before some decisions, but there’s as much annoyance with it as there is enjoyment. Especially early on when you haven’t yet had time to increase your reputation it just makes the game a bit harder and at time cumbersome to explore. After getting a few jobs under your belt you can manipulate the system enough to neutralize the limits that having bad rep causes, and for me that’s when the exploration became more enjoyable.
There’s some light narrative effects to the system though and I wouldn’t have minded if the consequences were more impactful, but at the same time I feel like that could have ruined the writers’ intentions, as you point out. And I don’t think that the game would be well served to wall off entire planets or areas simply because of a syndicate reputation. The map was made to be explored and I think they want the player to be able to see all that they created. So making the reputation more black and white would have lessened the gameplay experience, even if it would have made it more narratively interesting.
Edit: when thinking about it, I can’t remember another game that has done this system well, like you point out. The Demon’s Souls world tendency comes to mind (maybe because I was just discussing this with Tjuz) as another mechanic that changes access to things in the world based on your actions. I didn’t care for the system in Demon’s Souls either and I just kept all the worlds as white so that the game would be easier to traverse. 😅
@MaulTsir The reputation system is fine in the early game but it gets very easy to abuse it and be everyone's best buddy later in the game so some of the danger of infiltrating an area is lost when you can stroll through most of the base.
Weirdly, the jobs you can take on in space give you positive rep with the faction who offered it but without negative effects on another so those are the best to go for.
It's good to hear you're having fun though. I thought it was a solid 7/10 game that did nothing outrageously new but was good fun. There is a bit too much open world bloat and even the completionist in me had to eventually give up on the mountain of side tasks that built up, often with little reward. Some great set pieces and linear sections though that makes me wish more studios would be happy to go with more linear Uncharted type gameplay.
I'm just a little over 20 hours in, progress slowed this weekend as I've been away.
My initial thoughts are pretty much the same, the games absolutely fine, I'm still enjoying the story, I'm currently just finishing up on Kijimi, which is my second stop after Toshara.
The gameplay is mainly stealth, but I do like blasting my way through when I can.
The reputation system is pretty easy to manage I've found because as the story raises and lowers one I just do contracts or hand in data to push the other's back up.
I do agree though Thrillo, I'm getting to the point now where I have an excessive amount of side content and for the majority the reward is absolutely not worth it. I'm sort of sticking to the main quests now and I'm not feeling like I'm missing out on anything. The syndicate vaults seem to be the most rewarding so far as in value of credits.
I am normally not one for mini games either, like I avoid them in most games if I can, I'm already playing a game, I don't see the value of a mini game lol but my god I've became addicted to Sabac 😂😂 I have no idea why but everytime I find a new table I'm straight there!!
At the minute I'd sit it somewhere around a 7/8, I'm having a lot of fun with it, it's nothing ground breaking but it's certainly not the worse game ubisoft have put out.
Although if I was paying up over £70 to £110 which the ultimate edition was at release I think, I'd definitely be unhappy, at £20, £30 your getting value for money but any higher I'd be inclined to say it doesn't compete with games that I would value at £50-£70
@MaulTsir I agree with your assessment so far. I believe you’ll find that things ratchet up toward the last stretch. But definitely a lot of the side content can be skipped, depending on your mood and tolerance for it.
And I’m surprised about Sabacc! 😂 I’m the same with most mini-games. Usually they are relatively half-baked and unless there’s substantial rewards for the main campaign attached to them, I usually completely skip them. In Horizon Forbidden West I’ve completely ignored the little tabletop game (I’m forgetting the name of it right now). The game seems too complicated for me to learn an invest time into. So I guess I shouldn’t say ‘half-baked’ being the problem, because I also don’t like it when they’re too complex. 😛 In that way, Sabacc is a good balance, because it is relatively easy to learn and pick up, and yet isn’t totally simplistic like the random arcade games that are present in the world too. But still, I didn’t spend much time with Sabacc.
Trying to remember the last mini-game that I really got into, and I don’t really know. Maybe Summoner’s Court in Hogwart’s Legacy. 😅
The one I always go back to was Blitzball in Final Fantasy X. I have no idea why I absolutely became obsessed with that mini-game but I loved it. It’s one of my main prevailing memories of FFX!
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I don't have much experience with these kinds of in-universe games within games, but the one thing I found kinda interesting about sabacc in Outlaws is that you were occasionally forced to play a hand for main story progression purposes. @Th3solution mentions Machine Strike in the Horizon games and yet, for all the many hundreds of hours I've poured into that series, I have never once played Machine Strike, because it was a totally optional distraction from the compelling narrative and spectacular "proper" fights I'd signed up for. I'm wondering perhaps that's why there seems to be a lot of love for sabacc, because folks were made to try something they'd usually skip...?
I feel like Jedi: Survivor struck a decent middle ground with its Holotactics minigame. I engaged with that for the game's platinum, but it didn't overcomplicate itself. That was cool.
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
@Werehog What I like with Outlaws is that whenever the game forces you to play the minigames (sabacc, slicing, lockpicking) for the purposes of the main story or quests, you are given the easiest versions of those games, so that you can breeze through them if they don't catch your fancy.
I enjoy the occasional round of sabacc, but most times I just want to get on with things so whenever I need to play for story/quest reasons, I'm very happy that I usually won't have to get all the way into the deep tactics and shifts in order to get a favourable outcome.
I'm starting to feel sated by other parts of the game, though. I've just finished the ND-5 "Legacy" quest and have recruited all team members, but I've mainly focused on the big quests and staying good with the factions via contracts and I might just race through the rest of the story and call it quits on the other aspects.
I'm also getting a little annoyed by every mission following the same formula: Sneak in somewhere, find your objective, have fecal matter hit the air redistribution unit due to no fault of your own and shoot your way out. Just once I would like to have the option of getting back out undetected, but the story seems to have other plans every single time.
Still, I'm having a good time with it, overall, for now. Love the characters. There is no shortage of cutesy sidekicks in Star Wars properties, but Nix beats them all, hands down, in my book. The interactions between Kay and Nix in the street food minigames are so incredibly good that I wish there were more of them.
@Werehog Ah, Machine Strike, that’s what it’s called! 😄
Yeah, I talked to the first woman at Chainscrape who has a table, and after 10 seconds I knew I didn’t want to invest anymore time into Machine Strike. Undoubtedly it’s a well executed side game and it looks like it could be a nice supplement, but I already know that the HFW is quite a meaty game with just the main quests, not to mention the exploration, side quests, errands, and other activities. So spending a few dozen hours fine-tuning my Machine Strike skills doesn’t appeal right now.
The little bit of Witcher 3 that I played introduced me to Gwent, a similar supplemental table top game in the greater game universe. It’s maybe a part of what put me off about my opening hours of W3 and contributed to my getting overwhelmed with it and ultimately dropping it. So I’ve become better about ignoring those things if they don’t immediately grab me, or unless, as mentioned by @FuriousMachine they are narratively required and/or very simplified at first.
And yes, I’d forgotten about Holotactics! I did quite enjoy that one too. Although I didn’t get the platinum, I did get the trophy for winning all the holotactics matches. That was also a nicely balanced mini-game; it wasn’t too complicated but it was a nice little brief challenge to mix in.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Another +1 for sabacc here and it definitely gets even more fun once you can start cheating even more
Card based games are always a winner for me though. Gwent in TW3 was great, the triple triad card game in FF8 similar, and the Queen's Blood mini game (of many) in FF7R2 was really enjoyable too and the challenge levels mixed it up too.
@Werehog What I like with Outlaws is that whenever the game forces you to play the minigames (sabacc, slicing, lockpicking) for the purposes of the main story or quests, you are given the easiest versions of those games, so that you can breeze through them if they don't catch your fancy.
Yes, very much this! Was gonna mention something similar, a kinda "try before you buy" approach that I have seen in other games before, too. It's definitely the way to go!
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@Th3solution Your mileage may vary, but it sounds like your initial reaction to Machine Strike was identical to mine, so rest easy knowing that Forbidden West is plenty big enough without it, and I'm sure you won't regret skipping it... unless you do, in which case, you can always go back after watching the credits roll and try it at your leisure. But methinks you won't.
The best part about Holotactics was that it had Yuri Lowenthal voicing the commentator! Now I just need Cameron Monaghan to show up in Insomniac's Spider-Man 3 and I'll be a happy geek!
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@Thrillho I will admit, once I'd obtained a couple more cheat cards and abilities, I was able to relax a heck of a lot more at the sabacc table! I was nervous because my first game (when all I had was that one-time Nix peek) was a disaster, and I knew one of the DLCs was all about a high-stakes sabacc tournament. Fortunately, it ended up striking a good balance between the cheats you'd already unlocked in the campaign and basically being semi-scripted anyway. I thought it was really effective!
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
@Th3solution Yes it surprised me also my taking to Sabacc, I rarely if ever bother with mini games and yet I completely adore Sabacc, it's simple enough to just play it without to much brain power I think. Even at it's most difficult, there isn't 1000's of card to remember.
Well I've now finished over the weekend Star Wars Outlaws and the first DLC.
My final thoughts on the main game are it's solid without being amazing or ground breaking, all round it's a pretty fun game. I agree with most of the assessments of people's recent thoughts, it's really good to be in the Star Wars world and I think they did a pretty decent job at bringing it to life, the story was enjoyable enough to want to see it through, predictable yes but still enjoyable. Kay and Nix were 2 really good additions to the Star Wars universe I thought. I enjoyed Kay's persona, winging almost everything seemed the type of thing most of us would realistically be doing if we woke up in the SW universe.
The environments were good, and there was enough(more than enough actually) to do in all of them to keep me entertained, although as Ubisoft tends to do I ended up burning out on all the side content and just getting what was most important for upgrades. I didn't ever intend to go for the plat so all the collectibles I never even tried to get, only the one's I stumbled across. It was pretty easy though to distinguish between what was important and what wasn't.
One thing I wish developers would learn though is that side content rewards should be extremely good narrative wise or the reward should be well worth it, because this had neither, which I know is sort of Ubisofts speciality, but my god do they know how to bloat a game pointlessly.
Graphics and performance was really good, I had one major crash, right before the end missions, there was a certain part of the ship if I went in it just crashed the game, I thought I lost my save and would have to go back to the auto save which was only a few minutes earlier but luckily I could get out the ship through a different exit and then this never happened again.
The main gameplay loop did get repetitive before the end of the game, every mission just basically played out the same, sneak in, complete said mission and shoot your way out, even the going through ship hulls and ventilation systems and fans starting up just all seemed copy and paste. I wasn't or have never been a lover of flying/sailing parts of games so I especially didn't really enjoy the ship parts but they where short enough and easy enough not to damping my thoughts on the game.
Overall it's a pretty decent game, I can't see why any Star Wars/Sci-Fi fan wouldn't enjoy it for what it is, there was times on Kijimi that I felt like it was a distant version of a Mass Effect game. I would sit it at a 7/10 game. And if you could pick it up for £20 for the base game you've got a really good game for a really good price. I'm glad I played it in the state it's in.
I'll finish up the second dlc this week, roughly around 5 hours to complete accroding to how long to beat and then I'll be done with it all together.
@MaulTsir Congrats on finishing the game! It sounds like your thoughts align with my own about it. I think back fondly on my time with it. It’s one game in a large heap of other 7’s and 8’s that are really great games, but a tier below my most memorable favorites. Sort of a comfort food, with familiar aspects that scratch a certain gaming itch.
So what’s in store for you next? Are you going to try to play something from a different genre, or do you think you’ll set out on another journey in a new open world game? Pull something out of the backlog, or play a new release?
@Th3solution Thanks mate! Yeah, I think games that are 6/7/8s get too much flack these days, like every game has to be a masterpiece, but as long as the games fun and holds your attention long enough then that's fine. Some of these games paint a rod for their own back because of price points I guess because I would certainly be aggrieved if I paid £70+ for the game but that's mainly the reason I game 2 years behind so I pay the value I think their worth I suppose lol
@MaulTsir Here's hoping you enjoy (or have enjoyed already) the second DLC, which I found to be stronger than the first. It's an interesting insight into where a sequel might have gone, or at least what a second season of DLC might have added. And I'm glad you had fun with the rest of the game!
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
@MaulTsir I just finished the sabacc themed DLC and will focus on finishing the main story to wrap it up (I'm about to start the mission "The Truth") and everything you wrote in your "review" post echoes my experience perfectly.
Especially this:
One thing I wish developers would learn though is that side content rewards should be extremely good narrative wise or the reward should be well worth it, because this had neither, which I know is sort of Ubisofts speciality, but my god do they know how to bloat a game pointlessly.
There reached a point in this game when I opened a "treasure" chest, having spent quite some time looking for it, and upon seeing the reward thought "why on earth am I spending time doing this?" and the answer is, of course, because it's an unresolved blip on the map/in the journal. Which is a stupid reason to do things in a game, especially if it feels more like busywork than actual fun. That was also the point where I decided to abandon my attempt at the platinum. I may change my mind after I've completed it and the second DLC, but I kind of doubt it. Too many games on the old backlog for that
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Topic: Star Wars Outlaws (30-8-2024)
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