Story

- The story was a little hard to follow - and the team didn't do themselves any favors on the first cutscene. Subsequent cutscenes add a bit to what happened, but the fact that so much time elapses between the game starting and you getting out of the prologue - it doesn't

Gameplay

- Combat is fun - the fights feel fast paced, and the shoot and loot formula is tried and true. I can't speak to solo play, but co-op this game definitely hums. Enemies do a good job of splitting attention between players (depending on damage?), which makes the fights feel more dynamic
- The one unique aspect to this game is the constantly changing difficulty level - once you've mastered one World Tier, you are automatically bumped up to the next tier, forcing you to adapt as the enemies get harder and smarter
- With this comes better loot - a welcome addition.
- Having experienced the shift from World Tier 1 → World Tier 7, I can honestly say that it feels different, and is actually a really neat concept for keeping the game dynamic
- The gear upgrade system combined with enhanced abilities seems really tailored towards creating a build that will scale as you reach harder end game content. I like how you can swap out mods to improve abilities, it makes it easier to get the gun you want

Classes

- I chose to play as a Technomancer, for better or worse. At first, I though the range would be helpful, and while it is in certain scenarios, this game does not reward a static, shoot from behind cover play style. The abilities of the Technomancer definitely have utility for a variety of roles, from damage, to support (weakening / freezing enemies) to an ability that heals. So I feel like from an overall standpoint, the Technomancer is a good part of a squad.
- One area that I feel would have made an impact is the ability to respec to another class. Being stuck with one class (without creating a brand new character) seems an arbitrary restriction given how much you can change other things in the game (guns, abilities). I feel like it was probably done out of consideration for it feeling like a challenge to level every class up, but I’m not sure that the game is interesting of fun enough to want to play through it all again to level another class up, let alone 4 times.

End Game

- After completing the main storyline, you enter into the Expedition / Challenge mode. This mode allows you to continue earning epic loot by finding drop pods.
- Josh and I have played a few of these, similar to the World Tier, you can up your challenge level to 15, to allow you to wear a max level of Lv. 50 gear. So far, we've been pretty decent at level 8-9 (World Tier 15). We'll see as we get better gear if we're able to increase!
- After playing extensively, we got up to CT15. We got through every level except for Boom Town and the final Eye of the Storm with Yagak. These were definitely challenging at CT15.

Final Thoughts

- Outriders did some things really well: the difficulty system was unique and worked well, constantly tweaking the gunfights and rewarding you for taking on challenges. The looter shooter backbone of this game was nothing unique, but it worked well.
- However, the story was at times confusing. Even watching all the cutscenes there were points that just simply weren’t explained, and it felt less intentional mystery and more poor storytelling.
- This game really missed an opportunity to let you change classes instead of starting all over again - particularly because you have to unlock all the world tiers again even if you chose to create a new character.
- This game had so much potential, but the first 5 months were really squandered by updates continuing to come out that only addressed bug fixes. Class imbalances, mods not proc’ing, mob strength issues - the list goes on. Eventually, the end game gets monotonous because you play the same levels hoping for different loot to drop. Despite an update put out in May, this game didn’t do a good enough job of ensuring you weren’t getting duplicative loot. Since the loot table was always randomized, there wasn’t even a way to play certain levels to increase your chances of getting a particular drop. Once you do get more or less what you need…there’s nothing else to really do, unless you like speed running 🤮
- Finished with this game for now, we’ll see if at any point in the future they put out any new content