Recent reviews by Dark Jon

This game is infuriating.

The beginning is fine, just your typical survival crafting start. Was excited when I finally got my ship and started sailing. Ship combat started out ok. Then I tried to do a faction quest that had a recommended level of 3. It wanted me to destroy this ship and I just kept dying over and over, either during the ship combat or boarding. I felt there was something missing with the upgrades and I was right. Turns out you can't upgrade your ship gear from the bench, you have to unequip it first put it into your inventory then go over to the bench first. Not very intuitive.

Once I upgraded then I went back over to that quest marker, still recommended lvl 3 BTW and now there are 4 or 5 ships that are level 5. I am just getting wrecked, WTF? Do the enemy ships scale to your ship level??? It sure seems like it.

Anyways I finally won a battle and was 6/7 enemies defeated on boarding. My crew died and I was running around in circles trying to live. I see one enemy who is almost dead and I finish him off. 7/7 Boarding Complete! Yes! Oh wait an enemy hit me right after...I am dead....

That's where I'm done playing this game. Its not bad for the price but the scaling and some of these bugs like the boarding one need to be fixed.

Can't recommend now but looking forward to the full release.

I really want to like this game but fun moments are few and far between. The theory is that there are different roles on a team, pilot, gunner, repair, boarder, etc. But in reality it just turns into an FPS sweat fest. Everyone is just using broken shotguns that one shot everybody and either you have the right loadout, or you dont and get rolled. This is especially frustrating for a competitive minded player like myself who wants all the tools at their disposal. But instead you have to go through progression tracks to get a decent loadout when you are already getting steamrolled by players who have it all. I really wanted to like this game, I had a blast in the beta but at the first weekend, its already a bunch of try hard sweat fest teams. I feel like whatever job I do its not enough because its a team game and if you have a team that isnt a bunch of hardcore fps players you are just going to get rolled. There are glimpses of fun here and there but if you dont have a hardcore team of gamers with you its going to be tough to get past even 4th place. Good luck even getting a win, I've only received one so far in my 7 hrs of playing.

Overall I wish this game the best and hope they can turn it around. I'll keep playing a little bit longer but if its just as depressing as the last 2 days then I'm done.

Current state is not good multiplayer has plenty of issues and is half baked. Constant crashes on PC. It is not bad as a single player game but need to fix the crashes.

Outriders is a great looter shooter.

Yes, there were tons of crash issues.
Yes, people were losing their gear.
Yes, crossplay was broken for over a week.
Yes, there are lots of loading screens with redundant 2 second cutscenes.
Yes, there are a bunch of other progression blocking and annoying bugs sometimes.
Yes, the map is frustrating to read.

When the dust has finally settled, the game as a whole is fun. Originally when I started playing the game, the game was crashing constantly when I was playing with friends. I would get server disconnects constantly and it really made me want to stop playing. Now that the game has been out for a bit, the difference of playing is night and day. Yeah the story is not going to win any awards, but it's entertaining enough and it's fun to comment on the cutscenes with friends. Especially with all the ridiculous stuff going on. It really is a good amount of content and takes like 20-30 hours to get through but probably longer if you do side quests and really try to push yourself on the higher tiers.

What awaits at endgame?

Expeditions tie into the story, which is nice and gives a mode similar to the Diablo Greater Rift system. Outriders' Diablo influence is in full swing here. Climbing higher and higher in the tiers is fun, sometimes frustrating, but especially enjoyable if you're the type of person who loves min maxing their gear. The one thing I can say about this game is they are not afraid to let the players make decisions. No BS like Destiny where you are only allowed 1 Exotic weapon because it would be so broken!!!!!!! Here if you see something you like, you can equip it. Want to run with full legendaries? Go Ahead! If you can find them!! The enemies damage and health scales insanely high and like Diablo, it is up to you to find out what mods, weapons, and armor you can use to "break the game". I ended up using a build where half my damage comes from firing one bullet and reloading...with an assault rifle that has 40 rounds. What kind of normal shooter plays like that? I've even seen builds where you don't even use a gun. You can just melee to the highest challenge tier in the game. If you've enjoyed any part of doing the Rifts in Diablo then you really need to check this game out. The legendaries + mods make the game super addicting and you want to do "just one more run" in the hope of you getting that one piece of gear that will take your build to the next level.

Overall what can I say? Yes it's not a live service game, but why do we need that? I'm tried of all these BS developers with their stupid roadmaps where they never deliver half of what they promise. We have really solid content here at launch and I've dumped more than 60 hours into it and enjoyed it more than I ever did with Anthem. Would I like to see content in the future? Of course but I am also happy with what you get for $60.

Do you really like Borderlands and think that a mix with Diablo would be cool? Get this game, it's that simple.