Outward

I've had a love hate relationship with this game.
I walked into it expected a modern RPG and got my ass handed to me, lost all my gear, lost the starter house got tilted and uninstalled and didn't touch for years.
Eventually i came back with a lot more patience and understanding for what the game was going to throw at me. Accept my loses, adequately preparing for adventures and even making sure I have backup equipment back at home in case i lose everything out in the field. With a lot of preparation and patience this game has easily turned into a top 5 of all time for me.

A lot of negative reviews here complaining about how the game is full of inconveniences and how it is punishing and unfair. And that is the exact reason why i absolutely love this game. It's one of the very few games that truly incorporates the idea that you are NOT the hero of the story, you're just some schmuck down on his luck that has to fend for himself, and if you want to have any chance to survive outside your little village you'll need to PREPARE to journey outside.
Combat is about being prepared for a fight with buffs and proper healing/utility items, traveling is about being prepared for the journey with food and water, even reading the map needs preparation to look for and identifying the landmarks around you.
Outward is a game that rewards you for preparation and planning and utterly punishes you for rushing in like every other rpg, and i wouldn't have it any other way. May Outward 2 be even more ruthless than its prequel.

Two things up front:
1. This game has a tutorial in the main menu. Don't listen to people who say there is none. They are just blasting through the main menu and not paying attention, it's right there.
2. No, this is not a souls-like.
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Anyway, the game. Embrace the survival. Just embrace it. The only marker on the compass is your backpack when you drop it. There are 80+ defeat scenarios.
Getting lost, feeling lost, is part of the game. Explore. Figure things out the hard way. Unlike a lot of AAA titles, the game gives you the courtesy of using your own brain. It respects you enough not to lead you around.
The magic is bonkers. Casting spells is not an action, it's a reaction. For example, here's how you cast a fireball. You learn how to cast a spark spell. You learn how to create a fire sigil on the ground. Stand inside the sigil and cast spark. The sigil turns your spark into a fireball and it flies at the enemy you're locked onto, or the direction you're facing. All attack magic works this way and it's very fun.
Combat is all about preparation. Whether you're a rogue / hunter setting traps and loading your pistol, or you're a sigil mage or rune mage performing magic rituals before the fight to blast your enemies to the moon. Create a ghost sword out of thin air in your hand. Summon a ghost to fight along side you. Or you wanna throw down your big ghost drum and smack it, and your enemies, with a stick until everyone's dead. Or counter / parry / martial arts your enemies to death with a hammer or axe or giant sword.
Go camping, stay warm in the winter, stay cool in the desert. Watch out for hyenas & thunder crabs. Fight a lich boss, beat up some bandits, explore ruins, get an old magical train working again, fight weird mushroom people.
The music is freaking amazing. It's got a soundtrack that really pulls you in.
I couldn't gush about this game enough. Just keep an open mind, embrace the challenges. Be prepared to lose, get kidnapped, mugged, beat up. 80+ defeat scenarios are there because success is built on failure. Have fun.

Banger, probably in my top 10 games OAT but requires time to learn and understand.
I see a lot of negative reviews comparing this game to Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Let me tell you if you think that you are going to be disappointed, this game IS NOT Dark Souls nor Elden Ring but something else. If you want an experience like those games go play something else.
The combat is actually not so bad when you learn it people struggle with it because they leave Cierzo and immediately try to fight hyenas and bandits without understanding the basics, and the magic system is unique and fun to use. But again, both of these things will require time and patience so you can properly understand them. There are also survival elements in the game, but they are really simple. There's a lot of food and water, and sleeping is not a big problem.
Another great critique is the walking everywhere, since there's no fast travel and the maps can be fairly big. This problem persists throughout the full game, so keep in mind that you can spend 30 minutes or so just traveling from a city to another. If that's a dealbreaker, maybe pass this game. There is kinda of a way to fast travel using the Soroborean caravan, but don't go expecting it.
In my opnion the best part of this game is the exploration, probably one of the best out there. There's not a lot to see, but the things you can find, and the secrets are sublime.
If you like exploration, you are going to love this game, but again, it requires patience to learn.

This is one of THE best RPG games ever made of ALL time.
Mana and magic are entirely unique mechanics in this game, you don't start a mage, you need to pilgrimage to the mage mecca and exchange total health points for mana. This is really sick.
You don't just cast spells, you acquire sigils and cast them in combos to cast spells, kinda like arks fatalis but without drawing with a mouse.
Combat is unforgiving, punishing, you need to eat, drink, set up camp, sleep, cook, etc.
if you fail to dispatch bandits they can capture you and bring you to their prison cells.
they can rob you, take your stuff and now you're back to square one.
The only thing this game is missing is reliable fast travel systems and/or mounts. There is NO reason someone should be walking across these maps more than once, but you will have to, and you do it on foot.
and because of this, EVERY time i play thru this game; I farm for a pearlbird mask and mastertrader garbs. Because these are the only armor items that give you total % increase in movement speed, and thus these are the defacto best items in the game.
i dont use other armor, because they dont allow you more movementspeed. I don't want less movement speed because this game forces you to walk everywhere.
This becomes a problem in CoOp too because your buddy isn't gonna get lucky with the games loot tables and drop a pearl mask early for them too, so now you have one guy unable to keep up with the other, because the movementspeed is that broke. it will disrupt your co op partners gameplay, and it will funnel you into the distinct decision to use these same items as well.. because.. well.. you don't want to move slow.
this is the ONLY problem this game has. there is a small amount of clunk to the game, but not enough to disrupt the experience of the game itself.
Because of this movement speed issue i'm gonna have to give it an 8/10.
if this game got horse dlc or an update that added mounts or town fast travel for a price, it'd be an instant 10/10. but due to the spacious scale of the maps, it sours the journey from A to B after awhile.
tldr; this is a must play for RPG enjoyers, Co Op game fans, this is one of the most unique RPGs ever made.

Not An RPG For Everyone, and That's Good
Outward is Unique could honestly some up the game in a nutshell. This game has the power to give you such a childlike wonder whenever you play it. The sense of adventure this game has from it's music, level design, open world maps, it all just fits so nicely into a little bow. It really harkens back to old school game design where developers were ready to make risks and see what stuck and what didn't. There are some very weird systems in this game, and that's where all the charm is. This is also one of the only RPGs that let you play with your friends, although quest progression is not shared, which is good since that means you can be in different factions and help each other out.
Now this game can be hard and sometimes on rare occasions a bit unfair. This is intentional from the devs to make you interact with it's system. Crafting in this game is not optional, its a damn requirement. You HAVE to make food, potions, and weapons before you venture out into dungeons. If not you will find yourself dead and dead again. If you interact with the game's systems and prepare before going on your adventure, then the difficulty of the game becomes way more manageable.
To be upfront this is not a survival game with RPG mechanics. It is a RPG game with heavy survival mechanics. Please go in with those expectations in mind, and don't write a negative review just because you decided to go into the game with the wrong expectations of what genre the game even is. I'm partly writing this review to counteract the people who wrote reviews and got mad this game wasn't Enshrouded.
Nine Dots Studio has really made something special here, I can safely say there is nothing else like it on the market, and I can't wait for Outward 2

This game is a masterpiece, it's not a souls-like so don't go in expecting fast paced gameplay. Outward is all about preparation, knowing your enemies, managing your resources and learning how to survive! Now let me be clear this game is not perfect, it can feel empty at times and it doesn't have a lot of voice acting and no cutscenes at all. I personally like the combat system but before you understand it, it'll feel outdated and even after you do it's not gonna be the main draw of this game that is meele combat. But when it comes to magic, oh boy does this game shine. Outward hands down has the best magic system in any video game, they somehow made magic feel REAL. In most RPGs I played becoming a magician was basically get the spell, push a button, there you go. Not in this game you don't, using magic is a process and that might not sound like fun at first but after you get used to it something just clicks and you will feel like a master of the arcane arts and learning it feels so great because it makes your life easier and let me tell you in outward you don't start as a great hero, no you start as an average guy and literally even pearlbirds and bandits will mess you up at times in the beginning.
This game doesn't hold your hand it places you in an unforgiving world and just kinda goes "go figure it out" and I'm all for it. This game has a ton of innovative ideas and most of them work really good, one of favourites is what happens when you die, in this game you don't get to reload a save if you mess up, there is no save system, the game only saves when you exit. So what happens when you die is different everytime, sometimes a nice stranger helps you, sometimes you crawl back to town, if u died near bandits you'll became a slave or they steal you'r equipped weapon and armor and leave you to rot. The choices you make will affect your characters life in many different ways.
This is a really neat idea, one that I'd love to see implemented in more game's because it really lets you get immersed in the game. Anyway if you like magic in general or any of this sounds like fun to you GET. THIS. GAME.
Don't listen to all the knob heads who played for an hour an left a bad review, this game is an awful lot of fun if you just take your time with it, it deserves nothing but appreciation!! Games like this are really important in times like these when soo many games use the same ideas over and over again, this game doesn't do that, it's something new, something for more mature players!