Conan Exiles

I have very mixed feelings on this game, despite its age its worryingly unstable, while its packed with content the implementation is super rickety and the breadcumbs are nonexistent, if it wasnt for fans picking up their slack the game would be borderline unplayable and sometimes its the little things that are most annoying... Like the intro, which is tedious in the extreme when you are watching it for the 40th time because the skip button doesnt work reliably and if your server has mods EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE MODS INSTALLED you need to reboot the game every time to join the server. So you have to watch most of the intro cinematic twice vry time you want to play the game in and around the other loading screens. Just needlessly infuriating every time!

But when you get in the groove? Damn this game is gorgeous! there is so much to do! Our group has barely seen half the map and there is constantly something to try. Now admitedly half the things we try are broken, obscure and crap but when it works? It works really well.

So yeah, extremely qualified recomendation, get it when its cheap in a steam sale.

2020.Everyone in Lock down because of Corona virus...
My brother told me to buy this game so I went ahead and got the basic game.Seem like a good game I thought,but on his server they had mods..and I was overwhelmed with all materials building etc,so I thought I go and play it alone on a basic server first.
After I have tried a few private ones,i have joined to 1040...at that time I didn't know much about the game.Some players helped me over the weeks,some robbed me,invited me their clan then next day kicked me out.That resulted all of my belongings,bases are lost.
Then 1 day I met somebody...a person,I never seen before,who gave me such amazing game experience..taught me how to play,we went to dungeons,killed bosses,players..and most importantly had so much fun.Because I didn't work in lock down I had so much time to play..we literally played days and nights...We were in different clans,but that was great about it as we could kill each other in the arena for fun.We made friends over the years,some were very close some just joined for a few weeks then disapeared.After a year or so,we decided to join together in the same clan,hundreds of hours together seemed like never ending fun.The game had bugs and issues,the constant "updates" were helpful and useless at the same time. Funcom just couldn't fix the game properly over this 5 years I am playing it.
Regardless for the bugs we had so much fun..hunting,building..I even had a massive arena where players gathered on the night .They arrived on horses,rhinos..sometimes I had 10 horses outside my arena and we had so many pvp fights together.
In the past year I have been busy with work and life so never have time to play it as much,I believe she still plays it but a lot less than back in the day.Who ever thinking to buy this game,all I would say is you need friends and you will be fine.If you just want to play quickly every now and then,this game maybe not for you..I believe you need some kind of good memory with people to stay here and constantly play/buy stuff from bazaar..There is still some people play it constantly but I am afraid I don't think we have that feeling back again,what this game gave us 5 years ago.
Peace everyone,I really hope you find as much fun in some game as I did in this,thanks to my good and forever friend Susi!

i love playing in my own world, no pvp/other players, just building and foraging for mats and goodies. :) Very fun and relaxing to just build your little palace.

I'll be honest when I make this review, this game has three different communities together, the combat offical server players that are all there for the pvp and combat, and fighting other players. I would say they are similar to the rust community without most of the sh*t talking. The second group is the modders and builders who like to push not only the building system, but the charater creation system to its limit, (There is a mod used by most off the community for charater creation that is one of the most in depth I have ever seen.) They love to make cool sh*t and I dig it.
Then there is the roleplay community, I'll be frank with this group, they are everything you would not expect. Fair warning, or not I do not care, but they tend to be a bit smutty... ok you will see deviant sh*t that could only be made in a gooners basement with absinth and a blood sacrifice to your god of the week... but its some of the best text roleplay I've had in a long while. The demographic of players is most always older people, at least above 18 but most sit at around 28 to 34, but I've seen players as old as 75 playing this game. A larger then amount of stay at home moms also play this game, along with pentioners... and cronicly horny people as well, huge BDSM side to the community... also the slavery kinks but we don't talk about that...but at least most all servers have their own Consent sheets that people have to fill out before playing... somthing other games should have hopped onto doing because dear god.... Oh yeah the charater creation engine is the best in the roleplay communities I have ever seen, and im not talking about the vanilla one, that ones is ok, but the TOT modded one is the one everyone uses. I've seen driders, centaurs, demons, angels, a sentient ham sandwhich, you name it, you could probably model into the game engine WITHOUT MAKING A MOD, all of this is through the TOT charater creation mod.. also yes, there is a d**k slider, but with tot, there is a whole pannel dedicated to just that with over thirty sliders... they knew what they were doing when they made that mod...
Where was I going with this, oh yeah, this sh*t is fire, the things I've seen people make, the charater stories I've followed, the wild sh*t I've seen done. The friends I've play this game with... the people I lost and the memories that still stay there that I cant stop but look back at... To be honest, I don't know why I'm writing this, I mean I've poured a lot of time into this game, I'm not inherently good at the game, I'm not nessesarally a great roleplayer, and I am complete ass at the combat, I would die in seconds with another player.
What I'm getting to is... sometimes people need an escape, and this game does a d*mn good job at making an escape, now enough of my Skizo rant, go out there exile, fight a dragon, explore some ruins, get into a text roleplay fight with a cat girl futa that is a 36 year old man that works at hobby lobby over them barfing a hairball on your couch, Go f**kin wild and never tell your parents about this game, or the'll take you to see a doctor thinkin your insane and this is a cry for help. Anyway, good luck exile, and I'll see you out there, and watch out for yimr... you'll know what I mean when you fight him...

a solid game for the price

PROS:
-the base game is huge, it takes half a day to get across the map on foot.
-the combat is basic but fluid.
-crafting is easy
-UI is friendly, nothing out of place
-Graphics look good
-BOOBIES. just kidding, kind of. nudity in a game is so rare that its funny.
-enemy variety keeps you challenged and engaged
-Biomes are plentiful, have different creatures, and all look amazing.
-slave system is good at a higher tier when you can get people to help you fight, including beasts.

CONS:
-DLCs required for weapon and armor varieties
-DLCs required for map expansion
-DLCs required for different building materials
-theres like 8 more things that require DLC to make better but you can see where im going with it anyways.
-building is boring. its typical modular UE building without anything to make it special.
-slave system is borderline not worth doing and grindy until higher tiers of thralls or beasts.
-lack of difficulty customization. the game does have a difficulty setting, but it's not really customizable. it'd just be nice to see palworld style slider customization systems.
-game runs rough on anything less than a 16gb card. it's resource intensive even though its not that graphically impressive. optimization is mediocre.


overall, i'd suggest the game, its fun in its base form, but DLC is really required to have the maximum fun and thats a huge downside.

7/10 game.

Base game sucks. Combat feels like the game is buggy and early access, especially after 30+ Players join a server. Its great for just a few of your buddies.

The real experience comes when you add a bunch of mods or better yet, a roleplaying server.
I don't have 8,5k hours for nothing.

There is a Single player mode, and regardless stated on store page it is running very well on my Steamdeck and on my Linux PC Fedora40/Xeon/RX570.