Conan Exiles, our review

Finally available the title that relaunches a dense world full of secrets and violence: Conan Exiles. Will Funcom have managed to impress the public with this game of yours?

Version tested: PlayStation 4

For being a game based on the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, Conan Exiles it has very little to do with any part of that universe. It's a great open-world survival simulator that stays true to its initial hardcore vision. This is combined with a steep learning curve and a deep but confusing creation system, complemented by largely monotonous gameplay and an incredibly terrible user interface. It can be said that Conan Exiles do whatever it takes to stay behind on its mechanics and to let us into its certainly intriguing but highly flawed world.

The game opens when you regain consciousness in the scorching desert, completely naked and vulnerable. As an exile, you are trapped in a doomed and cursed land with nothing but the faint memory of being freed from your crucifix by Conan. From there, you are free to roam the wild. The exiled lands are huge, made up of different environmental biomes that can be freely explored from the start. Spectacular sandstorms can roll out of nowhere, forcing you to seek shelter from consuming you. You can climb anything from mountains and trees to walls and buildings, as long as you have the necessary stamina. This adds an extra dimension to the exploration, with the addition of some delightful insights into Conan's diverse world.

A world of crafting and shelter.

It starts small, collecting stones and sticks and creating simple tools. Almost anything you find can be broken down in one way or another; however, while it's nice to watch the rocks splinter and the trees tip over as you slip inside, the clumsy gathering motion never feels rewarding. Eventually you will need to build a shelter and a bed, which will become your new spawn point. Given the brutal loss of the game's items and resources after death, doing it as soon as possible will save a lot of resources.

Il refuge (or shelter) can be understood as anything from a small stone shack to a giant castle, complete with reinforced walls, towers, and even a trebuchet. Building is a relatively free block-based mechanic that allows you to create extremely elaborate base blueprints that can be fun to build, as long as you take the time to gather the raw materials to build whatever you need. That's fine, except for the part where you aren't shown how to do it. It's all up to you to simply understand or dive into a wiki first to have something explained in detail.

In company it is better.

If you are not motivated by curiosity, the modality single player di Conan Exiles it will feel empty and largely aimless. It's more like a practice mode, with only a handful of outposts and NPC structures to find. When you do, most of them are hostile, and the few who aren't offer minimal interaction. The multiplayer it changes this for the better in some ways, mainly through adding more human players.

More importantly, however, the multiplayer gives you more goals and clearer goals to achieve. This includes defending your base from other players and Purge, an army of NPCs who could attack and destroy your base as you gain XP - there's also an option to activate Purge in single-player mode. You can also join the Clan, which will allow you to build collectively, either on or near the already placed foundations of your companions. For times when you have to leave the house behind, you can create Slaves - human NPCs with specialized skills that you can take out, bind and drag back to the base in bondage - to protect her, and they do a pretty decent job.

History or level-up?

The progression of the characters is in the single player in that multiplayer takes place in Travel, a series of tasks grouped into chapters that, when completed, grant you attribute points to spend in any of the seven main skill slots. You also earn knowledge points to unlock new crafting recipes, of which there are many. The number of things you can craft is staggering; weapons, armor, survival items and even religious altars to help deify the gods of the world and earn their favor.

Do what you want.

Once you start creating more complex items, you can learn more about one of the worst aspects of the game: its user interface. There is nothing intuitive about it, and like the rest of the game, there is very little explanation given to how it works. On top of that, it's overly complicated, requiring you to put the resources along with whatever fuel you need in the crafting bar, select what you want to build from the menu, and then hit the play button to make it. There is hardly any difference between the console and the PC UI, so it's an absolute nightmare to do any kind of inventory management with a controller. And as with most survival simulators, that's what you inevitably take for a significant amount of time, making it a constant source of frustration.

When you are tired of splintering trees and rocks, whichever you prefer, you can kill creatures or other humans instead. There are all kinds of weapons in the exiled lands to kill or be killed, from animals and beasts to monstrous boss creatures like a giant black spider and a huge spiked dragon. But despite the considerable enemy variety and the wide range of weapons that can be obtained - from daggers to axes and giant maces - the combat is just plain ugly. Both light and heavy attacks are unwieldy due to slow animations, and weapon attacks have no impact, resulting in boring and monotonous combat.

Conclusion.

Finally, Conan Exiles it really is a raw product. Collected enemy bodies simply vanish into the air, and large areas of the world can pop in and out of sight at any time, tearing your character apart across the ground and then regenerating somewhere else on the map. As the night begins to come, the light of the moon is projected upward from the ground, creating a background effect that looks atrocious. It is also not in the most stable condition, with a number of crashes randomly affecting the game.

Definitely, Conan Exiles it is one of the most unsatisfactory games I have ever played. His crafting and resource systems might be dense enough that the ultra-patient might find something to like, but anyone else would likely walk away defeated. The boredom that numbed the resource crop, the sadly boring fight, and a handful of bedbugs made me feel completely disappointed and unimpressed when all was said and done.