Outriders: Worldslayer Review
People Can Fly’s looter-shooter Outriders was released in April 2021 to moderate success, with praise for the combat, crafting, and loot systems, while criticism was aimed at the storytelling, dialogue, and launch its buggy. Overall, the game succeeds where it needs to, giving players a fun, fast-paced combat system that uses supernatural powers along with weapons, armor, and technology to amass a huge variety of character to face the hordes of enemies contained in the game. The game’s story explores the last remnants of humanity as they flee Earth to colonize the distant world of Enoch, with the Outriders tasked with exploring the planet before unloading the colonists. In typical post-apocalyptic sci-fi storytelling, things go south when a mysterious electromagnetic storm, referred to as the Anomaly, begins to destroy everything in its wake. The outriders skip forward thirty years in the narrative, where humanity is trapped in the same valley they arrived in, now in a civil war with the Insurgents who usually follow the Altered supernatural humans, altered by the Anomaly. Additionally, the Anomaly has affected the local wildlife in terrifying and altered ways, further adding to the challenges players must face. Outriders: Worldslayer builds on the narrative left open from the base game by revealing that the Anomaly, now out of control of the planet due to the loss of Enoch’s native species, the Pax, is expanding and moving into more and not anticipated ways that threaten all life on the planet. The expansion also ties up the loose ends of the Insurgent crisis that were left unanswered by the base game with the addition of Altered Ereshkigal, who leads them. Furthermore, the DLC and its Endgame content will go hand-in-hand in telling more about Pax, their relationship with Enoch in the past, and their abilities to use the Anomaly.
While there seems to be a lot of content to cover in an expansion, the result reflects the base game’s issues with its narrative structure. First, the character Outrider acts as more of an observer to the events happening around the other characters. The story stakes don’t seem to challenge the Outrider in ways that warrant or see character development. It’s as if the Outrider is just a tool to be used to move the story along. And while the destruction of all lives comes with the Outrider, it’s the lack of personal stakes that makes the player character seem one-dimensional. In addition, the DLC’s story is too short for the price tag, clocking in at around six to eight hours depending on difficulty and exploration. Ereshkigal isn’t featured enough to flesh out what could be a promising, deeply flawed, and deadly antagonist. Instead, his motivations are typical of villains who want to watch the world burn. And while that motivation may come from engaging with traumatic history, Outrider: Worldslayer appears to lean into the evil nature of the Anomaly that runs through the Altered, driving their destructive tendencies. While the content of Tarya Gratar’s Endgame ties into the Outriders: Worldslayer story, exploring more of the nature of Pax and their connection to Enoch and the Anomaly, it leaves some questions open for those potential story expansion in the future. Overall, the story and dialogue present a lot of exciting ideas and theories, especially in a world that has high potential for an immersive narrative experience, but it seems to rush these factors to bring back the fighting player
While the story may have bumps in the road, the combat is truly where Outriders: Worldslayer shines, and unleashing waves of supernatural abilities and weapons on dozens of enemies is addictively fun. The game’s loot system is equally enjoyable, pushing players to farm for the best gear and mods available to present their Outrider character’s best form on the battlefield. While no new classes have been added to the original four, the addition of a Pax Skill Tree with two defining branches and an assortment of nodes with active and passive bonuses brings new forms of power to experience. of players. Along with Pax Skill trees are Ascension Points and Apocalypse Tiers, which allow for more customization and bigger rewards. Pax Skill Points are earned through the story progression of Outriders: Worldslayer, where Ascension Points are rewarded for defeating opponents even in the base campaign. These points are divided into four categories: Anomaly, Endurance, Brutality, and Prowess. Adding points to desired areas can synergize with new Apocalypse Tier weapons, armor, and skills that feature a third mod slot to power up the build players choose. Another significant aspect of Outriders: Worldslayer is the option to start the game in a new save with a leveled character, negating the need to go through the entire base campaign to get to the DLC. This allows new and old players to jump right into the unique content, gear, and mods that Worldslayer brings to the table. Character builds that start with this new save slot provide enough power and strength to progress but can continue to be improved.
Apocalypse Tiers replace the World Tiers of the base campaign, but they play similarly in that the higher the players level, the better the gear and mods drop. One of the main differences is that players can return to these tiers in the base game, whether they play alone or join friends experiencing early story missions. This encourages players to re-explore the story from the beginning, advancing this new tier system that now reaches level 40. Such a replay can create a more powerful character designed to handle the brutality of Endgame’s content . Outriders: Worldslayer’s Endgame dungeon, called Trials of Tarya Gratar, can be a sprawling run with plenty of off-the-beaten-path areas to explore. Primarily focused on Troves, which contain multi-round groups of enemies, players can use these areas for farming Apocalypse gear and specific pieces, as each Trove features loot for a particular piece of gear. While this particular farming mode allows players to constantly grind for their desired gear and mods, the dungeon itself is pretty much the same every run. The only change is the types of enemies that can appear in a given room. It resembles the base game’s Expedition, where the rinse and repeat routine runs the risk of becoming stale. Since Tarya Grata’s dungeons and bosses perform consistently every time, the constant improvement of gear and mods leaves players repeatedly increasing their stats, but there is no real difference in Endgame.
Outriders: Worldslayer enhances the base campaign with a battle-driven story and narrative that successfully ties up loose ends and poses new questions that can be explored in future releases. With its continuous and dynamic combat, Apocalypse Gear, Pax Skill Trees, Ascension Points, and loot-specific farming, Outriders: Worldslayer brings the quality of life improvements and advanced customization that players demand which goes back to Enoch. While some problems from the base game carry over to Outriders: Worldslayer, especially a rushed story and spotty character development, the game nonetheless offers a fun looter-shooter experience that worth mentioning. Outriders is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Stadia. Today Technology was provided a PC code for this review.