Recent reviews by Lord Lactose

An otherwise incredible game pounded down to the ground by incompetent devs, consistent lacklustre content drops, more bugs created than fixed, and quite possibly the worst balance team in any video game I've ever seen. What a shame.

THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SOUNDTRACK HOLY MOLY

Game good. Slower than S1, but gooooooooood. Hey Hey People.

You start off as a nobody with nothing, slaving away to mine copper. In time, you amass a group of lads and start building a little base for yourself - awesome, you are now self sufficient.

Thing is, you set up shop near the Fog Islands right next to a Fogman nest. They smell the fear in the air, then you hear it: first it's faint, distant, you feel safe behind your level 2 walls. But the sound is growing, getting closer, and then it happens.

About 70 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mindless Fogmen wailing their limbs and makeshift weapons at your gates til the locks give. They come in. Now your lads, they've been in a tussle or two, their stats are up, they can fend for themselves. But you soon realize, there's just too many mother ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Fogmen. They quickly outnumber your squad, as they helplessly flail their heavy weapons and katanas, hacking away limbs and heads, but it does not stop or deter them. They capture your lads, beaten and bleeding, back to their nest. They then proceed to eat each and every single one of them alive. You have to witness as they scream in agony, begging for it to all end to deaf ears. The bleeding is too extensive, your lads are all dead, and they're the lucky ones. You lost.

I absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game.

This is a fantastic Tech Demo

* This review is based on my experience of it from early access & around 15 hours since release. *

Being a fan of survival games and really enjoying progression in games, it's always been a massive let down for me when very promising survival games turn into complete garbage and end up on the bottom of the steam early access junk pile. Initially, that was exactly what I thought of Conan Exiles when it was in early access - it was empty, buggy, and a mess. I really, really wanted to love this game because the Conan IP is incredibly interesting and the setting for this game works incredibly well & it's a very refreshing change from modern shooter style survival games. The turn around the company has done ever since the game was released is immense and I commend Funcom for sticking to their title and allowing such an ambitious project to flourish.

Gameplay:

Being a survival game, it centers heavily around the idea that you should constantly be expanding and improving, which personally I absolutely love. This game knows very well how to reward someone for being good - It's combat system would be like a very, very basic version of Dark Souls' combat in the case that your eyes will be glued to the stamina bar and you have to learn monster attack patterns to know when to dodge and begin attacking. Progression in this game feels very natural and smooth, and transitioning between different tiers of gear and material is very fluid whilst still giving you the satisfaction of feeling like you've created something. The little hut you build will very soon turn into a tiny village, and then into a big village, and eventually into a full empire (provided you dont get whacked with the "building is not allowed here" hammer), and tiers of tools, weapons, and armor also merge well into themselves to make the game moderately fast paced and reminding you that you constantly need to upgrade your gear to survive the environment, which is very harsh and unforgiving. You need to also manage hunger, thirst, temperature, and encumberance, along with unlocking new technologies, or 'feats', to ensure you're at the top of your game.


Graphics:

Running this game on a mixture of high/ultra settings, it is very beautiful and along with the often stunning sceneries and landmarks scattered around the world, it could be quite breathtaking at times. The optimization in this game is a very nice bonus for me and many others who's systems might not be as beefy is an absolutely massive thumbs up from me. I run this game at around 80-144 frames on fairly high settings and I've heard people constantly mention how their lower-end systems managed to run the game with very playable frame rates after they've tweaked the graphics settings.

Audio/Soundtrack:

Game audio I must admit is a little lacking, sound effects feel a little lackluster and often fail to grasp the impact of what is making the sound. Whilst this isn't the case when you come across a tribe in the wild where you will hear very impactful chants and cries, it is more apparent with some of the PvE monsters in the game and the audio effects for certain items and buildings. Surround sound and directional audio is also very buggy in the game, often falsely making you think that you're surrounded by crocodiles or tribesmen when they're a considerably distance away. The soundtrack however is absolutely smashing, encapsulating the sounds of the terrains and biomes very fluently and making you feel like an epic hero on an epic quest. The orchestral element of it adds depth and power to the soundtrack, and the musicianship and variety in instruments makes it one of the most memorable soundtracks in recent years (Not quite Cuphead, mind you)

Bugs:

This is where the game struggles a bit. Bugs are very apparent in the game, especially when it comes to the physics. Stuff in the terrain constantly overlap your buildings which ends up making your little cottage floor littered with miscallaneous plants and shrubs, dragging unconscious bodies is very buggy and inconsistent, the climbing mechanic whilst is very useful and I absolutely appreciate its existence is also sometimes very jittery and unreliable, the game's combat suffers from being a little clunky at times, and the PvE AI is about as dumb as a first grader doing a maths degree.

Conclusion:

Even though the game is not perfect (far from it), the progress made on it is honestly exemplary. This is early access done right - Funcom did not give up on it and let it suffer the same fate as every other garbage early access game that died before much could happen, but instead slowly cultivating it into a great survival game which I am very glad I played. The IP and setting is incredibly interesting, the lore is very in-depth which you can expect from a game with the Conan IP, and the gameplay can be very fun and incredibly addicting if you are a fan of progression and setting little goals for yourself. There is definitely more work to be done to polish out the bugs and add more in terms of content, I would still however absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the survival genre, fantasy games, and video games in general.

tldr; great game, kinda buggy, sweet soundtrack, 8.5/10.

Fun if you have a premade team, otherwise it's the most cancerous piece of ♥♥♥♥ game in the market right now and nothing comes close to the amount of toxic players and cheaters you'll encounter in this game.

Never was able to get a dance with any of the girls.

Very realistic, 10/10