Outward Definitive Edition

over 2000 hours in this game across all patches and versions, unlimited potential

Bought it because it was on sale mostly, but the gameplay is amazing. Perfectly blends survival gameplay into an action RPG. Also has a unique tone of being epic fantasy, but not necesarily heroic. You're just some guy.

Died almost at every combat - and this is because foes have hundreds of times more health, stamina and mana than the player. To get to a point where the player character did not die at every fight - it takes hundreds of hours of grinding -and the process is not fun... Especially because the game mechanics seem to be centered around annoying the player rather than challenging the player to come up with new strategies etc.. Ex: Character has to eat and drink every 5 minutes, using magic spells consumes items which are hard to come by - and they have to be chained to be effective at all. So magic is pretty useless in the beginning. Melee weapons are hard to use as well - and the only useful option left is the bow - which is just a point and shoot mechanic..

Despite some rough edges and not the best execution, Outward offers an unusual feeling of true adventure, by letting you get overwhelmed by constant obstacles and inconvenient mechanics every step provides tangible progress in a game without leveling up mechanics. Hard to recommend to the average player but if you like the idea of slowly finding your way with everything against you is at least worth to try it, either love it or hate it is a very unique game right now.

I tried. I sure did. I logged a couple hours on my first playthrough, restarted, and logged a couple hours on my second playthrough. Not my bag. The combat is senseless (no parrying, no patterns, unforgiving), map is referenceless, and there's no leveling system (as far as I can tell from my < 6 hours of play)