As you’ll see from the video below of my literal first instance reactions on Conan: Exiles, the more I play it the more I got fully immersed in what this game has to offer – This isn’t a review as such, just a literal hands on first impression on a game I had stayed pretty blind to; a journey, if you will!
I looked into Conan a while ago but not properly (Not good for someone who’s doing this sort of writing…) and I had thought that this was going to be your run-of-the-mill sandbox combat game, kind of like Mad Max – As the release approached I discovered that it was a survival game, not only that but an MMO as well; this definitely piqued my interest and when I was offered to stream and review it with my best buds at Respawning – Regardless to say I snapped up the offer as fast as I could!
I’m going to update this article as I play more and keep everyone up to date with my ‘journey’… So here goes:
Week 1 – Approx 11 hours
We’ve paid for our own Respawning server so we can create our own awesome little world in which to build, survive and dominate!
I started the game up fully not knowing what to expect, at all, which ended up being extremely fun and satisfying. I created my character and set it to full nudity and gave him a massive wang (This element actually made everything more mature), chose my religion as the frost god, Ymir, which I later discovered enables me to build frost shit, and went on my way.
For the first hour or so I was literally clueless on what I was doing; I just had to survive and figure out what the fuck this game was all about! I died pretty quickly as I tried to bite off more than I could chew by attacking a woman as I started to figure out that you had to collect certain items to craft pick axes etc, which help to collect more stone, wood and other materials, which you then use to start crafting your weapons and armour and homes etc. Luckily, Colin came on pretty quickly to help me the hell out as I was pretty clueless as to what was going on. He did massively help me to figure out the menus, work out levelling up and the basics of crafting combat etc. The overall idea is to make your way through every age and continue to dominate so you can take on tougher enemies, so the Stone Age then Iron Age, and so on – After a week of play we’re just getting into the Steel Age which is kind of your 3rd phase.
What’s kind of surprised me is that despite this game being glitchy and a bit… Broken, this game is amazing, fun and addictive. I feel like the Respawning boys have our own little virtual world that we can just fuck around in.
There are definite issues with the game, I’ve glitched through walls a few times, been stuck in random holes, and had sever drop outs, but I can’t stop playing it. I just want to expand our little village and have the best shit available. I think the many elements of crafting and building really make the game and make you want to continue to expand, for me anyway. Its also pretty fun building your own slave army; we currently have a cook, archer, armourer and blacksmith, with many more to follow… So not only can you go and kill enemies for their shit you can enslave them to work for you.
I don’t play very many survival games but I love the survival aspect of the game, having to be careful of my food and hydration levels – This makes running too far away from your home (Ours is now a village) very dangerous… So you have to plan your little trips out of your homestead, make sure you take your water bottle and cooked meats! Thing is you can get attacked at any time, and if you die twice you’ve lost everything you were carrying. Luckily you can kind-of run away if you’re really struggling with an enemy but if you’re caught in a sandstorm outside, you’ve got no chance. So far I’ve managed to get my stuff back after each death… But I hope I don’t jinx myself!
So in summary, you grab the easy stuff to build the first level, start to build upon that to get better stuff like armour and weapons and building blocks… Then take on tougher enemies so you can explore new areas to get better materials and keep building upon it. Thing is it’s not grindy at all, the building element makes it really fun and the fact that you have to hoard everything single little thing makes you really care about dying and losing all your stuff.
I am very addicted to this game so I can imagine I’ll be playing it a ton; the game definitely has it’s faults in the way it’s built and things that just bug out, but this really hasn’t been a big issue to me as its been so fun. I’ll keep updating this as I play it more and hope you read and play along with me!
See below the 3 streams we’ve done so far:
How have your own experiences in Conan Exiles gone? Let us know in the comments below!
Want to help support Respawning and maybe even join Javier and Colin’s little village of stone? Why not purchase Conan Exiles through one of our Amazon Affiliates Links?