I Was Wrong About ‘Outriders: Worldslayer’

When I published my initial review of Outriders’ Worldslayer expansion, I was mostly mixed on it. But like all loot shooter things, I knew that it was probably best to give it some time and get deeper into the new endgame, hence me not assigning it any sort of score.

The story was okay, but goes by very quickly, and I had some hesitations about the entire endgame mode being both A) one activity you just run on repeat and B) still pretty unfriendly to solo players, like most of the game has been.

Now, uh, 50 hours later, I am changing my tune. I really, really love the Wordslayer expansion, and in almost every way, it reinforces what I’ve said in the past, the People Can Fly just get this genre in a way that almost all its competitors don’t. And even in some ways that current market leaders (ie. Destiny) are struggling with.

What’s changed? Essentially my love of Outriders’ gameplay and buildcrafting has superseded all other issues I have with the expansion. The more I’ve played, the more I’ve found out how fun all the new guns, sets and perks are, and as such, I have been grinding hard to try and make new and cool builds unlike anything I had before. Or enhancing some of my old favorites.

The grind is long. I’m not even at Apocalypse Tier 30 out of 40 yet, mostly because I keep switching around characters. I even did a level skip to 30 for a new Technomancer just because I wanted to have one on PC, not console (I now have seven characters between Xbox and PC). So far, I am not sick of the Trials of Tarya Gratar yet, despite a whole bunch of runs, given that they can be as fast or as slow as you want, depending on how many detours you take.

I’ve found comfort in running with groups, which makes runs less frustrating, but also more powerful builds mean less frequent deaths, and encounters that used to be much more annoying (the lower the pillars boss) are now much more tolerable.

The relatively simple changes Outriders made, giving gear a third perk slot and introducing new weapons and sets, have been enough to get me fully engaged with the game again. And in the post-launch window, PCF again demonstrates they really know what they’re doing, with very quick buffs to loot drops in Tarya Gratar to make farming it even more valuable.

All this said, I still think that a $40 asking price, though worthwhile for me personally, is probably still too steep an ask to try to get players on board, and overall, the expansion seems to offer less than Destiny or Diablo equivalents at the same price. The total package for $60 is something I’d argue you can extract a ton from, if you like this genre, as I’m probably pushing 300-400 hours across both platforms at this point, and the expansion will only keep increasing that, especially in a relative down time for other releases and games right now.

In short, while my initial impressions of Worldslayer were somewhat middling, the more gear I’ve gotten and the more builds I’ve been able to experiment with, the more fun I’ve had, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. That may end up being true for you, as well.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.