Introduction

Outriders is a third-person open world loot ‘em shoot ‘em RPG. If you’ve played any Borderlands game then you’ve basically played Outriders. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Borderlands is great. It just means that this isn’t an original game by a long shot. Which the game feels quite aware of. It almost feels like a parody of the genre at times. The story is as generic as sci-fi gets, the dialogue feels straight out of a ‘60s action film, and while the open world is cool and visually stunning, it’s been done before. The best part of the game- its gameplay. The worst- is its performance. 

 

Story - 6/10

Outriders has a very average story. It's kind of interesting but not very engaging. Most of the characters are boring and don't have much dimension to them. The villain story arc is forgettable, and the main character is almost a caricature of a protagonist. The game is littered with cheesy lines and jokes. The story almost feels like a formality for the game. Something they felt obliged to include but couldn’t be bothered really developing. 

 

Gameplay - 8/10

Thankfully the best part of the game is the gameplay. The four classes are all interesting, with the trickster being the most fun in my opinion. The gameplay keeps the game from getting repetitive. All the abilities allow a lot of freedom in your approach to combat. With loot perks and character perks all complimenting and amplifying your gear. The ability and loot relationship works in a similar way to Borderlands. 

The loot grind is pretty satisfying but my issue with it is that it’s far too stingy with the best gear in the game. Once you beat the game it has a replayability/ grind mode to get the best gear but it's far too difficult to obtain it. It's not that the challenge is too hard, there is just too much of a repetitive grind to have the possibility to get the gear. The game is clearly meant to be played most after the main story in co-op mode but for reasons I’ll get into later that was almost impossible for me to do. 

 

Graphics / Audio - 7/10

Pretty good. Looks good on next gen graphics but nothing breathtaking. 

The audio is fine, nothing special but nothing to complain about.

 

Performance / UI - 5/10

The stability of the game is one of the main issues for me and stopped me from playing too much after the endgame. Once I reached the endgame I started encountering an issue where I would dramatically drop frames to the point where the game was unplayable. This would happen if there were a lot of enemies charging at once. So it ruined the build that I had been working towards with trickster for the entire game. Even when I switched to different classes I would still encounter this issue. I don't remember the game crashing much but I know it happened at least 2 or 3 times in the endgame when the frame rate issues would crop up.  

Another issue I had was the terrible map and navigation system. The map was just really poorly designed and the navigation arrows would regularly lead me away from the objective. 

 

Fun Factor - 7/10

I had a lot of fun playing this game up until the endgame. The character I was building with specific abilities was really fun and I couldn't put the game down for days. I was just let down when the game started freezing on me, with frames dropping whenever the game got exciting, and when I wasn't able to grind a realistic amount for the gear I wanted. This could've been a really great game if its fine details were looked over, or even updated post launch. The lack of post release care for this game ultimately led to the game being forgotten very quickly after launch and why it hasn't had a revival since. 

 

Overall Score - 6.5/10

 

Conclusion

This game will go down as one of my biggest disappointments in gaming. It had some really solid gameplay that I would’ve loved to keep grinding out for better gear if I was able to. I also would’ve enjoyed developing a character for each class, but knowing I wouldn’t get far with them was too off-putting for me to really try. If the developers continue to work on the stability of the game and release more content I’ll be sure to return to Outriders. But I’m not holding out hope as I played the game about 4 months after release and there were still all of these issues. I can’t help but feel Outriders was an obligatory release, that Square Enix released as a quick cash grab to capitalise on the lack of next-gen games released at the time. Overall, to put it simply, Outriders lacked any heart or real ambition. It could’ve been so much more, but I fear the devs just didn’t care enough.