Videogame Review: Conan Exiles
When you think “Conan the Barbarian Video Game,” you probably imagine an action game in the mold of Assassin’s Creed. However Conan Exiles is more like a rated R version of Minecraft. There’s plenty of combat, sure, if you seek it out. It’s not amazing but it’s enjoyably gory. However most of your time will be spent crafting and building your own kingdom, brick by brick. It is a surprisingly relaxing and satisfying experience chopping down each tree, molding each bar of iron, and building each and every piece of furniture in your pimped out bronze age bachelor pad.
Exiles is pretty nuts when you play it blind. You start off literally naked, desperate to find water and gather sticks and stones for basic shelter and defense. The slow burn of gradually unlocking new skills and customizing your crib is really addictive. There’s even some amusingly problematic stuff like uncensored nudity and the ability to enslave people. Even cooler, the game world is huge and full of surprises. At one point I was wandering around in a northern forest and somehow managed to stumble into a dark swamp filled with horrifying giant insects. You get into all kinds of wacky adventures just from wandering around.
Truth be told this is actually my second go around with the game. I played it years ago when it first came out and let me tell you it was a very different experience. The game was buggy as hell. While it had a comfy atmosphere that you could vibe with for hours just exploring, once you decided that you did want to progress the story you would be totally lost. Three years of patches, DLC, and free updates have done the game a world of good. The recently released “Age of Sorcery” patch adds in magic and tons of other cool features. While the single player experience still feels really unpolished, the game is much more stable and chalk full of fun content. Exploring the multiple massive maps with friends can be a real blast.
Grade: B+
