Conan Exiles review for PS4

Reviewed on: PS4

Conan the Barbarian is a figure well known to pop culture fans. Created by Robert E. Howard in the 30s, the character started in literature and migrated to other media, such as comics, film, tabletop RPGs and, of course, games. Conan Exiles is the barbarian’s newest adventure in video games – not so new, actually, since Funcom‘s survival game was in early access since 2017, with its final release only now in 2018.

And let’s begin by dealing with the elephant in the tower, or rather, in the room: yes, this is the game in which you can define the size of your avatar’s “member”. Although other survival games already have their characters naked against the world, this detail in character creation gave Conan Exiles an infamous notoriety. To the disappointment of some, this “detail” is not present in the console version due to age-rating restrictions from the platform holders. The size option is there, but even setting it to maximum there is no difference in volume in the character’s lower parts. If the naturist spirit of the player speaks louder, the PC version is recommended, which has no content restrictions, including for female characters.

Despite the name, Conan Exiles is much more a game about the world of the Hyborian Age (the fictional period in which Conan’s stories take place) than about our favorite Cimmerian barbarian. The game’s protagonist is an anonymous exile, whose gender, race and appearance the player can choose, who was arrested and convicted of crimes they may or may not have committed and left to die crucified in the desert. At that moment Conan himself appears and takes pity on our avatar’s fate and frees them, leaving right after, but not before giving a not-at-all-cheering motivational speech about how things will be difficult (and believe me, he’s not wrong). From there on, my friend, it’s you against the world.

The game truly embraces the spirit of leaving the player to their own fate: there are almost no tutorials beyond the basic controls. All the other mechanics such as gathering, equipment, item crafting and even how skills and talents work are not explained directly, requiring a bit of curiosity and experimentation to understand how everything works, and even so there is still room for surprises after hours of play. Seriously, the building and decoration options are so robust that it seems there’s a medieval version of The Sims hidden in there, plus a system for capturing and enslaving enemies, complete with the classic wheel of pain and everything. This can be quite intimidating for players less used to this type of formula, especially because the game has a bureaucracy worthy of a government office when it comes to unlocking more advanced options. For example, to make a simple iron sword, you need to buy a series of talents in the skills menu, build two crafting structures and still go after resources that are not easy to find on the giant map. And that’s just one of the first things.

But past the initial difficulty (and many deaths from hunger and thirst), when your character already has a house and structures to generate resources, that is when the game transforms from a simple Survival into a relatively competent Action RPG. Combat is simple but functional, with each weapon having different moves depending on its type, plus shields and other ranged weapons. During combat, more important than watching your health bar is paying attention to the yellow bar that determines your stamina: if it hits zero your character is out of breath and can’t attack, block or dodge, making them easy prey, especially when fighting more than one opponent. Another enemy that shows up during combat is the frame rate. When there are several combatants on screen there are many fps drops, which hurts fluidity quite a bit, and if we add the clumsy animations, collision bugs and enemies getting stuck in the scenery, the picture gets worse. Not that the fights aren’t satisfying, especially given the brutality and blood involved, but it’s far from spectacular or even polished.

On the graphics side Conan Exiles manages to impress, but at the same time disappoints in some details. The graphics are above average for this type of game, the character and armor models are well detailed and beautiful, but the hair and beards are very poorly made, both in appearance and physics. If you want to give your barbarian a respectable beard, be aware that he’ll look odd 90% of the time. The scenery, apart from perhaps the starting desert area and some textures here and there, is beautiful and varied. From arid mountains, beaches and lush forests, to ice-covered lands and a volcano further north. The lighting also contributes a lot. It’s beautiful to watch the sun rise or set from the top of a mountain, just as it is equally beautiful and terrifying to see the sky turn orange/red when a potentially deadly sandstorm approaches. The soundtrack does the bread and butter of fantasy epics, with a catchy main theme, but nothing beyond that. The problem is in the sound effects, which suffer from a constant delay between the action and the sound. It is frequent to be in absolute silence, only to hear the sound of swords clashing about 3 seconds later.

Conan Exiles can be played both offline (solo or co-op) and online (in PvP or PvE). It’s always better to explore the world with friends or by interacting with other unknown players, especially since the game features dungeons and bosses that demand good effort to defeat, but during my time with the game, the online experience wasn’t the best. There is an extensive list of servers, both PvP and PvE, all with their own rules and modifiers available, but few of them are meant for South America and even so it takes forever to connect. And even when connected things didn’t work as they should, because lag is a constant presence, ranging from slightly annoying to completely unplayable. The hope is that future patches or the addition of more servers help reduce the problem and let players in this part of the continent enjoy the best part of the game without further trouble.

Despite having spent more than a year in early access, it’s clear that Conan Exiles has many rough edges to be smoothed out. The mix of Survival with RPG set in a universe as rich as the one created by Robert E. Howard is interesting enough to captivate players, despite the recurring problems. It may not be the best representation of Conan in video games, but the game has potential and with proper support, could become a title worthy of the greatest hero of the Hyborian Age.

Mechanics: 6.5

Audiovisual: 7.0

Fun: 8.0

Worth the price?: For long-time Conan fans, those who enjoy survival games and any people with a naturist spirit, it is definitely worth it. Just be aware of the possible problems with the online servers.

Played and reviewed on the PlayStation 4 version.