Reviews

• dXQuarionXb

  Feb 15, 2022

  Let me start off part three of my essay on this underrated gem by saying that art direction is better in every way compared to graphical fidelity. But just like my review on the previous DLC of Outward, this one brings more superb art direction and more mechanics that are questionable-at-best additions to the world of Outward, buy rounds it out with some of the best storytelling in the entire game. Let's start off with the biggest elephant in the room, and arguably the most controversial one: The primary aspect of the Three Brothers DLC is a town building mechanic. This punctuates the main story after every quest, and is mandatory to do in time to achieve good endings that don't cripple your town, making further failure even more likely. The punishment for failing the first time-gated town building mission is a 50% increase in building times, which are measured in a matter of in-game days. This makes succeeding after this even more difficult. The game gives you quite a lot of time to complete these objectives, provided you've at least mastered Outward's combat, since it's necessary to explore and gather resources to build your town. Gathering materials for resources is a quite a grind too. The way they implemented the gathering is rough at best, and completely unreasonable at worst. A set of spawn locations, scattered across the vast map, is determined by RNG. The worst part is, that each set of spawns shares some nodes with at least two other sets. Figuring out the set rotations on your own is borderline impossible, and results in you running across the map to just look for certain gathering nodes. For real, just use the wiki to help you strategize on gathering resources. It's not worth the headache. This town building mechanic easily the part of the DLC most responsible for the "Mixed" rating on Steam. To a lot of people, it felt shoehorned in, and ruined the game's experience by forcing you to run around the map fighting the toughest enemies yet, all in order to build a new building that you won't really see benefit from until halfway through the main quest of the DLC. These critiques are the most valid they've ever been, and the only defense I have for them is that gathering materials for your town makes you familiar with the map and the various locations you have to visit. Town building also gets in the way of easily the ABSOLUTE BEST QUEST WRITING OUTWARD HAS TO OFFER. This quest is so well written that I'm honestly baffled by the decision to punctuate it with town building. The town building is thematically appropriate, as you're helping the survivors of a volcano eruption rebuild, but this is an instance where thematically appropriate doesn't automatically equal fun. But the main quest! It's actually good! The antagonist isn't some rival faction looking to survive in this world alongside you by securing power or some other convoluted grab to weaken your faction. Your enemies are the old Nobility of the town of Sirocco, which was nearly destroyed in a volcano eruption. They are demanding, with no compromises, that the people of Sirocco return to the town that's falling apart into lava and await their fate. I won't spoil it fully (I might have already said a little too much) but the reason as to why they are so committed to killing their subjects is an AMAZING twist, and the story, the final dungeon, and the final boss themselves are ABSOLUTELY worth your money. When I stepped into the final dungeon, I was blown away by the music, the art direction, and the design of the dungeon itself. The final boss was also thematically amazing and visually striking, and my only gripe is that it took Nine Dots this much effort to REALLY get their storytelling right. It's also difficult to focus on the story if you haven't already learned the quirks of Outward's combat, but hopefully, if you've made it this far, adapting your play style to new enemies shouldn't steepen the learning curve any more. Oh, the music. I didn't even touch on it in my review of the main game since I hit a character limit for the review. The music in base game is really good, and worth a listen on its own, since each piece of music thematically matches each area so well. But the Caldera is where the music of Outward truly shines. Outward's music ranks pretty highly on my list of tracks that get me in a creative mood for writing stuff for Dungeons & Dragons. Absolutely well done, Jean- François Racine. Your music is extremely well written for communicating the emotions of Outward. Now, all in all, is the game worth $75 ($40 base, $15 for Soroboreans, and $20 for Three Brothers)? That's up to you. I've written what basically amounts to an essay on what I think works and doesn't work for Outward across all its expansions (although my initial review of the game is more a jumbled mess, since I wrote it as I was experiencing the game for the first time). If you can handle some quirky things, and adapt to how those quirks function, you will find a lot to enjoy in Outward. That's probably the biggest hurdle: putting up with things that Nine Dots wanted as part of their game. The whole experience is not polished, but this game and its DLCs have some of the most heart I've seen from a modern dev studio. The main game is listed as a souls-like on the store page, and in some ways, they're not wrong. It's not the i-frame dodge roll or stamina based combat, but the way Nine Dots poured their heart and soul into making the best game they could. They very obviously lack the polish of a FromSoftware release. If you think you'd enjoy it, give it a play through. Keep an open mind, and you might be surprised at what you find. *drops mic*
• Mr. Snakes

  Jun 21, 2022

  It broke my game. After purchasing this DLC, Def Ed was forced on me and the game would no longer open more than Once. I could open it, then on closing it, I would have to delete all files and uninstall it, then clear steam DL cache and restart my computer to play it again.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 29, 2022

  Literally the one game and DLC to inspire me to write a proper review. The Three Brothers is a clunky, albeit ambitious addition to what was already a sizable main game. But if there's anything I've learned about Nine Dots through my almost 200 hours and counting of Outward, it's that their ambition vastly overshadows their scope. After what was what I consider to be a very solid experience with their first DLC, The Soroboreans, I came in with high expectations. However, I'm left somewhat disappointed. Despite a creative and expansive world and enemy design added within the new map of Caldera, the experience is heavily bogged down by resource management in the form of New Sirrocco (It's Sheer-ah-koh, guys, not Seer-ih-koh). In any other well budgeted and well manned open world RPG, I'd call this a genius move. After all, it asks you to use your now abundant income and knowledge by this point in the game to build a central hub the way *you* want it with the promise of powerful rewards. Unfortunately it becomes rapidly apparent that it's held back by poor design decisions that at this point I suppose isn't unexpected from this studio. Over-reliance on RNG for rare resources that can take hours and precious in-game time to find in the first place and a clunky town grid that, while huge, is surprisingly restrictive in where you can place your facilities. Surely that second part would be fine if they just let you remove or relocate a building right? I feel this should have been a very obvious inclusion, but alas, we are forced with permanent choices on building placements. As a personal gripe, I feel the drip feed of armor and weapon upgrades can mean most encounters are a daunting task, resulting in the good old "find loot, sell loot" loop to feel rather bothersome and very much a chore. This only makes the time limit more pressing, as dying could mean losing several days of time better spent gathering resources. All of this led to me dropping the entire thing. If this DLC was not tied to the Definitive Edition upgrade, I would truthfully say it isn't worth your time. Enjoy the base game and the first DLC, but don't feel guilty over skipping this one.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 12, 2022

  Ok, so I really REALLY enjoyed the base game experience. The first DLC, The Soroboreans was also pretty good. I can't begin to fathom why this DLC has been designed from the ground up to drain you of all your currency, time, and patience. Every other quest series in the game has a true direction with clear goals. The Caldera (the new location in this DLC) feels very lifeless compared to other locations. Some of the new enemies are interesting but that appeal quickly wears off after you've circled the map for the 20th time. You see, this DLC is all about building New Sirocco, the main hub. So initially when you come to this region, there's essentially nothing there. It's very barren, with hardly any people. Literally no vendors until you construct buildings to house them. The building process is INCREDIBLY long and VERY tedious. You don't do anything new either. 90% of the time, you're given a 150 day timer to obtain resources to construct new buildings. This means you clear the entire map, searching for valuable ''Samples'', return them to camp for necessary unique rewards. Then repeat the process. I had to search for optimised guides online to ensure I got all of this done as quickly as possible. I truly mean it when I say this aspect of the DLC sucks all joy and life out of it. The base game, if you take your time and really enjoy yourself can take anywhere from 30-50 hours. The DLC feels like it's solely there to rob 20+ hours from you. If you enjoy the game, or want to give it a try, I encourage you to do so. It's a great time. If you feel you must, play this DLC once and see how it goes for you. I however, will probably never complete this DLC again, purely because of New Sirocco and the overwhelmingly unfun aspects of it. The only thing this addition successfully did for me, was make me want to go back to the older areas and play the base game instead. The area still has booba statues, rich with thiccness though, so y'know 4/10, coulda been worse.
• BimboGooch

  Dec 25, 2022

  Do not buy The other dlc you dont need to, its pointless for it to be on sale. You get the DE with this dlc and thus you get the other DLC for free with it. Dont make the same mistake I did guys :)
• SeniorBLT

  Jul 5, 2023

  I bought the definitive edition but it didn't give me the DLC so i had to buy this separately. what a fucking rip
• Un Forastero!

  Jul 11, 2023

  Welcome back to Outward. This game still suck. This DLC lets you beat your grandmother, who is the person responsible for your lineage-long blood price, build a town with a half-assed city building system with gacha tacked on (it even has a pity system!), and get forcibly impregnated by tentacle monsters. I am not even kidding about the last part, you can and if you want to do a specific boss fight, you will have to turn your ass to the classic hentai scenario. Though, since you are playing Outward, that should already be part of your itinerary. Upsides: It has some pretty neat boss fights that my friend and I genuinely enjoyed and found challenging. The combat is a step-up from the base game in every way. The enemies are more challenging, inflict all kinds of new status effects, and resist multiple elements at a time. These new and awful effects are not that bad because the Devs gave up and just give you panacea, an item that will heal all (most) bad effects. So no more holding multiple items that heal different effects. As another absolute step up, the blacksmith of the town doesn't even forcibly shut your eyes when ask for repairs or make loud fucking noises. The downside, there is no town initially. No service you can use. You have to be a true hobo at the start of the DLC. Though playing Outward, you should be used to that already. The missions are grindy, since you (and only YOU) are forced to make money to build the entire town. The map once again, is big and has plenty of hard blocks forcing you to go certain ways. So your loop will probably be "Go in dungeons > Kill things > Loot things > Find gachaholes > Go back town > Sell stuff > put money to town > Sleep 7 days". Repeat until you get through a checklist, then do very specific missions. The game still sucks but it's Outward, you should be used to that already. If you enjoy your time with Outward, you will enjoy this DLC.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 16, 2020

  Cyberpunk 2077 launched: Ok cool I'll wait for a sale. Outward DLC launched: [b] SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! [/b]
• gamedeal user

  Dec 16, 2020

  Love this game for couch coop with wife, love the expansion, one of my favorite games.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 21, 2020

  I have Tsar armour, couldn't be killed by anything anymore, had earned my place as an influential and powerful character. Went to the new DLC area, was introduced to moonscape surroundings with beautiful music playing. Then I got insta-killed by a laser beam projected from a floating evil bag. I'm in for a good time.