An imperfect storm.
Despite a wide range of technical problems that plagued the launch of Outriders, People Can Fly have done a remarkable job at addressing the game’s technical shortcomings. The game has also seen a host of quality-of-life enhancements that make the overall experience a vastly better one. While Outriders is not technically a live-service title, its structure can certainly come across as one, and while the game was immensely fun from start to finish, its endgame was disappointingly repetitive. Worldslayer, the first expansion for Outriders, aims to fix that, and while it certainly brings some engaging changes to loot and the ability to finely tune your build, its endgame, is surprisingly even more repetitive.
I remember the chaos surrounding the launch of Outriders, the constant server issues, and hearing from others that I would play with that their character lost all their gear or the constant crashes due to the game’s temperamental crossplay system. While I was thankfully spared from seeing my character lose everything, I was still constantly fearful that I would load up my game one day and see all that progress gone. Apart from a few hours into the launch of Worldslayer, where servers were bursting at the seams once again, my time with the expansion, from a technical point of view, was largely positive, giving way to Outriders being in the best shape it’s ever been.
Despite my overall issues with Outriders, the core gameplay that was present was superb across the board. The variety of what you could explore with your class was unmatched. Tinkering with the mod system allowed me to dive fully into one of several paths I could lay out for my Technomancer, allowing me to melt anything and anyone that was on the other end of my crosshair. Striving to get that god-tier roll to shift my mods around to suit my needs was intoxicating, and Worldslayer has not only carried on with this, but it also doubles-downed entirely on it.
As Worldslayer is an expansion to Outriders, I won’t be diving into the gameplay and mechanics structure of the base game too much, as you can check out my review for it here to grasp just what exactly Outriders offered. That said, I don’t know if Worldslayer is really going to get too many new players into it, given the word of mouth surrounding the original game’s launch, and it’s hard to say how many players of the original are looking to jump back in. Given that I did enjoy what I did of Outriders and always wanted more, as well as looking to produce additional content, I purchased the entire bundle, given that I wasn’t too keen on buying an expansion for a game I only had via Gamepass.
To make a long review short; Worldslayer is enjoyable for what it aims to do, but the amount of time I actually felt I wanted to spend on it was disappointingly shorter than I had hoped for. It also didn’t help that everyone I played Outriders with has had no interest in getting back to it, or its high cost has kept them from jumping back in. I don’t think the $53.49CAD ($39.99 USD) price point just for the expansion feels justified as all we truly get here from a content perspective is a single endgame activity, some new weapons, armor sets, and a short 3-4 hour campaign. Granted, Worldslayer is a solid attempt at what the future of Outriders could look like, but in some cases, it’s too little too late.
Outriders: Worldslayer continues where the base game left off, with the last of humanity struggling to live on a planet that is hell-bent on destroying them through vicious storms that are tearing the surface apart. Again, for a deeper dive into the world of Outriders, check out my review for the main game. The expansion also thankfully follows up on a loose end with the Insurgents, a plot thread that was left hanging when the credits rolled. This plot thread leads us to Worldslayer’s big bad, the altered female on the box art; Ereshkigal.
The limited time given to us for this campaign looks to push the story pretty fast and this comes at the cost of not seeing Ereshkigal fleshed out. We generally have two conversational encounters with her before your character makes a beeline for her, a nonstop barrage of rage-fueled encounters that while does end with a pretty decent boss encounter, causes Ereshkigal to become so one-note and generic in her final moments, that she is beyond wasted here. This is a shame since she seems like such a compelling villain with a kick-ass design and powerset, and while she repeats her boss dialogue a bit too much, the fight itself was very enjoyable with just the right amount of AOE chaos thrown in.
The campaign is also far more linear than the base game with a lack of significant large-scale environments that sing to the base game’s often impressive locales, offering no side quests or any sort of distraction to give you more to do. While some of the new areas are well designed and easily some of the best setup encounters we have seen so far, there is a wild lack of variety in how these moments flow into the next, usually placing rooms one after another with no distance travel or additional paths to explore; this expansion is streamlined to see you through it as fast as possible. You do have a few moments spent with your companions, including a new one to aid with the narrative, but apart from two or three scenes, most of their engagement is via a voice in your ear.
The story also doesn’t lend itself well to flesh out your own Outrider, as if they are simply along for the ride. While the story does in some ways get wrapped up at the end of its narrative, the endgame activity surprisingly has a story-focused end, a narrative that is set to be the future of Outriders going forward, but whether or not SquareEnix has greenlit it, that’s hard to tell until we know more. Still, the story that is here is more or less good, it simply isn’t given enough time for it to feel fleshed out and as deep as what we had in the base game, generic writing or otherwise. Its villain is underserved and its protagonist simply feels like a gun pointed where it needs to go.
As mentioned, the endgame activity does surprisingly lend itself to show us more of the story, but that does result in some less than stellar execution. The Trials of Tarya Gratar has a very cool premise. As the story leading up to it hints at greater things, the Outrider will take on this challenge to discover deeper secrets about the planet and the species that once flourished there. Tarya Gratar is a run-based activity for three players that unlike every other piece of content in the game, is not scaled to accommodate just one or two players; it is scaled only for a three-person team. This makes it the only content in the game that is nearly impossible to play on your own as the threats will get harder the deeper you go.
The Trials of Tarya Gratar has a set path with a few detours that offer up certain rewards, and its path and type of rewards offered are static. You’ll encounter a few bosses, and while a few of them are absolutely amazing, such as one where you need to siphon away its protective shield before you can deal out damage, many of the remaining of them are the same boss encounter over and over again. This static pathing, and hearing all the story dialogue over and over again, cause this activity to be vastly repetitive as there is no variety here apart from taking the side paths or not. Had this been procedurally generated to offer up a new experience every run, then this could have been a game changer, but it’s the same run over and over again.
With loot being sectioned off where one path is guaranteed to be of a certain type, or that you are always guaranteed a certain tier of item drop, the Trials endgame can serve as a good way to grind away at getting what you want, but the repetitive nature of the same rooms, the same bosses, really holds this mode back from being something that this game truly needed. The expeditions themselves became insanely repetitive and there were several of them, but this content here, it’s the same single location, albeit a rather large and lengthy affair, where even on my 20th or 30th attempt, I was starting to wear out on it hard. If my Outrider friends ever did come back, I’d certainly be up for it, but joining randoms who simply want to skip every cutscene, or bounce before the final one, just sucks. I had to eventually message the host to be able to go to the last room so that I could even see the ending as every single group I had matchmade with before would back out of the activity to run it again. Hell, for a while, I had assumed there was no ending, no final scene for all that fighting.
While the new campaign is short but enjoyable for what it does offer and an endgame that borders on “what could have been”, it’s the loot and gameplay that allows Outriders to be as good as it is, and that continues to be true here as well with Worldslayer. This latest addition revamps a great deal of loot and allows for even more flexibility in what you are able to get from your overall build. Worldslayer introduces a whole new offering of new legendaries, new gear, and new mods, all itching to be part of whatever crazy plan you have for your altered. Apocalypse Gear is where you’ll look to get that god-tier roll as while this gear is all new, it also comes with a third mod slot, one that cannot be modded, but is usually a pretty stellar addition to whatever you have in mind for your class. This allows for even more stats and perks to aid you in whatever you’re crafting for your Outrider.
While there is a slew of new weapons, there are a total of 12 new armor sets, including one, called the Martyr that looks like something out of Destiny, with its almost hammerhead shark sort of headpiece. And, with the ability to set a fashion slot to your gear, you can rock whatever you want and have it take the form of another armor piece, ensuring that you have the look you want but with the perks and stats you desire to keep your build running as intended. Each class has two new armor sets of their own, with four that are universal. After several runs of the Trials Endgame mode, I have almost locked down a few complete sets and honestly, the armor alone is nearly worth revisiting that mode as you are almost guaranteed a few pieces on each run.
While new weapons and armor are one thing, enhancing your character is where Worldslayer really digs into breathing new life into what you are truly capable of. While the core skill trees are unchanged, it is the two new avenues to build towards where you’re going to enhance what is already there. Pax Skills are an addition to the skill trees you already have active and are points you’ll earn as you progress through the story and onward. These act similar to the main skill tree by heightening abilities and gaining new perks and powers. Ascension Points are similar to Diablo III’s Paragon system where you use a wealth of points to incrementally upgrade twenty traits such as anomaly power, your health, or cooldown timers. Together, these give you a bit more oomph to push your character to be stronger and have more flexibility towards your build.
To increase the difficulty even more, and to earn more loot by doing so, World Tiers have been replaced by Apocalypse Tiers, which act the same, but now can be increased even more so, ensuring that the game is consistently challenging but also still ensuring you feel like a god. This also backtracks into previous chapters, allowing you to go back to the start and take that added difficulty and play throughout the entire game with the extra challenge and loot chance. And, if you want, you can also start a fresh new character that will allow you to just start up solely for the new content and then dive back in and tinker with their build as you replay the old content. This is also a solid way for newcomers to join their friends and then see what they missed out on before.
From the newly added quality of life features to the assortment of new stats, skills, and loot, Worldslayer can make for a great time as you play around with either a new class or continue to tinker with your existing one. I personally think that Outriders is in a far better place now than it has ever been, but the brief campaign addon and repetitive endgame mode doesn’t offer a compelling reason to really jump back in, especially if you haven’t played since launch. As it stands now, Worldslayer only offers up a few good bites before it feels like you’re just going through the motions. I love the new gear, the possibilities for enhancing my build even further, and even trying up another class, but without new and refreshing content to play around in, I’m not sure there is much reason to really stick with it. Outriders is a tremendously fun game, but Worldslayer only hints at what could have been so much more.
Developer - People Can Fly. Publisher - Square Enix. Released - June 28th 2022. Available On - Xbox One, Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, Stadia. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X Review Access - Outriders: Worldslayer and its base game was purchased for review.