Year:  2018

Director:  Joel Bylos

Rated:  MA15+

Release:  NA

Distributor: FIVESTARGAMES

Running time: Potentially infinite

Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

Cast:
NA

Intro:
Conan Exiles is certainly not what is best in life, but it’s an intriguing and fairly original take on the survival genre and worth a gander for armchair barbarians.

In 1932 writer Robert E. Howard created the character of Conan The Barbarian for the pages of Weird Tales magazine. Conan wasn’t just a scantily-clad barbarian bloke who liked to chop shit up though, he inhabited an entire detailed world with warring factions, religions and ideologies; a Hyborian Age of mythic adventure, blood and magic. Over the years Howard’s legacy has included good movies (1982’s Conan The Barbarian), bad movies (2011’s Conan the Barbarian), comic books and video games, which brings us nicely to Conan Exiles.

Conan Exiles is set in Howard’s Hyborian Age, and a fairly unpleasant bloody time it is too. You begin the game as a user created male or female character, left to die in the desert naked and alone. It’s a pretty great opening for an online RPG, and gives an immediate sense of the stakes. You’ll literally need to craft clothes to cover your dangling tockley or heaving bosom (both of which come in many colours and flavours, thanks to the prolific and slightly pervy character customisation options) and your first steps will be all about finding food, shelter and a weapon.

Conan Exiles isn’t here to fuck spiders, it’s a game that really wants to make you feel as if every poor decision you make will lead to your death at the hands of deadly fauna, starvation, the elements or other players. If you happen to die? Well you can respawn at your most recent sleeping spot, otherwise it’s back to the nude desert for you – sans food, gear and pants. That sense of grim consequence is appealing in a masochistic sort of way, however at time of writing the servers are a little wonky and losing hours of progress because of technical difficulties may have you cursing the name of Crom.

Another negative is the fact that without a friend some of Exiles can feel like a slog. The combat is unwieldy, acceptable but hardly Dark Souls, and the endless crafting, eating, sleeping and building grind can be tedious without someone to swap sarcastic comments with. That said, if you do buddy up trawling through dungeons and building more and more elaborate shelters is a lot of fun, and will help you look past the wonky combat and fairly frequent technical hitches.

Conan Exiles is far from perfect, it’s only recently out of early access and showcases a number of alarming bugs and technical shortcomings. However, if you’re willing to look past the lack of polish, and embrace this vicious, uncaring landscape, Conan Exiles may scratch a very specific itch. Conan Exiles is certainly not what is best in life, but it’s an intriguing and fairly original take on the survival genre and worth a gander for armchair barbarians.

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