I recently previewed the Xbox One launch of Conan Exiles, an open world survival game based in the universe of fictional hero Conan the Barbarian. The character creation menu offers a Bethesda-esque approach with every detail of your character being open to edit—from their eye color to their religion. There isn’t much variety amongst some of the character traits, like facial features for example, which seems a bit obnoxious given the wide variety of breast sizes they’ve made available.
Once you have completed your character selection, you are dropped into the middle of a harsh wasteland with absolutely no tutorial to guide you through surviving. I didn’t mind the absence of a guide, however, as it only contributed to the game’s realism and difficulty. There’s a detailed crafting system based on collectable assets, interactive world, and you must manage a range of personal resources (e.g. hunger, fatigue, thirst) in order to avoid succumbing to the barren wasteland. Hostile humans and bizarre animals pose additional threats, and it’s likely you’ll die a few times before getting the hang of avoiding disaster.
The game is a bit bare bones right now, and it freezes up quite a bit, especially during combat which resulted in quite a few preventable deaths. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what this title offers that is new to the survival genre, as pretty much every mechanic is pulled from other games like Minecraft, The Forest, and Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls games. Obviously, the game is still in development, and there’s definitely a great deal of room for enrichment in terms of world building, detail, and immersion. Still, Conan Exiles feels outdated, derivative, and, frankly, a bit regressive. I hope the developers consider pushing their game into modernity and embracing a more creative approach in the future. It needs much more work on Xbox One to be a viable product.
Jess contributed 16 articles to ICXM in 2017, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @Enceladosaurus.