Outriders
Well, how the hell did that happen? Despite my own admittedly mixed thoughts on Outriders’ Worldslayer expansion, in which I question if its total content is worth the $40 asking price, I have found myself deeply hooked on the new farming loop, and it’s overtaken Destiny as my most played game at the moment.
I still stand by my initial review. The new campaign stuff is short and feels like a prelude to the endgame rather than something all that meaty on its own. And having a single repeatable map be the main endgame for all of Outriders now does feel like a bit of an issue.
So what then, am I addicted to? That would be what Outriders has always done best: buildcrafting. I am having an absolute blast playing my different classes and experimenting with the new builds that Worldslayer has opened up. The main draw here is twofold:
First, there’s a lot of new loot. Many, many new legendary guns, two new legendary sets per class and multiple neutral sets that are better than old ones used to be. Loads of new perks attached to all of these.
Second, there’s the Apocalypse system, which attached a third perk to all pieces of gear that has the chance to be a tier 3 legendary level one, which makes builds at least 33% more crazy than they’ve ever been before, since you can now have an extra perk on all eight pieces of gear. And because you cannot change that final perk, it’s a lot of grinding to find the exact build you want. And you will be doing a lot of grinding anyway, given that the climb to Apocalypse Tier 40 is massive.
Outriders
So far, this has meant creating a super version of my already strong Bleed Devastator build, which can now become even more unkillable and scale its damage to new heights with more Anomaly boosts. And on PC I’m running a new build on my Pyromancer which lets me chain mob explosive Thermal Bombs for the most efficient AOE clear I’ve ever seen, though I’m still working on how to make it better at single target damage for the game’s beefy bosses.
While yes, Trials of Tarya Gratar is repetitive, I really do enjoy just…playing the game with these new builds and hunting down the new loot. In a perfect world, sure, there would be a couple of these maps and I wouldn’t have to fight the same stupid “lower the pillars” boss every single run, but I’m definitely enjoying all this more than I figured I would when I first reached the endgame closer to launch. The more gear I have access to, the more fun this is getting, which is almost identical to how the vanilla version of the game felt, as you really don’t understand its true potential until you’re getting full legendary sets. The same is true here with all the new stuff they’ve added.
I’m still not sure if I can recommend it to more casual players at $40, but the second it goes on sale? Absolutely snap it up.
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