IMPORTANT: Outward has severe performance issues on certain hardware configurations in two of its major cities: Levant and Harmattan. I have an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3070 with 8GB of VRAM, which is above the recommended settings, yet entering these cities causes my computer fan to spin up like a jet engine. Reducing the graphics settings to minimum did not help, only cutting the FPS from 60 to 30 while inside the cities did.
The developers have moved on to work on Outward 2, so this will likely never be fixed.
If you have a similar hardware configuration to mine, think carefully about buying this. It's possible to work around this, as I mentioned, but you might not find it worth the tedium.
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Re-writing this review after playing another 20 more hours. I stand by my initial statement: Outward is an excellent if niche game, but the performance issues are a sore point.
That said, the fact that I decided to push through and work around the performance issues is a testament to its appeal.
Outward is designed for the specific niche of 'Action RPG + harsh survival mechanics'. If you played Fallout 4's survival mode, or Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 or 2's hardcore modes, and enjoyed the survival mechanics but wished things were even harsher- this is for you. Another game with similar appeal would be The Long Dark.
Some reviews may mention Dark Souls, but I reckon most Dark Souls fans would not enjoy this game. The combat mechanics are not particularly satisfying. Death has minimal cost in Dark Souls, enticing players to try again and master the game mechanics, or experiment with different approaches. Death in Outward usually has harsh penalties, and *autosaves on death* (with no manual save), so it encourages playing things cautiously and running away as soon as things start to go badly.
The average action RPG rewards player mastery of combat mechanics (Inputs, dodging, etc). Whereas in Outward, gameplay is about planning your route, preparing the right buffs, and luring enemies to fight each other.
In other RPGs, stacking buffs and resistances until you reach 100% immunity to some types of damage is exploiting the game mechanics. In Outward, the entire game is balanced around you stacking buffs and resistances, and higher level enemies will murder you in a few seconds if you don't.
In other RPGs, abusing enemy AI to lure them onto 10 traps/land mines in a row is slightly cheesy. In Outward, there is an entire skill tree themed around luring enemies into traps. And so on.
Outward's philosophy is: You're not the hero, you're just a weak generic villager, and the world is balanced against you. Here's a bag of tools to level the playing field, or tilt it in your favour. The game's difficulty is balanced around the player deploying every advantage they have, from traps to buffs to abusing enemy AI, so there's no need to hold back or 'play fair'.
If this sounds good to you, consider buying Outward (performance issues notwithstanding). If this sounds terrible to you, I would advise against getting it. Even as part of Outward's target audience, I found the game quite exasperating at times. If you're not part of the aforementioned audience, you'll probably hate it.
