I’ve been part of Early Access for almost a year, levelled up a character to 40 or so, but then didn’t play on much since I wanted to save some stuff for the release.
All this time I really hoped, Conan Exiles would grow into an awesome game and overcome it’s Early Access flaws. But, well, I didn’t get my hopes high because so far I didn’t really see games do that on launch.
So now that it is launched and I had some time to play a bit, I have to say, that so far this is the one game I know that managed to kick that off. Fighting (apart from the bow, I hate the new bow, sorry), feels awesome and brutal, animations alone are great. Building feels awesome and rewarding and offers so many things to try. I really like the Conan world, so this has been another reason to try this game, and I haven’t been disappointed because instead of barbarian clichés, which are easy enough to create, the lore is a big part of the game, which makes it much more immersive and interesting. The survival part is also pretty well done in my opinion, apart from some of the recipes, like steel isn’t made from brimstone, but well…
Hail to you, dev team, in my opinion you really made it. There’s lots of survival stuff out there, but by Crom, for me Conan Exiles takes the cake.