Hello,
usually you start with the worst first and then talk about the good things so let me start with the worst here. A confession. I pirated the game around a week ago. Before you judge and stop reading I ask you to please continue reading on.
I am not really a big conan fan but heard of this but never got it or just thought about getting it. Ages ago I saw my favourite german youtuber play it on a livestream for a couple of hours. It looked good but it was an early build and looked like it needed alot of improvements. After starting the game I had no idea what I was getting into or why the next week of my life was divided between playing the game and doing anything not playing this game related. I just fell in love with the world because it breathes atmosphere. Let it compare it to the other big sandbox game: Ark. Both operate on the same ground but both are very very different. I am a big Ark fan but Conan has something that Ark does not have: Atmosphere.
The feeling of really being exiled and carving out a place for you in this world. Especially in the early and middle levels when you find your own place in this world, get thralls and build your own base in this world you just can dive into this. Ark operates on another very different level: The taming of dinos stands at the forefront and the basebuilding comes second. After a certain point in Ark there is really nothing that can make your life tougher, you have your high bred rexes and are on the top of the food chain and reign supreme over everything. As much as I dont like the level cap, it is important so that you never get to the point where you can just mow everything down in your way without losing any health. While there are still OP builds it never feels like you are god and everything dies when you look at it.
I bought the game today because I really want to support the people who made this game and this is why I am confessing here. This is not a threat made to discussion pirating games vs anything, I just want to say that the game is great and wish to support the people who made it. You can see that alot of love was and is being poured into the game. And you can see that it is still very rough around the edges. There are many things that are in the game that were thought it would be cool to add them but do not lead anything good, many things that are there but there are better alternatives out there for this. Cooking for example or crafting. BUT that is one of the best things about this game: It gives you alot of choices to find what you want to do here. Weapons, cooking, crafting, potions. Instead of giving you one choice it gives you 10 or 20. Most you don’t need or won’t ever use but it is this liberty and this choice that it gives you that just adds so much to this feeling of being stranded in this world and carving your own home out there.
This is why I dearly hope that Funcom adds MORE to this instead of trying to up levels and create more endgame content. Please make the game broader instead of higher. Please find a way to make the frozen north more interesting, to make the highlands more intersting, to get this survival and etching out your corner up there like in the beginning and middle way. Please add more options to customize your bases, new buildings, new pure atmosphere breathing stuff that you can place, more unique thralls, more of this please. And this is why I think that the Eastern DLC is the right path for this. I do not know what people think of this but I think its the right way into this direction.
Now if you could make the north more interesting the same way and add more stuff to it that would be one more way into the great direction. More of cooking, building, items, crafting etc. Like beekeeping. It is kinda useless but its fun and gives you more choices! How amazing would it be if you could make an indoor garden, if you could make your own trees, maybe have your own waterwheel? Finding more unique ways to produce food, craft things and so much more would just make this the best survival sandbox game out there! And this is why I think that Ark has reached the maximum potential of what it can do but Conan? Conan has so much potential because it is still such a rough game. You can clearly see the vision where they want to take it at every corner of the game. This is why I think Conan can be this game that would be the dream of everyone who loves sandbox games. Who wouldn’t want to ride on a Tiger through the desert to your castle, where a huge ramp winds upwards a big rock, guarded by your archers left and right on the towers, greeted by 2 fighters with spears at your Front Gate, to go inside the long hallway with pillars on the left and right. Lighted at every pillar with braziers, the walls full of wall cravings and carpets. A garden in the middle full of Tigers and dancers. where you can cook a hundred meals, build a hundred decorative things and expand towards the heavens in an unlimited fashion. This is why Conan is so great and this is why it can be the best Sandbox game ever.