Once the circle is cast, the fireball becomes explosive and deadly, and the preparation required to unleash it at its fullest turns it from just a reflexive keypress into a satisfying sequence. It's weak unless it's cast while standing in a magic circle, which is another spell that requires physical components that need to be collected and sometimes even crafted.
The fireball spell, a staple of fantasy games, is essentially like throwing a lit match at someone. Magic in Outward involves more complexity than just keeping a mana meter filled. Spells aren't all-powerful, but it still feels like you're doing something powerful when you master them. I don't mind losing time from a defeat in Outward, but losing real world hours from getting stuck on some world geometry was deeply frustrating. I eventually had to go into the game files and delete my last several autosaves, which put me back at the start of my journey to find the hideout. Even contracting a disease from exposure (I took off my clothing when it began to rain) didn't knock me out. It never happened: my meters all ran down to zero, but they never lowered my health, only resulting in debuffs for my stamina. Since you can't fast travel or reload a save, there I stayed, for two real hours, hoping I'd eventually slip into unconsciousness from lack of food or drink or sleep.
#Outward gameplay free#
I couldn't wiggle free and remained trapped in the sliding animation. While exploring an area on some cliffs, I slid down an incline and got stuck between the cliff and a rock wall. One quest sent me searching for a hideout (bandits again) and owing to Outward having no quest arrows and not displaying your own location on the map, it took quite a lot of running around and searching based only on the vague directions I was given. There are downsides to Outward's systems, too. Revenge is a dish best served without quickloading. Plus, I gained a long-lasting bitter grudge against those bandits, and dozens of hours later, even after having a peaceful and productive meeting with them as part of the main quest, I went back to their fort and killed every last one of them. But while I didn't enjoy everything about the difficult trip back home, it's now a part of my character's long and troubled history of devastating failures and eventual successes, and each time I return to my lighthouse I remember everything I went through to acquire it. I definitely would have skipped that damn hellish ghost fort. Maybe I'd have avoided that spike trap and made it home on time. Maybe I'd have fought those bandits again and won after a few tries. In any other RPG I probably would have just reloaded my last save and avoided most of those headaches. It was nearly a week later before I even had a proper bed to sleep in. By the time I made it back home-which took me through a fort filled with angry ghosts I was in no way prepared to handle-it was days later, and the time-sensitive quest to buy my house had expired. This time I was dragged to safety by a mysterious benefactor, but I woke up on the far side of the map. I managed to find my gear, escape, and heal myself, but I stepped into a spike trap and lost consciousness again. I set out to recover an unusual mushroom from a cave, hoping it'd fetch a nice price from a collector, but along the way I lost a fight to two bandits, who dragged my body back to their fort.
It seemed simple: Earn 150 silver coins to buy back my house (a lighthouse, in fact), which had been repossessed by my town's leaders to repay a debt I owed.
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