Conan Exiles

NOT SUCH A CROM­Y TIME

If absolutely nothing else, this game somehow manages to perfectly capture the tone of the 1982 Conan The Barbarian film. And what’s not to love about that? It’s the music that really does it, oh-so obviously emulating the score of that film but the game does a lot of legwork too. Even if it’s not always able to deliver.

Conan Exiles sees you in the role of, well, an exile. Nailed to a cross and left to die at the edge of the world with nothing but rags to your name (and if the nudity filter is turned off, then not even those). Customisation is a little basic but you did get to pick fun things like a religion, which will determine powers later in the game. You also get a random set of crimes that explain your exile and we had to giggle at “corrupting the youth”.

After being freed by a Conan lookalike, you’re then let loose without much hand holding. Thanks to a world that’s hand crafted instead of randomly generated, you’re still guided about by ruins and landmarks as well as given a few mini objectives to take you through all the necessary steps of survival. It’s all pretty straightforward if you have even a passing familiarity with the survival game genre: eat, sleep... all that jazz.

The first real obstacle of Conan Exiles is, unfortunately, the user interface. Especially on PS4, those menus aren’t just obtuse at first, the text is preposterously tiny. It’s an issue that never goes away and we can only hope it gets improved with patches. For now though, it’s a constant challenge.