‘Outriders: Worldslayer’ is finally here! Created by Square Enix and People Can Fly, players can pick right up where the core story for ‘Outriders’ ended and jump into the next chapter of events in the survival of the planet, Enoch. The Story campaign of Worldslayer has added more things to do mainly for end-game progression with the addition of Tarya Gratar.

This is the massive end game that the game desperately needed. No longer are we fighting the clock to earn good loot rewards, we can now take it at a slower pace with having three attempts within the trial. You are rewarded with plenty of good loot, with bosses that have never been used in the overworld before; it holds some truly interesting fights within its walls.

A new change to the levelling system is doing away with the infamous world tiers and replacing them with Apocalypse levels. Returning players will notice that the old tiers do convert over so if you were world tier 16 you will now be Apocalypse 16. The rewards for each level you raise have a chance to drop new gear for the DLC as a reward. The higher the tier the harder the game gets as you scale up with power so be ready for the fight that waits ahead.

To help the player with the new difficulty system, Worldslayer has also brought in two new ways to advance your character. The first being the ‘PAX’ system which is a new mini skill tree to add on top of the core game’s tree so you are able to further advance your killing machine of a character. You will only be able to earn 5 PAX points but you are able to re-spec for free at any time to play around with your builds.

The second system is the ‘Ascension’ system. This one awards points more frequently which can be used to raise a wide range of character skills or stats such as increasing the health pool, how much crit damage you output, and reload speed. It is a fun way to either add a bit more health to a squishy damage dealer or to make a tank a bit faster in terms of attacking and reloading. The new Worldslayer gear also comes with three mod slots instead of two from the core game so you are able to advance the gear slots more to include side perks you have wanted to run but didn’t want to give up the main perk for.

While Worldslayer has given the players a great and rewarding end game that they wanted, not all is perfect. Firstly, the major point that my team and I kept coming back around to was the enemy scaling for multiplayer. At many parts throughout different levels, it was just too intense and flooded with more enemies. We were already feeling the pressure and seeing a bunch more elites and annoying flyers enter the fray just made for a frustrating and rage-inducing performance. Constantly getting pinned between a bunch of enemies and a small object and not being able to break free was a big issue too like a co-op player colleague had when we played.

If you are not the host player you will have what seems like a permanent lag that only gets worse when more things are happening in the battle area. This goes hand in hand with the enemy scaling as a negative when it is pumping out more enemies the guest players are having a handicap right out the bat in hits taken or registering compared to the host.

The final boss for the Worldslayer story does have a bit of a slight bug. I ran the fight three times to see if it was a once-off but all 3 attempts were the same result of the boss when on half health stopping their moving and attacking. It just stood there letting me land a headshot spree until the fight was over.

In conclusion, Outriders: Worldslayer is great for the end game as the rewards are worth the grind, though the story is short and to the point with no side quests at all to confuse the end goal. Still having some bugs and issues that were there at the launch of the core game is still a slight disappointment as they have had plenty of time to iron these niggling issues out already since the first time around these issues outright made me stop playing it and was the reason a monitor was destroyed by a coworker. I do hope they are still working towards fixing the issues that have plagued the game. The price tag of the DLC is a bit high in my personal opinion, I would’ve expected the amount of content given for half the price asked for.

Written by: Shane Walsh