Hi there!
This is somewhat of a Review after I've been featured on the Steam Store Page for the game Hood: Outlaws & Legends (click to get to their website). I have been playing the game for 4 hours at the time, on May 7th, 7 - 11 pm CEST. I played more after the sponsorship (15+ hours in total) in order to learn more about the game and figure out what I think.
Pros:
- Before I started playing, I thought the concept idea was awesome, it looked great in trailers and screenshots and I was really looking forward to trying it out.
- The game was fairly easy to get into thanks to a quick tutorial at the start, showing off all classes currently available.
- There aren't a lot of things you have to remember when it comes to key bindings. You have your "Main Attack", "Secondary Attack", "Ultimate Ability", "Gear (Extra Ability)" and a Button to "Whistle/Throw A Rock". Everything is quite clear when it comes to that.
- The environmental level design looks great from what I can see, there are currently 5 maps you can play on.
- It's definitely more fun with friends, the game is a PvPvE game with up to 4 players on each side. You can also play against "The State" alone if you don't want to play against real players.
- There were plenty of situations for a good laugh due to mistakes that your team or the enemy is doing. Also the fact that you can match the classes as you want (e.g. 4x John or 2x Tooke and 2x Marianne), it can be really funny.
- It felt like I really wanted to master the class I prefer to play and see what kind of potential I can unlock, including giving each of them new perks. This is their progression system. It's not much at the moment though.
- If you like this type of game to play with a bunch of friends from time to time, I think the price is alright. A lot of people compare it to "Hunt: Showdown", "For Honor", "Thief", "MORDHAU" and "Payday 2", it even reminded them a bit of "Dead by Daylight", looking like "Assassin's Creed".
- I really enjoyed the stealthy and sneaky part of the game overall, but it might need a bit more to it other than just bushes. I'm not sure what could be a good addition.
- When you manage to outplay the enemy by dodging/blocking perfectly, executing your Abilities at the right time and hit your shots, manage your Stamina perfectly, it feels quite satisfying.
- There is a ping system, maybe a few more additions would be useful, but at least you don't necessarily need voice communication. However, there's in-game voice chat that you can use (no written chat though).
- If you are interested in cosmetics, there are a bunch of them you can choose from and I'm pretty sure there will be more in the future. So far I couldn't find any microtransactions, you simply play the game to earn gold and pay for new skins with that.
- There will be additions to the characters, new maps and game modes including seasonal & community events from what I could see in the current Roadmap (click to open).
Cons:
- This is personal preference, but I couldn't play this kind of game as my main game, or play more than just 2ish hours at a time. For me, it did get slightly repetitive, since this is the only game mode currently available: Find the Sheriff, steal his key, find and open the vault, get the chest to an extraction point, then extract.
- It can feel demoralizing when you have done all of the above, but the last tick of the extraction is the one that determines your win or loss. If you did all the work and the enemy team manages to get the final extraction, you lose.
- I started with the Ranger, which was probably a bad choice for me to start with. I think this one has a higher skill-ceiling when it comes to aim and also requires better teamwork and coordination, because you preferably want to stay far away from fights. Compared to other classes (Brawler, Hunter, Mystic), they are much stronger in close combat overall.
If you're on high-ground, your shots oftentimes go into the fence you're standing at, instead of using the good positioning to shoot from a good off-angle.
- The Ranger also isn't able to shoot arrows if teammates are standing in front of the enemy. The arrows will go into your teammates, but there's no friendly-fire. Considering you have limited ammunition, this can get frustrating. I would love to rather have a reload than having to go to crates to refill.
- After spending more time in the game not playing the Ranger, I found the other classes much easier to get used to, especially with the "Assassination" ability that can one-shot anyone if you crouch close enough behind a target. A lot of people think that this is too easy to execute, but considering that crouching slows you down and you have to be close behind the target, you should simply not let them get the assassination on you in the first place. If you pay attention, this shouldn't happen so easily.
- The Brawler's secondary ability is an aim-bot, meaning he will slam towards a target no matter if you're facing them or not. Compared to the Ranger, this is way too simple to deal reliable damage.
- The combat doesn't feel very smooth, it's quite clunky and I'm not sure if that's latency related or just not that well optimized considering there is character collision too. Certain Abilities just feel unresponsive, especially when trying to Assassinate.
- There is only one key binding for interactions AND Assassination. So many times I tried to assassinate somebody but accidentally opened a door or started winching, which got me killed.
- According to a lot of players, this game promotes cross-play, but you cannot cross-invite people from e.g. PC to XBOX. You can be randomly matched with other platforms, but you can only invite people if they are on the same platform as you.
- Matchmaking seems a bit messy at the moment, maybe because I played during the Early Release and there wasn't a better fit. A lot of people on the enemy team were much higher level than my team.
- A minor thing, but agitating is the fact that you can't access the menu to change key bindings etc. while you're in the queue, which sometimes can take a while.
- You can't report people for being AFK, which is unfortunate.
- It also seems like there is no penalty for leaving a game early.
- Final point being cheaters: I have encountered a bunch myself, after people have been complaining about this since day one. Getting shot from across the map is no fun.
All in all, I guess I would give it a 3.69/10, I was very happy to be considered for the sponsorship and the opportunity to be on the Steam Store Page. I didn't have to pretend to like the game, I genuinely had fun at the time. I just had a massive headache half-way through, because I'm not used to collaborating with other streamers due to all the voices. Me having to learn a new game, focus on the community to answer questions AND having to communicate with my team was simply too stressful for me. In the future, I will continue doing my streams by myself.
The longer I played off-stream, the more annoyed I got with the combat. I can't quite put my finger on it and tell you what it is specifically that annoyed me so much, but I do hope that they will improve it eventually and release more content to the game, so I can give it another go. I think this game has great potential due to its concept idea, but at the moment I rather play a different game.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out; my contact information can be found on this website, but you can mainly get on my Twitch (click here to get redirected), where I'm live from Monday - Friday 2 - 6 pm CEST.
Thank you for reading my review!
Unfortunately, I lost the screenshot of when I was streaming it :(
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