Outriders Review 2026 — The Looter Shooter That Punished You for Hiding
Outriders is the looter shooter that looked like The Division 2, borrowed Destiny 2's wardrobe, and then went and did something neither of them dared: it made hiding the most dangerous thing you could do. Developed by Poland's People Can Fly (Bulletstorm) and published by Square Enix on 1 April 2021, it launched into a server meltdown, quietly finished its content roadmap, and stopped updating after its sole expansion. Five years later, with servers that are still online and a no-microtransactions design that feels downright radical in 2026, it's worth a fresh look. One warning up front: it still requires an internet connection to play, even solo.
Table of Contents
- At-a-Glance
- The Anti-Cover Creed
- Four Classes, No Waiting
- Enoch Deserved Better Writers
- The Always-Online Hangover — and the 2026 Server Status
- A Complete Game, Not a Live Service
- Endgame: Expeditions and Worldslayer
- PC System Requirements
- Price and Availability in 2026
- Verdict
- FAQ
At-a-Glance
| Developer / Publisher | People Can Fly / Square Enix |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 4 |
| Release | 1 April 2021 — PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Third-person looter shooter / RPG |
| Players | 1–3 co-op, cross-platform · online connection required, no offline mode |
| Scores | Metacritic 72–73 across formats · OpenCritic 73 (52% recommend) · Worldslayer DLC: MC 73 |
| Rating | ESRB M (Mature) |
| 2026 price | Base $19.99 · Complete Edition $29.99 · Worldslayer $14.99 (routinely ~$5 on sale) |
The Anti-Cover Creed
Every screenshot of Outriders lies to you. There is cover everywhere — chest-high rubble, wrecked trucks, doorframes — and you should treat all of it as enemy property. Your health does not regenerate. The only way to refill the bar is to kill things, in the way your class prescribes: Tricksters heal by eliminating enemies at close range, Pyromancers by finishing marked targets with fire, and so on. Crouch behind a boulder and you are simply choosing a slower death. It's a single mechanical decision that rewires the entire looter-shooter formula, transforming battles from cautious poke-fests into constant, forward-leaning pressure plays where risk is literally the reward loop. An hour in, cover-based shooters start feeling wrong in the opposite direction.
Four Classes, No Waiting
The best one-line summary of Outriders: it's Destiny 2 if your super took seconds to recharge, and you carried three of them at once. Abilities are the combat, with guns as excellent supporting actors — loot pools full of punchy shotguns, rifles, and machine guns that feel tuned, not disposable. Skill cooldowns run in seconds, so the rhythm is casting, repositioning, casting again:
- Trickster — teleport behind an enemy, drop a bullet-stopping slow-time bubble, blender everything with blade moves. The crowd favorite.
- Pyromancer — mid-range fire mage; mark targets, then detonate them for heals.
- Devastator — stone-skinned tank that Golem-punches point blank.
- Technomancer — long-range support with deployable turrets and squad healing.
Enemy variety keeps the loop fresh across the ~20–25 hour campaign: human raiders flank and swarm, while Enoch's fauna simply tries to erase you fast. New archetypes feed in at a steady clip, and World Tier sliders (difficulty and loot scaling that rises with you) let you play it as a power fantasy or a proper knife-fight.
Enoch Deserved Better Writers
The setup is genuinely promising: Earth is spent, humanity's ark lands on the supposedly idyllic Enoch, and your custom Outrider wakes from cryosleep 31 years later into a civil war waged by an anomaly-touched human and alien mix. What the game does with it is the problem. The protagonist has one personality trait (gun), the cast oscillates between bland and hissable without earning either, voice work veers in quality, and supporting characters are introduced with fanfare then quietly forgotten. The vistas keep changing — deserts, frozen peaks, glowing forests — but you're here for the combat rhythm, not the narrative, and every fan of the game will tell you so unprompted. Which is telling in itself.
The Always-Online Hangover — and the 2026 Server Status
Outriders' day one was spent by most players staring at a login screen: the "core game components" suffered a major outage at launch, and after the studio briefly took servers entirely offline to stabilize, US players had a second gap. Those scars shaped its review scores forever. The important 2026 facts: the servers are still online, the requirement is still absolute (solo included — game sessions are peer-to-peer hosted, but you must log in and stay connected), and the population is small enough that matchmaking a random Expedition can take patience. PC players: expect single-digit-to-hundreds concurrency, so form your trio ahead of time. Given Square Enix's shutdown record elsewhere, the squad breath-holding is fair, but as of October 2026 the game remains fully playable end to end.
A Complete Game, Not a Live Service
Years before "finished at launch, no roadmap, no store" became a selling point again, Outriders did it: People Can Fly promised no microtransactions and no Games-as-a-Service model, and it kept both. Everything in the box is earnable in the box, solo or with up to two friends, with cross-platform play enabled. The one content update was the free New Horizon patch (November 2021), a genuinely generous rider that removed Expedition time limits, added an industry-shaming transmog system, four new Expeditions, and rebalanced every class into viability. That was it — a game that was improved, completed, and left alone.
Endgame: Expeditions and Worldslayer
Post-campaign, Expeditions are the gear treadmill: 14+ hand-authored missions, timed-optional after New Horizon, climbing Challenge Tiers that gate the legendary weapons and armor sets with build-defining mods. Stack three armor pieces of a set and you genuinely change how a class plays. It's not Destiny 2's raid ecosystem, but it is miles beyond what Anthem shipped with. The Worldslayer expansion (30 June 2022) deepened the loop rather than widening it: a new campaign chapter, a new PAX skill tree per class, a max-tier villain to chase, and the endless Tarya Gratar dungeon — plus Apocalypse tiers for the 1%. It reviewed fine (MC 73) but, controversially launched at $39.99, didn't pull lapsed players back and marks the end of the line: no further content followed, and the in-development sequel — reportedly codenamed Project Gemini — was suspended in June 2025 amid People Can Fly's restructuring. Square Enix retains the IP. What exists now is, definitively, the whole game.
PC System Requirements (Official)
| Spec | Minimum (720p/60) | Recommended (1080p/60) |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit |
| CPU | Intel i5-3470 / AMD FX-8350 | Intel i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X |
| RAM | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| GPU | GeForce GTX 750 Ti / Radeon R9 270X | GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB / Radeon RX Vega 56 8 GB |
| DirectX / Storage / Net | DX11 · 100 GB · broadband connection required at all times | |
Yes, 100 GB — the "100" is not a typo; budget your drive accordingly, and skip any 'repack' claiming a fraction of that.
Price and Availability in 2026
Outriders' list price settled at $19.99 (base) and $29.99 for the Complete Edition with Worldslayer — and both are perpetual deep-sale candidates; Worldslayer was down to $4.99 on Steam as of 18 October 2026. It spent its first stretch on Xbox Game Pass (day one) but has since left the service. It never went on PS Plus permanently. The honest math: the Complete Edition on sale is 30+ hours of campaign plus a full endgame for less than a pizza. As always, buy from official stores — there are no legitimate free-download links, and the always-online requirement means pirated builds never really worked anyway.
Related reviews: Control · Destiny 2 · New Tales from the Borderlands · Biomutant
Verdict
| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
|---|---|
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Score: 7/10 — Good, and frozen in amber. It never became the live-service empire reviewers feared. Instead it became a finished, fairly priced, aggressively fun co-op weekend machine — as long as your connection holds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the Outriders servers still online in 2026?
Yes. Despite years without updates and a small player base, login services remain active as of October 2026, and the campaign, Expeditions, and Worldslayer content are all playable. Sessions are peer-to-peer, but the always-online login check is still mandatory.
Can you play Outriders offline or solo?
Solo, absolutely — the entire game can be played alone, and its difficulty scales for it. Offline, no: a constant internet connection is required even for single-player.
Does Outriders support crossplay?
Yes — cross-platform co-op for up to three players across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox was added post-launch and still works.
Is Outriders on Game Pass?
It was a day-one Game Pass launch in April 2021, but it has since left the subscription. You'll need to buy it — fortunately the base game lists at $19.99 and routinely discounts hard.
How long is Outriders?
The campaign runs roughly 20–25 hours with side content pushing past 35. Add the Expedition endgame and the Worldslayer campaign plus Tarya Gratar, and completionists cross 80–100 easily.
Is the Worldslayer expansion worth it in 2026?
At its launch price of $39.99 the community balked; at its current $14.99 list — and ~$4.99 sale pricing — it's an easy yes for anyone who enjoyed the base game's loop. Buy the Complete Edition if starting fresh.
Does Outriders have microtransactions?
None. People Can Fly committed to no microtransactions and no live-service model, and delivered exactly that — all gear in the game is earned in the game.
Which class should beginners pick?
Devastator is the most forgiving (heals on close-range kills and shrugs damage), while Trickster is the most fun once you accept dying while learning. All four are solo-viable after the New Horizon rebalances.