Current Playthrough: ~40 Hours with about ~80 hours logged in the game (including ~40 hours in 2018. Dedicated Server hosted and managed by me.

Conan Exiles is a fun game with some great ideas that ultimately is undercooked even after all these years.

Pros:

• Freedom. I liked the openness of this game. The multiple build options and thrall gameplay was actually fairly enjoyable.
• Build options are good. Want to build a small outpost? Done. Want to build a warriors keep? Tools are there. Want to build an age of Conan strip club? You do you do.
• Accessible through difficulty settings and if you want or don’t want nudity, feel free to toggle it.
• Journeys are a great way to get familiar with the game and a perfect checklist for newer players.
• Good value for base game. Even when the mid-late game kind of falls flat.

Cons:

• Buggy AF. There’s something satisfying about dragging your unconscious thrall behind you back to your torture wheel but look back too long and the wonky physics will straight up crash your game. Bosses not responding properly, enemies forgetting to fight, getting hurt for stupid reasons.
• If you’re not going to program a competent interaction with NPCs, maybe don’t make them close together. Friendly NPCs often sit amongst the hostile ones making for a cluster f*** of gameplay. Case-in-point look at the primary friendly npc city, there are a bunch of bandits in it, if they attack you all the friendly npcs will go full hostile.
• Combat sucks. It really, really sucks. It’s so bad. Unfortunately, this is the largest deficit, and because it sucks, when you get to the point of the game where it’s all pretty much combat, the game grinds to a halt.
• Mid game recipes for armor and weapons don’t feel like much of an upgrade.
• The leveling system needs options such as an ability to adjust max level. Not being able to finish all trees forcing you to respec occasionally kinda seems pointless in a game with robust admin controls.
• The campaign is confusing and most forums I read on don’t even recommend finishing it. The story isn’t hard to follow, but determining what boss arenas are up next in line with a goal to “beat” the game is.
• Microtransactions and battle pass. BARF

Conclusion:

Play at your own risk. If a survival/craft/base building game is your cup of tea, this game might feel built for you. If you are big into games on servers with strangers who can grief you and you them, this game will have some appeal. The combat though won’t let me give this game anything above a 3 star. I still enjoy and may continue playing to try and finish the main quest, and again, I may never log back in.

Perhaps this one is better played on PC, because on PS4 it's simply not good. I tried to give this one a chance but it's really not worth the time.

Let me say, the game itself is not a bad one. The graphics are pretty decent, and the concept around the game is decent as well. The survival mechanics are pretty good I'd say. It was a very neat idea and the game had potential. Where the game falls short is it's combat.

This is one of the worst executed combat systems I have ever seen in any game. Terrible. The hits don't connect properly and you'll just flat out miss an opponent who is standing a foot away from you. The way you have to fight is not skillful. There is no skill capacity. It's simply block and swing, block and swing. A peasant villager is able to tank my attacks from a two-handed stone sword and swing through them with no armor, piercing through my resistant armor and causing me to stumble so I cannot swing. That same villager I killed an hour ago with no armor, a bone shield, and a simple stone axe for chopping wood and multiple levels down, because block and swing, block and swing. Repugnant.

I really tried to give this game a chance. Had potential, good survival and craft system, terrible combat. For that, this game is no more than 2/5 stars. Just not good at all. If not for the survival system, a 1/5.