Been playing some Conan Exiles recently.
For those whom might not know about it, it's basically one of those 'survival' games (like ARK, for example), except that it is set within the Conan universe, of all things (that brings me back way too many years, nay, decades). It has a pretty good hand-crafted, non-procedural map (well, for the most part anyway; from the parts I've seen, since I haven't seen it all yet). The building / crafting portions of the game (along with the gathering of resources part; arguably those two aspects of the game are the most developed for now) are good, and diverse enough. The kind of structures one can make can end up with some good layers of complexity.
However, it just came out of Early Access, and they only spent roughly 1 year or so during Early Access before just recently releasing it (May 8th). I'm saying this because, in our day and age, what is one single year of development especially for complex games? Basically not much at all. And it shows. Some 'branches' of the game need a LOT of work, but the potential is there. It's technically a pretty ambitious game, and the world map is large (and its layout is pretty good by now I'd say; they can only add content and polish to it at this point, rather than making it larger); but there's a solid basic game foundation I'm clearly seeing. It needs a lot of polish, new (more) features for a bunch of things. I mean, the combat system is "ok" for now, but it's ok only for melee combat. The distance-based fights (throwing spears, firing arrows with bows, throwing axes, etc) is essentially useless (especially the bows and arrows system, it's VERY awful at the moment).
The enemy A.I. is often just a complete joke. The game overall is not well-balanced for single players (although, of course, it's possible to adjust a bunch of gameplay settings to our liking which does help to some extent alleviating those solo play-related issues; but it is absolutely clear that for now the game has been designed with multiplayer in mind). Can't comment much on the game's "dungeons" since I've only seen one myself (The Dregs I believe it's called). That one particular dungeon was extremely underwhelming, with a near total absence of enemies (I literally encountered I believe no more than 6 or 7 skeletons a couple of rooms before the boss). The boss himself (or "itself") was... extremely basic in patterns (remains at the center and attacks from there, it's like a big serpent that extends its body from the center to get to you melee-range, or spits acid at you when out of melee range, etc) and had an obscene amount of health considering I was playing solo. I was level 30 and I had to retreat and left the dungeon, didn't go back in (that part is fine though, I'm ok with having to leave if I'm not ready for a fight, but by Level 30 with full Medium armor sets I still needed something like 200 Arrows or something ridiculous like that).
Anyway, skipping the dungeon part, going into the "Thrall System". So it's the world of Conan, it's brutal, harsh, dangerous and violent (and side note indeed; Conan Exiles is a mature game; don't make your kids play that thing). It's a bit of a "controversial" aspect of the game for some people I guess (I have read how some people are just turned off completely by the mere presence of such "gameplay"; I can understand why though). So basically you can get slaves. There's no other ways to cut it. It's what it is. You "capture" them (bash them with a Truncheon) until they get knocked out unconscious, you then have some (reasonable) time during which you have to 'attach' a rope to them and literally drag them physically behind you as you walk or run back to your base, as their body gets ragdolled around on terrain until you get to your "Wheel of Pain". You 'place' the NPC ("Thrall", it's how they call NPCs in the game I suppose) into the Wheel of Pain's interface and let the Thrall get "turned" (tortured) with a progression bar at the bottom of the icon until the 'task' is complete and the Thrall is fully "yours". Then the Thrall in question suddenly and magically belongs to you, and is fully brain-dead to your cause and yourself.
However, the "Thrall System" of this game is extremely bare bones. I'd say that even the NPCs and Followers of Bethesda games SHINE in comparison. I'm not even exaggerating. The Thrall system of Conan Exiles is definitely one aspect of the game that I'm considering still very much is early alpha development. Heck, even the "Follow Me" function (Press and hold E, radial Menu pops up, click on some basic Thrall "commands", such as following you) is so basic that the NPC does not even physically "follow" you per se. The NPC literally TELEPORTS in small / medium distance 'steps' as you move around the environment. So basically no terrain pathing A.I. / terrain recognition stuff done at all. They also completely remain silent, there's just... I mean you have to go in really understanding where the devs come from. And especially consider the fact that they only worked for about a year during Early Access before "releasing" it officially.
Anyway, I'm passing on multiple points I could talk about but despite what I'm saying above (the negative points anyway) I DO sort of enjoy it. But I'm taking it with a grain of salt since the game completely screams "I'm totally not done yet! Please let the devs work on me for another three years and stay with me during that time!". And to finish on my train of thoughts before I forget about it... this game does, however, have a pretty decent modding community. I'm seeing a lot of potential there. It's obviously not going to be on Skyrim level of modding (what game in existence would ever top that anyway?), but it's there. There's already a number of mods that add things that "should" have been there, or modify them as to add a minimal amount of "balance" on things that otherwise just aren't balanced at all, etc. So at least, right now, if you go in and you find out over time that it's indeed far from being a "complete" game then you can always take a look at some of the mods that in some cases genuinely try to add to the game without being ridiculous or over the top.
And, finally, I'll conclude by saying that one thing that surprised me was the music. I really like it so far (main menu theme is already memorable, and some of the outdoor / exploration ambient tunes are good, they also vary per map regions). If I had a score to give (it's unfair to do this now actually but whatever) I'd go with a 6/10. It's passable. I DO see the game's potential, really. It's there. It just needs a solid two years, maybe up to three, of constant development (excluding mods) before - in my opinion - this game can be taken seriously. But I suppose that's just me. I'm seeing a lot of praise in some of the Steam user reviews, that's fine. To each their own. But it's not a terrible game by any means. It just needs time and work put into it.