Funcom has been a mainstay in the multiplayer survival game genre for quite a while now, with two of its highest-profile releases being adaptations of wildly popular franchises: Conan Exiles andDune: Awakening. Both of these games have found very large audiences and had high-profile releases, and there’s certainly a direct line between them mechanically.
But in the interest of pitting them against each other to see what happens, only one of these games is going to take home the trophy. We’re looking top to bottom in both of these games to see which of the two is more deserving of the spotlight.
8World
Dune: Awakening
When it comes to a survival game, the world in which the game takes place is going to be a huge component in how much fun it is to play. If you don’t enjoy being a part of the world where the game takes place, why would you enjoy playing it?
Both of these games have the advantage of being in worlds that have decades of history and popularity going for them. There’s no clear-cut winner in the Dune vs. Conan debate, because it’s going to come down to popularity. But when it comes to how well executed the world is in these games, Dune: Awakening is in the lead.
7Size
Conan Exiles
Survival games are often meant to be played for hundreds of hours, with time spent not only putting yourself in an optimal situation for survival, but also engaging with the story and the world that the game takes place in.
If you’re more interested in how much there is to do, Conan Exiles is the clear winner here. The game is longer in the tooth than Dune: Awakening, and that means that Funcom has had more time to continuously add new expansions to the experience.
6Combat
Tie
This is a tough one, because honestly, neither of these games is taking home a handful of high-fives for their combat. The combat in both gets the job done, and can occasionally look nice, but mechanically-speaking, there isn’t a lot going on.
If you’re interested in ranged combat, Dune is the easy win here. It has a wide variety of ranged weaponry, and some actuallyinteresting skillsto apply to them. If you’re looking for the visceral feeling of running your enemy through with a blade, Conan is going to be more your thing.
5Graphics
This isn’t a fight on even footing, because Dune: Awakening is a much newer game than Conan Exiles. But in the graphics department, it does come out on top. That said, Conan Exiles does not look bad by any stretch.
On top of this, both of these games have great art direction. It would be a challenge to fill a desert with interesting landscapes and locations, but Dune and Conan both do this, to different extents. (Though Conan has the advantage of being able to create very different biomes.)
4Base-Building
When it comes to base-building, the intricacies here can often make or break a survival game. If it’s too much hassle, or too frustrating, to build a base, no one is going to want to spend the considerable amount of time needed to do so.
Luckily, both of these games are nearly top-of-the-line in this department. Occasionally, there can be a frustrating moment when trying to place something, but for the most part, there are a lot of sound mechanics behindthe base-building, and it’s a convenient and straightforward process.
3Survival
These games share a surprising number of survival mechanics, and looking back, it’s clear that a lot of the survival systems present in Conan were perfect ones to be tinkered with and perfected for Dune.
The difference is that Conan ends up having many of the standard survival mechanics that, while they work fine, do nothing to make it stand out. Dune has the advantage of Funcom seeing what worked and what didn’t from Conan, and of making these survival mechanics blend perfectlyintegrated into the Duneworld.
2Progression
This is a fairly clear-cut winner: everything leading up to the endgame of Dune: Awakening is extremely well-crafted, with missions, characters, and a presentation that draws you into a unique world. It’s a mostly smooth experience, and because of how well-told the story is, it keeps any of the survival mechanics and tier progression from dragging on.
Conan is a bit more basic with it. There’s less investment in the world and the story; it’s not that what’s there isn’t good, it’s just that there’s less of an effort made to pull you in with characters and situations. It’s a more standard survival game, and is indicative of the slight difference in genre between the two games.
1Winner
I spent a lot of time in Conan Exiles back when it came out. And I honestly had a great time with it. It was my first experience with a survival game of that sort before, and it’s kind of imprinted in my mind as the standard for the genre.
And this is part of why Dune: Awakening has blown me away as much as it has. Going in, I was expecting something with the execution of Conan Exiles, but the presentation and overall polish that Dune: Awakening has is far more than I expected. It has a perfect blend of MMO and survival mechanics, both of which make the other more appealing than it would be on its own.
