Viking: Battle for Asgard
6/10
The game itself is beautiful. Personally i've always loved Norse/Anglo-Saxon mythology and have even made some poor attempts at learning Anglo-Saxon, (I have all the materials but not the wit sadly) i've also read as many saga's as i could lay my hands on.
The jist of my review is this. I was disapointed and i'll post a feature list to explain as to why;
- *The Story of a Viking Hero - Skarin is an uncompromising force. A play-thing of the gods rebelling against their selfish agenda. The definitive Viking warrior.
This is not untrue
- * Rich Viking Lore - The violent and glorious world of Viking mythology brought to stunning life. Players will write their own legends to be told around the campfire.
This is not so true, the world is pretty convincing but it makes some changes, one in particular and a big one is the viking soldiers, they appear more like roman centurians to me. that adn the lore itself is barely mentioned and where it is it's been altered.
- * Vast Open World Environments - Explore, uncover and fight your way across huge next-gen worlds full of combat, exploration and quests.
Huge worlds? This is another term for "Quite large islands" i imagine. The exploration is minimal as the linear quest/game story leads you to anywhere of interest and the spaces in between are often littered with a whole lot of nothing at all. Except prettyness.... silent prettyness.
- * High Impact, Brutal Combat Engine - High-impact, brutal combat. Dismember enemies and experience high-impact melee combat unlike any game you've played.
unlike any game I've played? i think not. The combat is good but by the end of the first level(of 3) you've mastered everything you need to know and at best it's simple hack and slash gaming combat
- * Mythical Powers - Tame dragons and command them to rain fire upon your enemies. Call on magic and the power of the gods to win the mortal war.
Uunderwhelming. You have to rescue one dragon per island and having more than one dragon doesn't appear to give any more advantage than having one dragon, they look cool flying around above your base though.
- * Free Your People - Liberate your Viking kinsmen from the clutches of Hel. Earn their trust and their sword arm. Fight alongside them in battle.
This forms the bulk of the game and running around midgard finding the camps and slaughtering stuff and seeing how pretty the world is certainly is the best part of the game but rescuing one camp is very much teh same as rescuing another.
- * Epic Battles - Lay the foundations for huge battles featuring hundreds of dynamic NPC warriors. Subtly influence the battle through targeted assassination or wade in to save stricken allies. Become one amongst many and turn the tide in favour of your kinsmen.
This is where it flops for me, the "Epic" battles are pretty cool to witness. massive front lines of legion and vikings charging into each other but once they hit? You can't tell friend from foe, not only that but both the legion and your soldiers respawn continously. The objective for you is to slay the "shamans" that respawn them. This of course is a challenge impossible for the soldiers themselves to achieve and at the end of the day you end up totally ignorign the massive battle surrounding you of endlessly respawning bots slapping each other and just heading for the objectives. That's it. subtlety, assassination or wading in to rescue striken allies are gross exaggerations.
It also fails to mention that before many of the epic battles your required to "Sneak" into the base that your later to attack. It's interesting but it's a feature that feels tacked on, especially considering when you attack it moments later the fortress is suddenly several hundred times more densely populated than before.
Viking does a nice job of the visuals, everything looks right, it's cold, snowy,there are dragons flying around. You use an axe and a sword as your basic equipment rather than just swords. Good ol' hack and slash and the core game is fun.
However. I think the sound department were given a day off on day two and forgot to come back to work, unless your fighting the game is almost entirely silent, no birds tweeting or wind blowing, minimal music. Even some explosions and basic combat sounds are missing. The waves do crash though.
In summary. The story seemed unfinished, the gameplay seemed unfinished, the sound was undeniably unfinished which, by the end of teh game leads you to think you've just paid a company for selling you a project they'd given up on.
i'm disapointed mostly because this theme is mostly unexplored and it has So much potential but the only place i'm going to see anything like it in the near future is in northrend via WoW sadly which will be nothing of the sort.
I've sadly not touched on the other things that got to me or even the things i really liked (and i found enough to play the game to the end) but i've already editted this post down severalt imes and it's still huge, i simply have too much to say on the subject so at the end of the day i'll just say it's not a bad game that is worth a play but for the folks on these forums there are far better titles. (And probably not worth full retail price, rental or secondhand is acceptable)
Even after all these years the Zeromus theme and main FF theme that plays beforehand still brings a tear to my eye. If there are some faults it would be that the voice acting does seem forced in parts(especially Cid he sounds like a bear), and also I remember in an article that there was supposed to be nearly a 1/3 of content that was left out of the original because of memory constraints. But what is left in there is just fine. There are a couple of fleshed out cutscenes on how Cecil ended up with the King of Baron and Golbez with Zemus. Overall they couldnt have done a better job.
![[VaLkyR]Anubis](/data/avatars/s/53/53707.jpg?1532157214){kind=avatar}
