A viking is sent to Valheim and in the name of Odin, said viking has to fight nature itself and overcome some really big bosses. Valheim is one of the nine realms in Norse mythology, the home of the Vanir which lives under the world tree Yggdrasil. A world between afterlives it seems. In this case it is a procedural generated environment, composed of several unique interconnected biomes. Each one has a new resource and enemies to fight against. From a dark forest, to a boggy swamp, up a frozen frigid mountain, of windswept plains. Each location in Valheim is visually beautiful to gaze upon. Thrust far it is missing waterfalls and lakes though. However that is a minor nitpick if anything.
This is Helga Hjulkaster, she is a strong viking woman made of true grit and muscle. Her goal is to sacrifice various trophies on an altar in the middle of a biome. Which will call up on a mighty warrior that has to be beaten in combat. In order to have a chance, I have to take charge and start collecting wood and stone, which I can craft into rudimentary tools. After all, I can not cut down trees with my bare hands. I tried and it did no damage whatsoever. While I was busy chopping wood a tiny creature made of sticks and stone assaulted me. The rude little bugger fell swiftly to my axe. Then I fell to the tree, brought down on top of me through gravity. Yes falling timber hurts anything until it lays still on the ground. This includes other trees, vikings, enemies and anything not made of stone. After I gathered enough wood, I began to cobble together a flimsy hut, with a thatched roof and a bed made of straw. Which serves as a spawn point and it gives a well rested bonus. But only if there is a fireplace nearby. However a badly placed one will slowly choke me to death, or get blown out during storms and the rain. The next step to survive in the wild was to hunt down a huge amount of wild boars to craft myself a bow and a workbench upgrade. Then I stocked up on arrows and killed a whole flock of frolicking deer in the forest. Their bloody skulls made for an excellent trophy to summon the guarding spirit of the meadows. A huge lightning infused elk. A fierce battle ensued, but eventually I won the battle and I got myself a huge head to bring back to the starting area. The totem allows me to call upon the spirits power for a while. The beast also dropped a horn that must be used to make a primitive pickaxe. Because bronze and tin ore is needed to make copper.
Combat is a simple and smooth affair. I can block, parry, shoot enemies and make things to throw at them. Bringing home the bacon is easily done with more than one player, through the easy to use multiplayer system, where I can run a public, or private instance. The caveat is that a password is required, so at the moment no random stranger can join a public server. For an early access game on Steam I have not encountered any game crashing bugs, or anything that would ruin the experience for me. The only issues I have encountered thus far is the game stopping up a second, or two when saving the world. There have also been several cases of boats getting destroyed the moment I exited a portal. Biomes being a bit out of whack.
There are a couple of things I would really like to see in the game. Sailing leaves me to the mercy of the four winds, until a certain power is gained. However I would really love to have oars in the boats. A true and tested invention that would be very easy to implement. When the wind is going the wrong direction, it is faster to push the vessel by swimming behind it, and climb aboard when the stamina runs out. And some sort of brass, or bone horn. Because it sounds badass to charge into battle tooting my own horn. The music is fantastic, especially the sound effects are top notch and sets the mood perfectly. Graphics convey the moody and enhance the atmosphere brilliantly. The simplified art direction makes Valheim run fantastic and look better than most other games of this nature on Steam.
Njål sand
#zaceron
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