Shaun is often found in Final Fantasy 14, trying his best to complete everything there is before his magpie brain inevitably drags him onto another game.
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Our Verdict
Valheim is launching with one of the single greatest areas I’ve experienced in gaming. The Deep North is everything that a Viking adventure should be, and it’s an experience that everybody should have. Unfortunately, getting here is a road that will take days and frustrate players to no end. I just hope you stick it out; it’s worth it.
Valheim begins where most stories end. You’re a Viking warrior who fell in battle, but your work is not done. You’re whisked away by Huginn, one of Odin’s ravens, to the new realm of Valheim. It’s a forsaken land that’s home to the biggest nasties Odin could find, severed from the world tree. Yet it’s threatening to return and disrupt the balance of all other worlds. Odin has denied you access to Valhalla and instead tasked you with heading on into Valheim to defeat these great evils and save the universe. No pressure, then.
Valheim’s story is presented through a series of what should be award-winning animations. These leave you eager to get going, until you realize you have absolutely zero equipment. Sure, you can punch a Greyling into the ground with some effort, but good luck doing that against the Forsaken, the world’s bosses. So, you must instead contend with the game’s biggest feature: crafting.
I quite enjoy how Valheim implements crafting. You discover recipes through exploration instead of levels. Any item, from a scrap of iron to a simple onion, can see your Viking thinking up pages of new items to craft. It really connects the crafting system to the game’s emphasis on exploration. You want to delve into every dungeon and dark corner to see what ingredients you’ll find.
Unfortunately, it does have some drawbacks. The world of Valheim is massive; you could explore for days and still not uncover a tenth of it. Yet, it’s surprisingly empty. Except for trees, those are everywhere; Greenpeace would be proud.
Let’s take the first boss, Eikthyr, as an example. To summon these Forsaken, you need to offer items at their altar. Eikthyr needs three deer trophies, rare drops from, you guessed it, deer. Good luck finding them, though; they’re few and far between, and when you do stumble on one, odds are you’ll accidentally spook it and see it run off faster than you can catch it.
It’s a similar story when it comes to weapons and armor. Crafting or upgrading equipment often calls for a lot of resources, so you’ll be blindly searching for those veins of ore in the Black Forest for hours, whilst being mobbed by annoying little goblins. And that’s before we talk about building.
If you have any skill in design, Valheim’s building is perfect for you. There’s a huge number of building material options and furniture to choose from – you can truly create the longhouse of your dreams. I can’t; I am terrible at this stuff. I just claim squatters’ rights in the abandoned buildings I find.
The number of resources you’d need to gather to translate vision to reality, however, is immense, tying me back to my first point. You’ll spend hours on end accruing the necessary bits and pieces, which for dedicated housing enthusiasts is great. For most players, however, it’s a hell of a grind.
The time sink, however, is worth it. The combat, in particular, is perfect. You can choose between melee, ranged, or magic, but I feel like the game wants you to play melee. I’ve tried the other two, and they felt underpowered, especially bows. Besides, you’re a Viking; pick up that axe and get to it!
The battles against the Forsaken are incredible, but definitely difficult. Playing solo is a herculean task; there is a reason up to ten people can be on a server. Eikthyr lulls you into a false sense of security, but if you learn to block, then they’re easy. Then you’ll move on to your next foe, arrogance aplenty, and be immediately massacred over and over. And whilst not a proper boss, good luck against Lord Reto in the Ashlands by yourself. That one almost made me cry.
Defeating the Forsaken not only grants you the drops you need to progress through the next area, but also special Forsaken Powers. These can range from making you better at mining and logging, to increasing your damage resistance and dropping your block cost to zero stamina. My favourite is Moders’, because it makes sailing much faster.
And trust me when I say you’ll need these powers. The Mistlands is a biome that will push you to your breaking point. As you can guess, it’s shrouded in mist, and even with the item that’s meant to let you see through it, you only get a tiny radius. So you stumble through this heinous place, looking for dungeons to locate the next boss, constantly being ambushed by annoying foes and the horrific floating Gjalls, which are the second most terrifying thing in Valheim.
You have to be methodical in battle; otherwise you will be punished. Start your weapon swing at the wrong time, and you can’t back out of it; you will get hit back hard. Block too often, and your guard will break. Instead, you have to master either dodging or parrying; the latter of which leaves your enemy open to a barrage before you step back to recover stamina and start the dance again.
Hilariously, parrying also works against ranged foes, like the act of perfectly blocking an arrow sends a wave of awesomeness to stagger them. The Ashlands biome also added siege engines, with little fortresses to conquer, which gives such an injection of scale. My favourite part of battling, however, is in The Deep North, when you encounter Jotunn. Battling the age-old foes of the Norse gods made my mythology-geek heart sing.
And even if the world can sometimes feel empty, the sailing feels heaven-sent. The first time I crafted a boat – not the stupid little raft- and went to sea, I was awestruck. The music; that perfect, soaring score as you went out in search of adventure on your Viking longboat. I could have wept. It was absolutely glorious.
The primary focus of 1.0 is, of course, The Deep North. I don’t want to give too much away, but it is absolutely stunning. I adore every single inch of it. It’s the crown jewel on top of an already incredible game; everything just slots into place.
The lands are blanketed in beautiful snow, even the trees, which immediately shed their icy blankets when you start hitting them with an axe. I also love the Moose, your vehicle here – if you can tame them. Although don’t ride them onto the ice; they will, for some reason, immediately charge forward and end up in the water.
I went through maybe five Moose on my travels, suffering through the laborious, long taming times, including one that kicked me off a mountain when I tried to befriend it. They also ended up in the water. I am Moosebane.
While you’ll largely face off against the Jotunn, you’ll also encounter hulking Gammeltrolls. I love these things; combat against them feels like the epic battles you expect of a Viking saga. A small, determined warrior felling titans. They are, however, a source of my biggest Deep North annoyance.
They become petrified when killed, so obviously you think, “I should mine these.” But the best pickaxe in the game doesn’t work. Instead, you’re meant to blow them up. There’s not a single indication to do this in a game where I have never exploded anything. And Huginn and Muninn were no help here, not even a nudge towards “maybe go boom.”
Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed every second exploring The Deep North. You’ll often stumble upon full villages of abandoned houses, encountering the ghosts of those who once thrived here. Even severed from Yggdrasil, life went on in this realm. It feels so poignant, but maybe that’s the mythology geek in me.
Unfortunately, in a lot of instances, Valheim doesn’t respect your time. Crafting is laborious, especially since the first portal you can create doesn’t let you transport ore, so you have to rebuild your forge constantly or travel back miles. And the Mistlands are the work of Satan. It feels like Iron Gate wanted to artificially add more hours to the playtime, but chose the most unfun, frustrating way to do it.
And yet, I love Valheim. It is the perfect Viking game. I can’t wait to see where it goes next, and The Deep North is a masterpiece that everyone needs to play. This isn’t a game you can dip in and out of, but if you stick it out, there’s a wide and wonderful world out there to enjoy.