By Odin’s great raven, this ain’t it.
Sons of Valhalla is a side-scrolling adventure RPG with town-building mechanics. Players will build up their mead hall, armories and other buildings in order to recruit an army and do what Vikings do best; raid and pillage throughout England. This is actually one of the better setups for a roguelite, oh did I forgot to mention. Yes, this is a roguelite, players will be tasked with rescuing their wife and getting revenge for the murder of their father, you know; real everyday Viking stuff.
Players will take control of Thorald, a Viking who is chosen by Odin after falling in battle. He is given the chance to right some wrongs like The Crow, which is funny because the All-Father is also known for his crows. But while this element could have led to some cool things narratively like involving other gods from Viking lore, instead it falls flat and is simply used for explaining the respawn system. Much like every other roguelite the price for this immortality is Odin will take all of your runes; which act as Thorald’s upgrades.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
Gameplay in Sons of Valhalla doesn’t feel very unique but instead ends up feeling stiff and button mashy. Thorald beings with a simple light and heavy attacks, block and a dodge; as players progress, they will find shrines that reward combos that are meant to open combat up, but since these aren’t permanent upgrades, players will be using the basic slashes for a good portion of the game. The combat may be mid on purpose as the main fighting force in this game is the army that players can recruit and build. There are various classes from Raiders who storm the front lines to even siege units that can launch flaming ballista from afar. Players can even recruit mercenaries to their armies that come in various flavors, which I found the medic one to be extremely useful.
Gameplay consists of moving the players forces from left to right, much like the pixel game series ‘Kingdom’ or its 3234 spin-offs at this point. Players will take enemy camps as they progress and its here that that raid party starts to end. The difficulty spike is insanely high in this game. I am all for a difficult game, but I couldn’t even finish the first camp due to the insanely high health pools of the buildings. It took me the better part of a day to build up forces, go in for the attack only to find I didn’t bring enough guys, as they get wiped out and I have to retreat and start building again. I have read that the team plans to address this in patches, and rightfully so.
Visually I liked Sons of Valhalla, the game starts off with a delightful animated cutscene that sets the tone of things and luckily the game is displayed with that same level of detail and graphical prowess. When character portraits appear during dialogue sequences things start to lose some appeal, as some characters look alike and when it rains in game, the visuals can make it difficult to tell what is going on at times.
The one thing I was most excited about with Sons of Valhalla was the city-building aspect but sadly this ends up being a really shallow experience. As a fan of StarCraft, WarCraft and any number of games like that, I had hoped this would be similar but on a 2D plane. There is no real depth or strategy that takes place when building the city or training units. If you have a lot of big units, chances are you will prevail. I didn’t hate my time with Sons of Valhalla, I had just expected more from it.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
