Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

In the end, Vikings: Wolves of Midgard is good. It retains most of what makes the genre so appealing, and the other changes, like environmental dangers, amplify the formula instead of watering it down. It doesn't move the genre forward, though, and the lack of a custom preset combined with spotty performance on middle-of-the-road hardware will make some people see this as rather unpolished. For those who want something new in the genre, Vikings is worth a shot.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard clocks in at about the 25 hour-mark and manages to entertain the player with fun Hack&Slay-mechanics for most of that time. A boss at the end of every level, decent puzzles, many side-quest, an arena with various challenges and a lot of upgrade- as well as crafting-options are supposed to bring enough variety into the game. Sadly, not every idea or mechanic within the game appears to be really thought through or implemented as well as it could have been. Especially the balancing is in need of some refinement. Vikings: Wolves of Midgard also doesn’t really give the player any form of incentive to replay the game. Sure, there are different difficulty-modes and a new game-plus-mode, but since nothing within the game changes on being replayed, there isn’t much of a reason to do it at all.

I don’t think anyone will consider Viking: Wolves of Midgard’s hack & slash play as anything novel but some of its other innovations are very welcome. The environment forcing you to take some time to recover is a nice little feature but the town building aspect is what I enjoyed the most. It sounds like a simple enough addition but the impact on character progression and the relevance of loot and materials should not be overlooked. What you do during a mission, or rather bring from one, actually matters beyond a few gold coins in your inventory. Fun? Fun.

It’s not a title you need to play to stay up to date with gaming trends. It’s a typical representative of the hack’n’slash genre, solid in every aspect but not unique in any. If you enjoy such games, walking the wolves in Midgard will be fun, because the essence of the genre was conveyed proficiently. [06/2017, p.73]

Straight-up Nordic fighting game, which offers core hack’n‘slash and a pleasant atmosphere of the Nordic mythology.

It's not the most complex or nuanced of games, but the boss battles are great and the combat is brutally compelling. [Issue#261, p.70]

Is Vikings: Wolves of Midgard the kind of game that you can have a run at and finish in around the 12-15 hours it’ll take to finish its campaign? Absolutely. Just don’t expect it to be able to keep a grip on you once the end credits have thawed out.

Vikings – Wolves of Midgard is a very conflicted game. On one hand, you have a well-executed, fast-paced, action-packed hack’n’slash gameplay. On the other hand, the game is ridden with frustrating and annoying mechanisms (inventory handling, leveling up restricted to altars etc.), and filled with bugs which may directly influence the experience (eg. force still command although the enemy may be out of melee range). Unfortunately, in this case the cons outweigh the pros by a wide margin, and we cannot recommend it to be your priority purchase.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard offers minimal incentive to continue playing past the first hours, and it’s main redeeming point is its four player cooperative experience.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard has its ups and downs: it works amazing with the small details, but sometimes it feels too repetitive and does not risk much.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard just doesn’t do enough to stand out from games such as Diablo 3 or Path of Exile. While the core of the game is relatively solid and the amount of polish is nice. The game still falls into a classic trap of ARPG’s repetition. The core combat becomes boring very quickly and the level design, progression and enemy AI, flat out doesn’t do enough to keep the combat engaging. Narratively, Ragnarok should be a great story, full of action, drama and betrayal. In its implementation in Vikings however, the game somehow manages to take a story about Giants, mythical creatures, Gods and the world ending and makes the entire thing an apathetic experience. At the end of the day, Vikings is good, it’s just not that good.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard has everything to cement its mediocrity: lots of annoying "Kill " challenges, a badly written story peppered with silly jokes, and cooperative mode that no one seems to play.