Valheim Review: Oh Great Odin’s Raven

Background

As you all probably know by now, I’m what you call a legitimate and professional gamer. Sure I don’t have the accolades or the prize money, but I do have something called legitimacy amongst my friends.

I basically got lucky a couple of times in a game and acted like I meant to do that, and I’ve been riding on that ever since. But along the way of me pretending to be a gamer, I did manage to gather up interesting ways of looking into games. I recently got very interested in trying to create my very own game from scratch. You can check out how that’s been going here.

And I do love me some of that indie flavor when it comes to casual gaming. Along came Valheim. The hype that came along was absolutely bonkers. Everybody was talking about it.

While I would love to get on the hype train, it was difficult to do so as I was recently crushed by the toppled souffle that is the release of the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077. I’ll probably write about it in the future, so I’ll leave a link somewhere here.

What was this supposed to be? Oh, yes! Valheim! And from the sound of it, Polygon gave it pretty good review.

The game starts off with a very traumatic flashback of a pixelated menu.

Oh god, it’s Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 menu all over again! Remember the pixelated trash that crowded the screen? I mean I could do higher detailed pixel art at that point!”

Sorry sorry, I veered off again.

So yes, after a minute or two of adjusting to what I’m looking at, I am now at the character creation menu. Nothing too fancy. Just enough to get things moving along. After all, we all do have one of those friends who like to spend too much time in character creation.

WE’RE VIKINGS FOR ODINS SAKE.

Muscular. Men with majestic beards and braided hair locks.

In The Beginning

The first thing you’re going to realize is when you press the Map button, the generated worldmap is gigantic. Like massive. Massive enough for me to not expect it for an indie game. I mean I’m sure there are similarly large worlds, but it’s just the pixel hybrid graphics that they went for kinda threw me off at first. Don’t believe me? Press “M” and scroll away.

Anywhos, you’re whisked away by a giant bird thing through a storm and dropping you off in a remote region of this new land. You and your friends now find yourselves surrounded by a couple of runestones that act as a small introduction to the game, as well as offering a center for when you kill a boss and would like to redeem a certain power.

That’s all neat. Now, let’s move along. Oh look, a Tutorial Raven is here to annoy the fuck out of me every time I reach a milestone in the game. It has a name but I refuse to acknowledge it. I don’t need a tutorial. Although there was a time when I accidentally made more than 3 to 4 clubs by accident and wasted all of my collected wood. No matter, none of my friends found out. You could just chuck your shameful accidents into the ocean. In fact, chuck your life mistakes into the ocean. It works in real life too.

So first, you start off by literally punching trees. You now have wood. Time to make some tools. You start making more advanced tools. You start hunting for food. Your beginner’s menu consists of various berries, mushrooms, and the tail section of a really annoying lizard species, Neck. Ironic that you eat the tai partl of a species called Neck.

You make simple clothes and a couple of legitimate weapons. You make a bow only to realize that using the bow in the game is actually pretty hard. There’s actual wind physics in the game that I’ve only realized after failing to exact my vengeance on a boar that killed me in the last playthrough.

The Fellowship of Constantly Getting Fucked

Obviously, this is my personal experience from my own playthrough with my buddies. You’ll always be going to have one of these few zany characters in your party. I’ve played a bunch of survival games, and somehow there’s always the same archetypes of players. Obviously, we’ll be using archetypes to describe these characters that I always find in any of my sandbox games.

The Builder

He has found his true calling. This man witnessed the realistic but sometimes janky physics engine in the game, that simulates gravity and decided, he will challenge it. By building monuments. Of various sizes and heights.

Remember, that these monuments must be built in a certain way, almost like a real-life building, keeping in mind the load-bearing parts and how much weight the structure can hold before collapsing down for being too heavy.

Also, remember that these fucking house projects take a ton of resources and time. Several massive deforestations have been committed by this player over and over again for his passion project. The highest stats this player has is chopping down wood and building. He who hammers and chops with the strength of Thor. He who also is not seen nearby as the rest of us are stomped into the ground by a troll.

The Mentor

Like Odin, he has sacrificed his eye for knowledge. He sees the streams of creation. He hears the screams of Trolls echoing in the Black Forest. The only thing he tastes is victory and surrendering was never an option. The mentor also has no social life whatsoever and has clocked an unreasonable amount of hours in the game.

The mentor will assist in guiding us towards the path of mid-game. He lets us know the right way of handling resources and what to do next. He is also a showboat that has nothing else to do while he waits for his main server friends to come online.

Without his help, it might’ve taken us hours to figure out how to progress through the game. It’s harder when you have one player who talks about effectively creating spiral stairs in his next treehouse project.

The Soldier

He is bred for one purpose. To eliminate anything that isn’t remotely Viking. He is the bane of the forest creatures. Greydwarves and monsters alike tell their children scary stories about him. Even birds could not avoid his accurate arrows.

He charges into danger with a shield and a broad sword. He confidently performs a heavy attack as he is swarmed by enemies. The warrior that lusts for battle.

He’s also the fool who spends valuable resources to make weapon items. Keep bronze and tin away from this player as he will use them to make and upgrade the bronze equipment he or she has on.

He is always seen stealing wood from The Builder to make more arrows. They don’t get along sometimes.

The Noob

He has no survival instinct. Like a newborn child, every little interaction in the game is a new experience for him. Fire is hot. Water is wet.

He finds himself trouble in every single corner. The Noob dies in ways that cannot be explained by the experienced players, or even the game creators. He is a walking game bug.

Seeing him stuck in a hole can sometimes be delightful. But when you desperately need that extra set of hands for help, he’s either lost or ends up dying too fast to make a difference.

Use him as bait or fodder, it’s the best you can do with this particular friend.

The Age of Shiny Bearded Men

We’ve mastered wood and rock. After that, we’ve conquered a few dungeons. We’ve built great forges and it is now time to shape metal. Bend it into instruments of war.

Take anything that The Black Forest head on! You still need to dodge a troll’s attack though. That shit will kill you in a couple of hits. You and your band of shiny brothers are now ready to try to get on the game. The next boss after the first is located unreasonably far. I mean…why? It’s so god damn far.

You could also build portals in this game. Yes, actual working portals that will transport to anywhere in the map, granted you’ve built two portals that are linked together by Viking magic. And remember, you’re not allowed to carry raw and processed precious metals into the portal. I guess that’s one of the game’s built-in hard level blocks so it doesn’t break the levelling experience.

But what about the ocean? How am I supposed to travel vast distances if I can’t cross the other side of the ocean? Every attempt to reach new far destinations by foot has been met with a disappointing realization that there is a body of water between you and your destination.

Wait, what?

Holy shit, you can build boats?! No way!!

Sails, Ahoy!

It is time to leave the old shack behind. Everything is too easy. There is no glory in killing pathetic creatures of the forest. The boat is ready.

First off, steering the boat in this game is a little tricky. You have to adjust the sail to catch the wind at the right angle in order to move the boat.

Now you have the ocean to deal with. Big waves to cover the horizon. Sure, there is fear. But the allure of new adventure is too tempting to resist. Oh, storm clouds! No matter. We will ride the storm to Valhalla, brothers!

And we’ve made it. Lady luck is on our side. The new lands look quite similar to when before….OH MY GOD, THERE IS A GIANT SNAKE IN THE WATER!

Here’s another tip for ya. If you lose all of your stamina from swimming, you will use up your remaining HP as stamina. And once it hits zero, you die. As a result, your stuff will be floating on top of the ocean surface.

This is especially going to suck if your spawn point is located in your first area before crossing the ocean. Lovely.

Get Out Of My Swamp

You’ve made a base in the new lands. You’ve seen the Black Forest and Meadows biomes. You’re familiar with the landscape. Hang on. What is that in the distance? Evil-looking trees in the darkness. Looks like something right out of a fairy tale story.

It’s the Swamps. And boy does it get rough in there. Firstly, the sunlight does not penetrate all the way to the swamp floor. Secondly, you have deadly leeches swarming in the shallow waters. You also have zombie creatures with his vastly superior to anything you’ve fought before. And finally, a giant green blob. Yes, a blob. That jumps around and tries to land on top of you to make a meal out of you.

You’ll quickly realize maybe you’re not ready for THE SWAMPS. My bronze sword wasn’t ready for the ensuing ass-kicking that I suffered. However, with better planning and stocking up on the right resources, the swamps can be an adrenaline-pumping experience for you and your team.

Conclusion

Hold on, was this supposed to be a review? Oh damn. Well. The game is good. Go get it here on Steam. Play it with friends. Play it alone. I mean it’s not bad. Above all, better with friends. Get it before it gets expensive. You know how it is. There’s way more content about the game that I did not have the time to cover in this one article.

The article might turn into a book if I were to continue writing everything here. I’ll write more about Valheim along the way. Watch out for the Beginner’s Guide to Valheim, which will be coming out soon!

Valheim developers are adding more stuff into the game as we speak. So yeah, legitimate updates to increase replayability. And as always, well…I don’t have a sign-out phrase yet. I mean this is a pretty new blog. And I’m not famous. What you want me to say? Keep gaming on! Yuck….that was pretentious. So yeah, just get the game already and have fun!