Odin won't let me go outside anymore and I have Stockholm Syndrome

Early in the year 2021, I heard about this game a decent amount of people were talking about: "Valheim" It appeared to be some sort of Survival Craft / Sandbox title taking place in a Norse mythology setting, and since I love both, I thought to myself: "Hey, let's give this a try!" Several months later, I'm unable to tell if that grunt I just heard came from some creature in the game or my own stomach because of the pasta I ate raw in order to minimize the time spent on something else than building, slaying monsters and gathering materials. Social interactions are a distant memory, time is irrelevant and I could swear the other day my cat attempted to speak norwegian while sporting a fake beard in order to try and get my attention. Now allow me to at least try to explain to you why you should drop everything and make Valheim your new and only religion: -The game's not good; it's amazing . At the time I'm writing this, Valheim is still in early access. This is something I genuinely have to regularly remind myself because so far, it actually feels like a finished product. In my 900+ hours of play time ( ~~shut up~~ ), I could count on a single hand's digits the times I've run into bugs, and all of them were minor things that a simple log out/ log back in immediately fixed, with no consequence whatsoever. From gameplay to graphics, every aspect of the game is so polished that when you take into consideration the fact that this is a work in progress made by a small team of indie developpers, it's enough to put some of the biggest names in the industry through such amounts of shame that they'd wish they were Activision Blizzard right now. -Ok, but what is this game about? Basically, Valheim is some sort of cross between Survival Craft, Adventure and Sandbox set in an open world. The (pretty huge) map is comprised of several different biomes you'll have to explore in order to find crafting and building materials, fight monsters and eventually face bosses. It is procedurally generated at world creation, which means that no two maps will look the same, thus contributing to a unique experience. Progression is based on the improvement of your gear through crafting, which requires materials you'll get from various sources in the world; some of which you'll only have access to after defeating bosses. Recipes are unlocked either by putting said materials into your inventory or interacting with crafting stations for the first time. This means that if you join a world in which the other players have already defeated bosses and stored materials, breaking into their homes and rummaging through the crap they've been hoarding like a real Viking should allow you to catch up on their progression without having to do the exploring and fighting yourself (and possibly ruin your experience in the process, as well as earning yourself the title of Lazy Bastard). To help you achieve your goals, you have a system of "skills" which are improved through pure practice. For example, the more you sprint, the higher your sprinting skill value gets, which progressively allows you to sprint for longer while using less stamina. In other words: practice leads to efficiency. -Sounds nice, but what's so special about it? If you've played other Open World Survival Craft games before, like Ark: Survival Evolved or Conan Exiles (which are pretty damn good in their own right), you might notice some similarities with Valheim in terms of mechanics and gameplay. What Valheim does that others don't in that regard, is either improving on or getting rid of these elements that happen to mostly cause rectal discomfort in other games from the genre. Ever spent four hours farming the stone required to build the three missing walls from your crappy shack in hope of preventing your untimely death from pneumonia caused by a sudden summer breeze, only to be on your way home and suddenly die of dehydration because more than three minutes have passed since the last time you drank? And then you spent two more hours just running to your corpse on the other side of the continent, dying 475 more times in the process because some local flock of seagulls have deemed you the perfect sacrifice to their dark god? But when you finally managed to reach the location of your body, you only found undisturbed dust and sand as even the scorching sun seemed to laugh at your absolute despair? No such tragedy in Valheim . Although you can -and will- die in the welcoming embrace of your friendly neighborhood wildlife, the game is designed in such a way that most of the frustration you'll experience could only be blamed on your own lack of foresight. Examples of this would be the following: - You cannot die of hunger or thirst, although eating is necessary to increase your health and stamina in order to survive encounters with monsters or sudden falls from steep cliffs - The amounts of materials required for crafting and building can be gathered without necessiting to quit your job and survive on potatoes bought on the internet with healthcare money - Weather only affects your health and stamina regeneration rate (except if you plan on climbing snow-covered mountains in your birthday suit, but I'm no one to judge, we've all tried this IRL at least once) - Player corpses have no time limit and will never disappear, even after a server restart - As long as there's four walls and a roof around them, beds can be placed anywhere and the last one you interacted with will act as your next respawn location until you manually disable it Now don't get me wrong: the game absolutely does not lack anything in terms of challenge, and at times you may potentially suffer flashbacks from that time you tried Dark Souls while drunk with your neighbors' newborn baby howling like a tasmanyan devil in the background. -Have you considered seeing a therapist? Don't need to; don't want to. Plus I don't have to do anything you tell me to since you're not even my real mom. -Sounds a bit too perfect, there must be at least some downsides There are, but as surprising or dubious as it may seem, there aren't many in my humble opinion: - Technical optimisation isn't the best as of yet. I'm more specifically thinking about the fact that being in an area with several player-made structures can cause severe framerate drops, even on decent computers. This can go to the point of unplayable on lower-end computers, as it happened to one of my chums who eventually stopped playing for now because of it. Hopefully it will be fixed with an upcoming update. - The damage dealt to structures by some higher-tier creatures just feels like the equivalent of card castles in a room full of chimps with ADHD. - ~~(Used to rant about auto-pickup here, turns out I'm just blind)~~ Keep in mind, however, that the game is still in early access at the time I'm posting this review. -Final words Somewhere in-between thrilling and relaxing, Valheim is a very well-balanced game made with love and passion, and it really shows. The ability to alter the terrain by digging / flattening / raising the ground is pretty dope. Regardless of what you think about the retro-ish style of the graphics, this game is gorgeous . You'll know what I mean. From the very first time I got ganged up on by a group of monsters while peacefully picking berries, to when I took a sip of mead as I watched the horizon from the top of my fortress decorated with the heads of their brethren, I enjoyed every second of this journey I'm still far from being done with. If you are tempted, just buy the game; I promise you won't regret it. Also, f♥♥♥ Greydwarves.

Top 100

Trending

Featured