It's a decent blend of stealth and brutally savage combat (albeit janky), with absolutely astonishing battle set pieces with hundreds of highly detailed warriors on screen at the same time and a semi-open world that was more influential to later games like Ghost of Tsushima than anybody gives it credit for. Its problems lie in its high repetition factor, with the same objectives being offered to the player over and over again, and in the sound design: this is a quiet game, with little music to speak of and a number of missing sound effects in and out of combat.
One would be excused for thinking the sound is malfunctioning at first, but no, it's working as intended. Better sound would have gone a long way to make both action and exploration more impactful: it's one thing to cleave a hulking brute in half with your axe or to kick a heavy iron gate off its hinges with puny or even missing sound effects, another to do so with a nice chunky sound to accompany it, and that's simply not there in this title.
The battles deserve a few words of praise: the game was made by the studio behind the Total War series, and it shows: rarely have I seen such concurrent numbers of NPCs charging at each other in real time and populating vast battlefields in an action adventure game. These impressive large scale battles truly make you feel like you're in one of the Lord of the Rings movies, a boast few games can make. Unfortunately, the way these are designed detracts from the fun: the player is supposed to rush to a number of objectives, usually a shaman respawning an infinite amount of enemy troops. Should the player choose to take part in the battle at large instead of rushing to the elimination of these monster closets, they will soon find themselves fighting wave after wave of reinforcements, without any chance of turning the tide of the battle in a more organic manner than just closing the respawn faucets.
It doesn't help that it also suffers from poor performance on consoles and also a poor PC port: irremediably locked at 30 frames (steady at least) and with subpar controller support, it leaves a lot to be desired.
A shame, because with a bit more attention to detail and maybe some tightening up to stem repetition, this game could have been remembered fondly, instead, Viking faded in the mists of time due to its general mediocrity.
One would be excused for thinking the sound is malfunctioning at first, but no, it's working as intended. Better sound would have gone a long way to make both action and exploration more impactful: it's one thing to cleave a hulking brute in half with your axe or to kick a heavy iron gate off its hinges with puny or even missing sound effects, another to do so with a nice chunky sound to accompany it, and that's simply not there in this title.
The battles deserve a few words of praise: the game was made by the studio behind the Total War series, and it shows: rarely have I seen such concurrent numbers of NPCs charging at each other in real time and populating vast battlefields in an action adventure game. These impressive large scale battles truly make you feel like you're in one of the Lord of the Rings movies, a boast few games can make. Unfortunately, the way these are designed detracts from the fun: the player is supposed to rush to a number of objectives, usually a shaman respawning an infinite amount of enemy troops. Should the player choose to take part in the battle at large instead of rushing to the elimination of these monster closets, they will soon find themselves fighting wave after wave of reinforcements, without any chance of turning the tide of the battle in a more organic manner than just closing the respawn faucets.
It doesn't help that it also suffers from poor performance on consoles and also a poor PC port: irremediably locked at 30 frames (steady at least) and with subpar controller support, it leaves a lot to be desired.
A shame, because with a bit more attention to detail and maybe some tightening up to stem repetition, this game could have been remembered fondly, instead, Viking faded in the mists of time due to its general mediocrity.