Jotun: Valhalla Edition

Beautifully drawn levels. Each level has its own features. Funny hordes of dwarves. The game itself is boring. The story is as clichéd as it can be. Not much happening on the levels and they are pretty simple. The bosses are ridiculously difficult compared to the rest of the game. I think I have spent 80% fighting the bosses. It was difficult and bo-o-oring.

First of all, the game is beautiful. The music, the art style, everything seems lovingly crafted. However I found the game to be lacking in every single aspect that makes games enjoyable to play. The camera was either locked so close to your character that you couldn't see a lot of the map at any given time, or so far away that actually seeing what was happening at any given time was a pain. The non-boss maps were sprawling and maze-like it was almost impossible not to get lost, which dimmed any will to explore the maps, which themselves were often very barren, with only a few types of environmental hazards and enemies. Needless to say, the non-boss maps wore out their welcome quite fast. The game feel" was quite terrible. The controls never felt right, the player character controlled sluggishly, the hitboxes were hard to predict because of the controls and the camera angle, and the movement speed was so slow you'd end up enduring the annoying rolling sound just to get there a little bit faster. All in all the game wasn't nearly tight enough to constitute a satisfying experience in the genre. A real shame in a sense, because aesthetically the game is fantastic.

I'll get to the point, I didn't give the game more than I thought it was due. 50 minutes was as much as I could tolerate. There's a lot of open space, which goes hand-in-glove with graphic-empasizing games. Problem is, this game is cheaply/poorly made. The lady MC sprite and animatic cutscenes aside, the visuals split one of two ways: The background and stationary sprites feature entry level digital painting that took all of 3 hours per level. Hyper-repetitive flash animation, so slow that looks like it's animated all on 4s, dominates the remainder. This includes the screen-filling boss fights. Would that I could say that there was something to redeem the visuals in the gameplay, but no. I've seen better from smaller studios on shorter deadlines, anyways, but here goes. The toon steers like a SNES rpg character with none of the snap. She's incredibly slow, either for a sense of realism or to make the world appear bigger by dint of the time it takes one to get anywhere. I'd say would have worked for me a little if the game camera wasn't deeply zoomed in our heroine as she traversed incredibly undetailed slabs of grey/green/brown. MC's run has a working pace of a crawl, the dodge an enfeebled roll in any one direction. You have two attacks- slow and slower. The fastest aspect of movement is changing direction, which aids you with "heavy" attacks and dodging enemies' own. It's a good thing the enemies are slower than your toon, or you might be in real danger- of losing HP, at least. The bosses I've fought are slow and repetitive, but have little to no variance in their patterns. This would be no problem if it were fast to defeat them, but that's where the game's design studio really shines. With bloated health pools, fights that might have been engaging at a faster pace or a lower HP range feel like tedious shlogs to the finish. Based on my experiences. the game seems solely designed around taking up your time. Give it a pass, even if you got it for free.

My score would be 3.5 instead of 4 stars. Story: It's decent. Easy to follow. I didn't mind that it was told in a foreign language. (8/10) Visuals: The art style, boss renderings, and the stages were pleasingly good. No complaints here. (8/10) Music: Fit the game well. Considering the game is mostly walking and not much interacting, the music kept my attention enough to want to continue playing. Most of the boss battle tracks were very good (Isa, Hagalaz, and Odin). (9/10) Gameplay: This is where the game suffers, but it could have been so much more. There's nothing wrong with simplistic controls, but it can't be to the detriment of the gameplay experience. Why is there an annoying cooldown for every move in the game? If the size of Thora's axe is to blame for why she's so slow to move, slow to swing, and slow to dodge, then there should have been smaller, more manageable axe that you could have obtained towards to the middle of the game to liven the gameplay up some. This would have been especially helpful during the final boss fights when the speed at which you move was more of a reason you got hit as opposed to a lack of skill or awareness to avoid being hit. I have read other reviews that say that they wish the speed of the game was faster. I agree. The game could have been 30-50% faster. This would have made for a much enjoyable experience during boss battles as you spend most of the time trying to get close so that you can do a few hits, rinse, and repeat. The god powers you get are useful, but they are really only needed because of the clunkiness of the controls. If the gameplay was tighter, this would have been a much more enjoyable experience. (3/10) If you need something to occupy an afternoon or two and you find it on sale, give it a try. Despite being as slow and clunky as it was, I did enjoy my time with it.

Game has great visuals and really nice music. Hand crafted levels show huge potential, and on the surface game looks fine. However gameplay itself is terrible. You just have two attacks, one slow/strong and other fast/weak. Also you have some skills but they don't add much to the gameplay. On the other hand boss fights show potential but are again dragged down by dull combat. Game is really short (about 4-6) hours and yet most of it is constant downtime. There is almost no point in exploration, because every map has just two not really helpful buffs to find. You do nothing but walk most of the time which kills the last bits of good experience you could have. Overall it's sadly a below average title.