Northgard

Do not buy. Everytime Northgard gets a major update, 2 new bugs enter the game for each one that is fixed. Then, It takes weeks for the game to get back to a playable state. Small and toxic online community, although from time to time you find very nice players - people. If you're interested, wait for the developer to get their sh*t together. If they do, I'll update this review. As of late November/2024 : They keep adding untested stuff and reworking systems to make them WORSE and even more toxic than before the rework. Northgard has been a good online gaming experience a few times in its history, but now it's definitely not. Also, it's a game that treats GoG.com customers as 2nd class citizens, patches and fixes often come to Gog,com days or weeks later than when they are launched on Steam. Only buy heavily discounted and if you REALLY don't care about multiplayer at all.

I’m not good at RTS. I can find them hard & this was no exception for me. I got up to the part where I needed to out-trade some raven & kept losing. I gave up on story mode by then. But I tried Conquest & Domination, despite losing the former, I enjoyed those. Surprisingly the narrative was decent. It was a cliché plotline about some guy’s dad being killed when invaders raid their village & then he seeks revenge. But still kind of amusing. I’m a sucker for anything that lets you hold territories because it feels more satisfying than randomly building. It actually feels like you’re expanding a kingdom. I liked that it had simple structures & units, it didn’t overwhelm you with stats like archer v calvary or anything. Having a mix of military units was enough to create a decent warband. What I didn’t like was that you couldn’t split the warband. This made moving units around fairly tedious if you wanted to manage multiple groups. Most of the challenge came from resource management. If you started off poorly or didn’t manage it right, it’d have dire consequences on your clan. Fail to stockpile food & they’ll get sick, eventually die. If they’re unhappy, you can’t produce more villagers. I liked that its balanced things like food, wood & coin were infinite but stone & iron was finite & specifically needed for upgrades, so you had to be sensible with your upgrades at times. AI can be a bit iffy too. At 1 point I was doing a conquest that was victory by fame (you have different victory conditions that can be selected at random in non-story mode). At the start of the match, before I had even had the chance to build the dock that can earn fame, AI already hit about 5%, this was on easy. I’m talking < 5 mins. In <5 mins you’re usually only able to build a house, wood cutter & scout. I don’t know how they got there that fast. I don’t intend to play it any further than the 9 hrs I’ve clocked because I feel like I’ve had my fill.

Northgard is the game of almost dead real-time strategy genre. In the age of armies of ftp clones with zero new ideas, made only to suck money with microtransactions, this game is a breath of fresh air. + One of a few of original real-time strategy games made in this decade + Unique gameplay + Pretty and original graphics and sound + Interesting Nordic setting, which wasn't mainstream when they launched the game + Devs a still maintaining the game. Upgrading, balancing, adding new free and paid content. Keeping multiplayer servers up and running - The game had problems with bug on start and it still occansionally have some minor issues - Problems with stability. It seems that devs added obligatory online connection to fight the pirates. This thing causing some troubles. If you like strategy games this is a must buy. Most of negative reviews here are because people rege about stability and connection. 4.5/5

I love this game. Its Settlers all over again but then with awesome graphics. The Norse mythology is very well done and the pronunciation of the Nordic names is very accurate too. Thanks for supporting Linux BTW!

I am a big fan of The Settlers type games so I thought this would be straight down my street. On some levels it seems simpler than The Settlers (version 2 is my comparison), especially in the economic / production area. So I imagined I'd play the game for a little while but it might not hold my attention long term. I was wrong on that. A couple of months later and I am still playing it every now and again. I even spent 8 hours on it one Sunday, which is not something I'd do. My one issue with the game is lack of saving in multiplayer. This makes, in my opinion, multiplayer somewhat useless. I just can't set aside that many hours in one go (apart from that Sunday above!) and can't expect others I'm playing to either.