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The game is fun and the artstyle and mechanics are great. The performance is absolutely awful, especially in some multiplayer modes. This makes them almost unplayable and extremely frustrating.
I bought this game because it was on discount (and because it is an Indy Game). I did not expect, that I would play it much, because I am a singleplayer and I had the impression that Northgard is more a multiplayer game. But there is enough to do for singleplayer too. And of course I don't know how good the multiplayer mode is.
The game is a little bit like Civilization and Settler, at first glance much simplier, only a few kinds of buildings, a few technologies and no production chains. But it is harder to survive and there are different ways to do that.
The art style is cartoonish, you may like it or not depending on you preferences, but it is well done.
The story mode is basically a tutorial with a nice little story (I love the voice of the narrator). I will definitely repeat it on higher difficulty.
I'm particulary surprised how much fun the conquest mode is. It seems to be made for singleplayer and will keep me busy for a while.
It is very good strategic game, it could be a nice gem in RTS world I would say, but there are some issues making this game a bit annoying. The latest patch introduced some bugs, 3 games played, conquest multiplayer mode, and 3 crashes - time lost, no progress done. The main issue is linux support. Yes it is possible to install and run it in Linux, but support for this system is getting worse and worse.... It was and still is not possible to play any multiplayer, but now in the latest patch is not possible to play even the singleplayer, there is just story mode available, so about 75% of features disabled. Thats very pitty and I am starting to regret that I bought this game...
I hope that bugs will be fixed soon, but I very doubt that Linux will be supported in future :(
It's a very well thought-out RTS. Gameplay is polished and very good at what it is. However, beware that this game will not suit a player who is expecting a traditional RTS experience. This game plays like an Warcraft 3 style RTS mixed with a city builder and a board game and this blend of genres comes with its pros and cons. I haven't played any other game that felt like this and because of that I needed a lot of time to get used to it.
Playing through ~2-3 campaign missions is a MUST to learn how to play properly. Otherwise You will be spending a lot of time trying and failing to grasp all the different mechanics that this game just keeps throwing at you in a single match.
Also - because of its board-game-esque gameplay, a single match takes ~2 hours on average to finish. 1v1 may last an hour or so, but do not expect to crank out 2 matches in an hour - that's impossible even when You play through campaign and a bunch of skirmish matches.
Despite the fact that I come from traditional RTS and Tactical RTS genre and this game is a bit slow for me, I play it a lot lately. Highly recommended. You won't find a similar experience anywhere.