Northgard

Once my Favourite game, as you can see I have 1k hours. I used to adore this game and recommend to everyone who asked me.

I dont play singleplayer, I bought this for the multiplayer pvp so I cant comment on that aspect of the game. This review is based soley on the multiplayer experience.
Northgard used to be a fun multiplayer experience although flawed it was fun, and if you had experience in the game could soon find yourself climbing rank and progressing. The lobby system used to allow players to choose who they played with, creating matches that where balanced and fair in skill and rank, for both high rank and low rank players

The new auto matchmaking is a joke and has slowly but surely brought the decline of the multiplayer scene. Players perpetually stuck in low rank even though they are skilled because team imbalance, auto matchmaking didnt and doesnt respect player skill, often a player with experience and skill getting placed with the low rank new players against 3 other high rank players, an obvious loss even if you attempted to play it through.

You might think, oh he is mad because HE is stuck in low rank and is probably just bad at the game. I cant tell you how many games I enter where I come across another wooden shield player who clearly should be king rank or higher, a raven player with a wood or silver crest only to pull off play perfectly. I should have lost to them but alas because high rank players have been matched with low rank players for such a long period of time now that they are stuck with poor teammates allowing me to dominate their team.

Rank no longer has any meaning in this game, its a crap shoot and you have no idea the skill level of the player you are playing with or going up against anymore, making it an overall terrible experience. and I haven't even gone into the bugs that get introduced with each update sometimes making the process of getting into a game in the first place a nightmare.

My advice to the devs would be to bring back the lobby system, the matchmaking system just does not work and I have finally after several attempts at coming back to this game decided to lay it to rest and not come back anymore.
It was really my favourite game for a long time and I'm bitter that I no longer get to experience the joy I used to have playing this title, hurts to see it decline so much over the last year or two.

Honestly speaking, I've been playing this game probably since it came out. I truly wish I could give it a positive review, but between the multiplayer issues, the conquest issues, the singleplayer issues, the Issues with the AI in general, and the direction the game is being taken, I have to give it a negative review.

The AI is effectively given infinite gold and happyness it seems like, resulting in deathstacks roaming around the map and randomly targeting a player or another ai until something distracts them. 10 minutes into the game and you have to face an army of 12+ units, while you can only afford/marshal 4 + hero, sometimes just your hero. The DLC Clans are notorious for this, especially the Lion and Stoat. ESPECIALLY THE STOAT! If you go for any objective other than conquest, you'll either end up with all of the bots aiming at you to prevent you from winning, or will get ignored by the bots in entirety. The bots only ever go for conquest victories. They used to go for all types of victories, but I've yet to see one do so in years.

This game isn't in a good state right now, and a lot of work is going to be needed to get it right. Fix the AI's,

I used to love the game, but now its clear the dlcs are game updates. skip this game

So many of the tooltips in the game are incorrect, and it makes it very difficult to figure out how anything works. The community is so small that there aren't many people datamining or explaining how things work. At its core there is a good game here, but I don't want to have to join the dev team to have fun playing the game.

To force a player to buy each new clan, not even releasing the new clans for free after a while is just a terrible experience. I can afford it, but do not want to play in such a community, where trust is broken between the player and developers by forcing someone to pay more or not enjoy the game.

feels like a mobile game, theyve stripped away the rts elements so all you are really doing is getting a decent sized warband together and running around curbstomping the enemies. maybe pvp is different but I made it 4 chapters in and have no desire to finish it.

If its on sale its not a bad time waster but don't expect depth here.

My wife and I had enjoyed this game vs. bots. 2v2 or 3v3 if a friend joins. Used to play Hard bots and it was a decent game that we could occasionally lose...now? Now we get stomped early game because the bots have an insane (seemingly) uncapped military. They can have ONE camp and as many warriors as they want. It just gets tiring. Even normal bots can be rough.

We LOVED this game, it was our cozy relaxing pass time. Now? We play one game and get frustrated because it just isn't fun anymore.

Until they improve bot games, my review will stay negative.

So i bought this game a couple years ago but left it to marinate for a bit. This review is only on the main campaign.

- The biggest bug was crashing at the finish of a game, having to replay it/reload it. But after a couple times this was resolved.

- There were many more near bugs/strange decisions imo: In the final mission my allied units did get attacked by the befriended Jotunn, but not my own units, which was kinda weird to me. Could be intentional, but having to split your army just because of that seems like a weird mechanic.
Other things were not being able to conquer zones using food because you had to build food silos to increase your capacity. Which however is restricted by 1 per zone with food production. So you were forced to use gold at times which, because of the increasing cost, took ages in a longer game.

- I also feel the balance of the game is somewhat strange, as the earlier missions seemed harder to me than the later ones. For example the time limit in the mission against the raven girl was way harder than the final missions time limit. There also were some visual bugs or strange things at least: The raven girl bows to her bear and not to you/mc when she submits, but i dont mind that too much.

So those kind of things seem weird and make the game a bit worse to play. As if its not streamlined or finished yet.

The graphics were fine, gameplay was fun with its different factions. The military and economic parts could have had a bit more depth but its fun to play through. I will try the other mods like conquest the coming days as those might surprise me positively. I would recommend the game as its fun to play through, but be aware its not fine tuned as well as you might expect and is not the most indepth military/economic strategy game. But fun nonetheless.

Hi, this game seems fun, but has constant issues, such as crashing when completing a campaign mission and campaign objectives not completing when they should, stopping you from progressing in the game. I will be requesting a refund.

Used to be the best game. Now so buggy its unplayable. Crashes at the end of every game. and start anything else and you risk the blue screen. Shame was so good. need to move on and find a new number one

Seems like a great game but it has too many bugs. Crashes every time you win a level and if you wait 15 minutes it may clear or it may not, sending you back to replay the level. Not worth the trouble IMO.

Game breaking bug where any game that is finished becomes unresponsive.
I cannot progress the story or continue playing any single player games.

When finishing a chapter of the story the Victory button freezes. According to the forum, you have to wait for 5 - 6 minutes. This works foe the first 3 chapters. After that, the time for refund passes and the game no longer works. Refund not accepted, game can't be played. It seems that lots of the games on Steam have this strategy of taking your money. Too bad ... I was hoping to actually be able to play this game

Just bought this game and the story mode freeze at the first scenario on the victory screen. After reloading several times and trying out, it finally suceeded. However, same issue occurs at the end of scenario 2. Very frustratig.

Played this game with a friend because he wanted a more complicated resource management system than StarCraft 2 and I wanted to still control units myself to maximize potential. This game easily became an immediate favorite for the both of us and we play almost every night now.

Nice strategy game that can be played entertainingly as well as seriously competitively, and the game's soundtrack is very well done.
There are a number of factions to try out, each with a unique way of playing, and some with their own unique way of winning.

Annoying stutters when you move camera or start building. No matter what settings you set or if you lock fps - it always drops by 5-15 frames. It's known issue in community since 2020 and its not fixed

game makes fun, clans are a blatant cash grab basicly each clan is just another faction all of them better then the base factions. But the main reason why U SHOULDNT BUY !!! the game is incredibly buggy, best example complete freeze after finishing the first campain.
Its 7 years old with 10 dlcs but u cant play the campain? A joke

really fun game but at the end of each game it crashes so you have to log back in. i have tried on 3 computers now and each time it is the same thing. if you are a patient person like me no biggie but i know most people wold get frustrated with something of this nature. so i do recommend this game for those with great patience but not so much for those that get easily frustrated.

great game but definitely feels pay to win with the other classes and I cant play them because i'm a poor man

Played for almost 6 months now.
Enjoyed it for most of the time but recently fun is gone. Unbalanced AI, strange conquest missions with no solutions. wont play it again. its a shame because there were good basics.

The most laggy RTS game that will cost you more than one victory.
After the April update, it's unbearable to play with players from different countries. I just wasted several hours trying to win multiple games, but, alas, due to crashes and freezes in the game itself, I lost so many matches.

I've played Northgard a lot, and I really like this game. But when you have just one free hour in the evening, and out of many games, you choose Northgard, only to be let down — it starts to get extremely frustrating.

I sincerely hope the developers will work on fixing these issues and make the game even better. Otherwise, players will start saying goodbye to Northgard and look for alternative strategy games.
Good luck, Shiro Games!

Its not a bad game but i do believe its trailers are misleading... its more of a lane style game very fixed on things you can do compared other RTS games.

Great game that will get a positive review when this stupid in game mechanic is fixed. In Northgaard you can lose an entire army (1 hour worth of gaming) in a matter of 2.5 seconds - no joke. Crazy clicks and micromanagement which I don't mind but when you level up your military you get a pop up that removes ALL control until you ESC out of it. Meaning if you level up mid engagement you can and will be fucked. Other than that great game - how the community hasn't put its foot down on this and demanded change is beyond me.

Liked this game back when I originally bought it. I've returned years later to find about 3x the number of clans I have unlocked at start behind a paywall, absurd to put dlc content behind a $60 paywall. Might play through the story again but this was disappointing to see.

*spends $30 in DLC content*
*game crashes mid game for building a mine*
sigh

Love this game but I'm tired of it crashing

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. This game has experienced so many updates and the devs refuse to fix the major crashing issues that prevent progression. There are many Conquest missions that cannot be completed for vast reasons, some are bug related, some are just poor design, some are updates that overwrote old behavior and the new behavior wasn't tested and results in unstable sessions or poor AI behavior. The devs only care about putting out new clans (that are not good and not worth additional money). They should listen to their fan base and FIX THEIR GAME!

Game is ok but the policy of DLCs is not.
6 Base clans , 14 DLC Clans, each a Microtransaction for 1/6 of the games whole worth.

I feel there is not enough diff between each clans.

Terrible AI balancing, 5000 troops in the early game and way too agressive, no challenge at all in mid and late game on highest difficulty. Multiplayer often crashes or isn´t available at all. Devs prioritize cosmetics and DLCs instead of fixing the obvious issues.

Been a fan of this game but recent update made the game unplayable. Played every game mode then crashes after a few minutes gameplay. Even the bug report is not working and saved games crashes as well. Not worth buying even on sale.

После последних обновлений играть в коопе невозможно. Дисконект и лаги.
Кнопка реконекта к последней игре, конечно, классно. Но толку от неё 0, бесконечный лоадер.
10 охеренных коопов из 10
Ну шо за дела, госпади(

Slow and not satisfying to win. I feel like gameplay is similar to age of empires but with less to do and slower progression. I wouldn't recommend it to a friend but I can see why people would enjoy it

I've tried and tried and tried to play this single player and i just think it is broken. I've never been able to beat the comp on harder difficulties. I've tried so many different combinations and the computer is just stacked. maybe someone knows better on how to manage this game but i sure can't do it. Population trickles in while somehow the computer has as many troops as i have people, even when no ones dies. Like how do I win against that? The comp can just magically get all the resources, i cant feed anyone or get firewood becuase either everyone is getting resources or everyone needs to fight and you cant switch back and forth from troop to person because you have to pay to outfit every one one each god damn time. Hey DEVS i bought the soldier once, why do i have to buy the each time i make them into a combat person? Not to mention each one you buy the price scales...it fucking scales. At least refund some of the coin if your gonna charge me every time. I wipe out the comp army, my dudes are hurt, but somehow the computer can just shit out more dudes instantly. How do they have at least 600 coin and when even if i dedicate my entire economy to coin i can only gen half as much (300 for the initial levy and then another 300 to replace). Not to mention the 5 people i just killed.. Where do they come from?! i have to wait at least 30 fuckin days before i get another dude. I kill 5 soldiers, and 3 workers when my pop is only 16. I killed half of them and then BANG 5 more fucking soldiers. How do they feed themselves while they only have maybe a few workers in the back? Oh and the time in between new people also scales based on happiness, and the happiness is so hard to keep up. You have to have at least 1 worker on happiness or the rate at which ppl show up is so slow you cant win. Taking that person away early on makes it so you can get food and wood fast enougb, but if you dont have them no one shows up. It is fucked.
I try to play online and it never really works, so i don't know how that feels. I just feel like this game is broken. Comp on harder difficulties is totally broken they shit out new factions you can play but I cant play this thing. On medium it is too easy and on hard or extreme fuck it is unplayable. If you're trying to play single on hard, there is not any fun unless you just like losing. I think i'd pass on this one.

This is my favorite game. Between Shiro's servers, waiting to even find a game, and a
community of leavers and griefers it is a massive waste of time. You can easily waste a couple hours and not get a single full game in.

So, I bought & played the game right at its launch with a friend and it was great fun. After a few clans came out I stopped playing, around 2019.

And going back to it in 2025, this is a very refreshed blast!
The visuals improvements are very much welcome, those cloud shadows, sun rays, weather (fog) & seasonal evolution bring so much life to this stylistic world that I completely immerse into it despite the visual style not being my thing.
Add to that amazing music, sound design & a great sense of pace & progression with a huge variety of ennemies & encounter...
It has to be one of the chillest most satisfying & best blend of RTS/sim & city building game creating its own genre.

If you want to play an "Age of Empire, but I wish it had more features & depth, but in a chill yet surprisingly combat-driven gameplay loop", well that's it.

If there was close to a perfect tight & deep game, this one is it!
Can't recommend enough!

It's a good game, but it has happened 3 times out 5 games that my save game could not be opened. It probably happened after a patch update and there has been multiple patch updates within the span of a few days. Great that you're still working on it, but please make sure my save games can be opened so I don't have to start over every day.

its a good game i love it connection for multiplayer was abit of bad due to my bad internet but i still enjoyed it and imagine northgard but japanese themed with all the clans it would be sooo cooool :D

I spent almost 2 hours trying to beat the first mission. I like RTS games so I started this up on Hard. There's no real way to know what's going on, there are UI elements that are just icons with no explanation.

First try, I guess I didn't utilize the zones properly so I wasn't able to generate enough food to keep everyone alive. Try again, things go much smoother, but I still don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. The mission objectives just say "we must now reach the shores of Northgard." I don't know where that is so I figure I'll just keep exploring and colonizing until it says complete.

It keeps telling me how important this Brand guy is, but I don't know what his deal is. When I click his name in the UI it just targets my main hall and that doesn't seem to help anything. Eventually I find out I can hire him at the training lodge but he costs a lot of gold (krowns) and some resource I've never seen before; looks like a silver bar of some sort. Cool, maybe I'll find that soon.

I fight through zones clearing out wolves. Draugr open up portals and I beat them back. I colonize the entire map, build every type of building there is. Even built a dock on the north shore which I thought might be the victory condition but no luck. By this point, I have absolutely no idea what to do. I've gathered every resource I can figure out and now my citizens are just wandering around with maxxed out food bitching that they want better houses and better town halls. That's fine, except in order to upgrade houses I need to upgrade the town hall first. In order to upgrade the town hall, I need stone. There's no way to gather stone yet in the game so that's not happening.

I finally decided to look it up and find out that you're supposed to start the game with Brand already, you shouldn't have to hire him, so he's really just not spawning like he's supposed to. The objectives are also supposed to list an objective, which was to reach the shore to the north, which I did within the first 5 minutes.

Furthermore, the bonus objectives were to gather 500 food (I had over 1500), explore the damaged houses (did that within 15 minutes), and build the longship dock before year 3 (I think I did that one too).

But since the guy just doesn't spawn, I can't complete the first part of the very first mission. I tried restarting it on different difficulties, cannot get this guy to spawn. I'm just glad I was able to get out of the game just before the 2 hour time limit.

I'd say get this game if its on sale. Painfully slow levels in story mode, AI can make or break a game. But that's all the negatives I have for this game. Overall, the game is very rewarding and has the feeling that SC1 and SC2 had me feeling. It's a solid game but I'd say wait for a discount or sale to give it a go as it took a while for me to get into.

I love the game. the game play and everything, litrally reminds me of Settlers 4 from back in the day.

only problem is the money grabbing shit from the DLC.

great game fun to play, not balanced at all but you can easly trick the OP clan to fuck up

10/10 love to make my friend rage quit <3

very good game. alot of thinking and quite challenging

A simple yet fun version of any simulation strategy game. Love the enemy variation and unique victory conditions.

Its Okeyish Game u can have fun for like 20 hours but what i dislike in story mode everything is time based game is forcing u to rush building army etc u cant chill at this game.
I rather would play KKND2 than this game or AOE or Dune 2000 new dune is shit btw overrated .
If u get this game cheap on steam is worth it otherwise u just gonna get angry and nervous. don't recommend to buy dlcs they too pricey

Grew up playing AoE, this is (in my opinion) more interactive and engaging. The unique clans all function very differently, requiring you to nearly overhaul your playstyle for each one. The AI opponents cheat horrendously though, so if you want to win the harder matches/modes you are pretty much at the mercy of RNGesus. As annoying as the extreme difficulty can be, it is a lot of fun to tackle co-op conquest with a friend.

Been enjoying the campaign, game's mechanics are interesting. overall quite enjoyable

Northgard is a great real-time strategy game with a unique blend of city-building, resource management, and Viking lore. The gameplay is engaging, with different clans offering diverse playstyles, and the mix of exploration, survival, and conquest keeps things interesting. The art style and atmosphere fit the Norse theme perfectly.

However, the DLCs are a mixed bag. While they add new clans with unique mechanics, they often feel overpriced for what they offer. Some clans feel unbalanced or gimmicky rather than adding real depth to the game. If you enjoy the base game, some DLCs might be worth it, but overall, they don’t always justify their cost.

I wanna start off by saying that his is a great game overall. That said, the gameplay loop and atmosphere gets kinda old and the factions aren't balanced. None of the single player experience is much to talk about. It might be worth $10 or maybe $15 but not the full price. But, biggest reason why I cannot recommend this game is the achievements being locked behind faction DLCs that effectively double the price of the game. $60 is absolutely bonkers for the all factions bundle and buying them one at a time (like how they came out) is even more expensive. Greedy and manipulative sales tactics are a no from me dawg.

The perfect balance between large civ builders like Civ and more focused city builders like Banished. SO much content and different ways to play. This is my new favorite game for sure. Hoping some of that DLC goes on sale

Great RTS! What really convinced me was the gameplay—easy to learn but hard to master. I especially noticed this during my initial experience with the game. While there aren't many buildings or units, there are numerous ways to utilize them, making every decision feel important.

I enjoy the art style; it suits the Nordic theme well. The gameplay is engaging. Strategic thinking is crucial, but the game remains accessible—you can still win even if you're not the best RTS player. As you learn more, you begin to see deeper strategic possibilities.

One thing that surprised me is the number of game modes and how distinct they are from one another (story mode, mode with quick battles, classic mode, multiplayer and more). This significantly enhances replayability and keeps the experience fresh. Another standout feature is the clan system—each clan comes with unique abilities and playstyles, allowing for varied approaches to the game.

At the time of writing this review, I have only about 8 hours in the game, but I will definitely return to it. Northgard is a well-made RTS where everything comes together nicely, offering a balanced mix of accessibility and depth.

Only played solo but a lot of fun. Nice 4x feel but casual enough.