Northgard

Bought it during a sale. Game kept failing to load my saved games. I tried giving it a chance, saving it in a different slot, when I found discussions on Steam about others having the same issue I realized it was not me.
Refunded for myself and those I gifted it to.

The game is promising. The different flavours of clans feel like an interesting idea and reminds of the time when there was more than just RTS grounded in real-life history. Different win conditions are also present. It does feel a bit weird to play with a tile system where you have to claim each piece of the land or f.e. that one military building can only produce two warriors, 3 if upgraded. But that is just me being used to old RTS games probably.

Them going hard on releasing each clan as a separate DLC is questionable to me too. I understand, they gotta eat and keep developing but I personally would rather pay a bit more to buy the game in full, all in one place from the get go.

Loved this game at first. It's just way too imbalanced now. On Normal difficulty the AI cheats for resources and units so if you get the Swamp biome you're toast. There's a bug on Extreme difficult that the AI is actually easier because they don't cheat for soldiers. So all ppl playing on Extreme think the game is easy, hilarious. Normal should be a comp stomp if you're decent at managing economy. I'm getting stomped every time now and stuck on a level that's unbeatable because the AI get's free resources and units. Devs are greedy AF.

I bought Northgard on sale because I like strategy games and it seemed interesting. Unfortunately, my experience has been frustrating. The user interface is incredibly small and doesn’t adjust to fit the screen, making it hard to see or use. I spent hours playing yesterday, saved my game, and returned to find an error message about a corrupted save. When I continued, my game was frozen and completely glitched. All my progress was lost. Between the tiny UI and the instability, this game is difficult to enjoy. Even on sale, I regret buying it.

I'm sorry- but I actually don't understand all the positive reviews and can not recommend this game despite how much I like the gameplay.
The devs love small quick matches like League of Legends loves ranked, so with the way the game has been built now over time, most clans have their identity stripped to "slightly different war-chief and brewer", "slightly different research effects than normal", except for some of the more powerful clans.

Which is strange, I shouldn't be allowed to actually say, "more powerful clans", and that shouldn't be a decision factor, but it's a HUGE one. Of course, they all cost money too. I would name them for examples, but then the devs will take notes, and make those few clans just as useless as the rest.
Some are basic or get overshadowed by something stronger, and when enough people finally complain, rather than buffing the weaker clans they nerf the stronger ones. Overtime the entire game has slowly become a slog because most clans are unfun to play for one reason or another, and all of them struggle a lot more than they should throughout the game, especially at the very beginning and end game.

Speaking of, I don't even want to talk about end game- I used to have singleplayer saves go on for days, just against the max difficulty environment with the map special victory. But now, if you run any match, single or multiplayer for longer than 2 hours, the entire game starts to shit itself and quickly destabilizes, no good game should do that. Case in point: the game used to be good, and when it was this didn't happen. But now, it's slowly getting ran into the ground because I'm not sure the devs know what the community wants, and they keep pushing out content for money at the cost of bugs and server instability.

If you then think mods can save this game, guess again sadly, because judging from the fact that there are like 3 or 4 ACTUAL mods, each multiple years old, and everything else are maps, it must be extremely hard to mod, which also isn't doing this game any favors. Again, I like the gameplay, but so many blunders and strange things make it not fun.
I will say though, the DLC clans are worth it if it looks like something you're interested in, the mixed reviews / negative on most are literally just because it was buggy when first released and those reviews never got taken down, or it's people complaining about how the clan is too op or not op enough. Ignore that noise and focus on what looks like the most interesting playstyle, they all play great, but it's just not the same still, as it was years ago.

The amount of time I've put into this game is not a reflection of the quality of the game. It's a reflection of the very slow pace, and very steep learning curve. Basically, the first 30 minutes of any game, you're entirely on your own. You're competing against the elements, and trying to build up your colony. But then you encounter an opponent, and it becomes IMMEDIATELY clear if you did well to prepare for their invasion. Either you get steamrolled, or you do the steamrolling. There is not much exciting back and forth in this game, and it takes way too much time to get the repetitions in to figure out how to build up your base effectively.

This has to be one of the worst AI's I've seen in a long time (!)

Cheating AI to compensate for being bit dumb is common practice in RTS games, but apparently the devs think that their AI is stupid beyond any redemption so they juiced all the cheating levers to the moon and the only thing that remains is artificial difficulty in the most boring and tedious way.

Raiding/attacking an AI is absolutely pointless unless you can actually destroy their main base. They're barely relying on population for their production and any villagers/military units you kill respawn almost instantly anyway so it's absolutely pointless to raid them.

The issue seemed a bit less apparent during the Campaign, so at least that part was bit better balanced. But trying out Conquest mode afterwards is just absolutely disgusting. It's doable, but an absolute drag cause it requires constant micromanagement to barely compensate for all the AI cheating. And even then it takes so long to finish off an opponent because raiding an AI does barely anything, so unless you're way way stronger the AI will just bounce back in the blink of an eye.

Bit of cheating would be fine, but I mean the AI units literally respawn like 2-3+ times faster, and their armies have barely any upkeep so it doesn't matter if you destroy their economy cause they will just field an army of 15+ units without any economy supporting them anyway. It's just a joke imo, this is not an actual challenge.

Please put some actual thought and at least a little bit of effort into your AI so the cheating doesn't have to be so blatantly in your face.

It's a shame, cause the base game mechanics are interesting enough, the game looks nice visually and has a good theme. The campaign is decent and multiplayer might be fine, but beyond that the AI is a hot broken mess preventing you from having any fun.

fix that shitty servers. Trying to find the game for over 30mins and suddenly im getting message "server not responding"

The limitations in the game needs to be tweaked. This game could be such a great game, but the scaling is so low and congested feeling. The rats are just stupid. They don't present challenge, they just piss you off and wreck your game. Incoming raiding ships are WAY over powered and not challenging at all, it just simply destroys you. It can either occupy your military or you just get pummeled. They need to fix the gameplay. What is the point? What is the goal? I don't get it. 2/5

very fun game, 5$ for each new tribe ruins everything.

Technically it's a good game.

But it seems the current focus is on new tribes to buy, rather than game stability.
At least in the last six months, errors occur regularly and the game freezes.
It's quite annoying if you lose a few hours of play.

In addition, the AI isn't stable either. With normal it's sometimes quite difficult.
On easy it's... well easy but some times challaging as well - but sometimes the AI doesn't do much at all.

Do you like fun games? Games that work? Games that offer a good balance of challenge/reward?

Well this isn't that game. At worst you get a few minutes into the game, then the bots raid you twice or more at the same time so you're forced to start over. At best you do decent, The stats and military look good, but you get a ~3fps slide show you can't do anything about. It is a cool concept that can be fun at times and you can really get into it, but the current execution Is not there.

Very good strategy game, with a lot of content and ways to play it. Single player, online, with friends or solo. Highly Recommended!!

FIX YOUR AI. IT IS EMBARRASSING AND GAME BREAKINGLY AWFUL.

The AI system plays so robotically. Any time you move your troops anywhere, the bots know to execute whatever script. Above all else, they literally CHEAT. They have way more troops than would be possible based on tiles. 0/10. If the AI was fixed id play it.

Northgard is a fun game with a lot of potential, but it often feels like it's stuck in a perpetual beta state.
New bugs are frequently introduced with updates, and frustratingly, some older bugs tend to reappear as well.
This pattern seems to coincide with the release of new DLCs, which focus more on adding content to drive sales rather than ensuring the base game is fully polished.

The campaign is a highlight of the game — it's engaging and, by now, should be relatively stable after addressing many earlier issues.
However, the Conquest mode is still plagued by numerous bugs, which can hinder the overall experience.

The AI in the game is particularly frustrating. Instead of being "intelligent," they rely heavily on blatant cheating. There are significant discrepancies between AI clans: some will obliterate you with massive armies despite having virtually no visible economy, clearly benefiting from resource generation cheats. Others are so poorly designed that they practically self-destruct in some Conquest missions, making their behavior wildly inconsistent and often immersion-breaking.

As for multiplayer, I can't comment since I don't play it, but it's worth researching if that's a primary interest for you.

In summary, Northgard is a game I'd cautiously recommend.
While it offers an enjoyable and unique experience, its persistent technical problems and uneven updates make it hard to fully endorse. Still fun to play, but can be frustrating sometimes.
If you're willing to look past the flaws, it can be worth your time — but proceed with tempered expectations.

The DLC is not worth it. $4.99 for a single faction that you might not even like? Such a weird game. cool story but a lot of opportunities for the campaign to soft-lock, especially in the expansion, which ALSO costs money, despite not being thoroughly tested. do not recommend

If you are player not good at fast pace and manage land no recommended for this specially play with other friends it just destroy relationship

Not only does the games AI cheat excessively, it doesn't even do a good job of hiding it. Prepare to be focus fired by all NPCs on the map at the exact moment you move to defend elsewhere, their knowledge exact, their co-operation flying in face of the free-for-all. They have more resources, have to defend themselves less against monsters, handle emergent issues (frequent and crippling to you) without issue while attacking with a force twice the size of your own, while you barely muster an economy (which must be tightly crafted and again, can be crippled at any time).
I realize cheating AI is nothing new in the genre, but my god this is just un-fun. I play a game to enjoy it, not to hate myself. Basically, it doesn't feel like a challenge, it just feels cheap. Polish your AI and remove it's innate bonuses. Hell, even if you can't polish the AI remove them anyways and just let easy/normal difficulty be playable, I have no idea why anyone but most sweaty power gamer would ever select a higher difficulty aside from being a masochist.

8/10 Great RTS Game Wow, I wished I had picked up Northgard sooner. This is very much a modernized version of Age of Empires with some boardgame-like elements. Normally, I hate elements that are boardgame-like, but it works really well here. Also, I gotta say that you wouldn't even know this was Early Access with how polished and full of content it is (I did have one crash, though). I booted it up and four hours flew by. Took me about an hour to get my head around the mechanics.

Essentially, this is a RTS game with a variety of victory conditions. Everything is fully customizable. I only played single player and that mode is great; I'm excited to try multiplayer. Because it has multiplayer, there is no manipulation of time or pausing. Some refer to this title as a 'city builder', but I don't see really any aspects of city building - it's a RTS like Age of Empires. What really makes Northgard stand out from the pack is how the map is built from large tiles. The tiles create a whole new dimension to how you go about playing the game. Here are some interesting things:
You can only build on your tiles, and each tile has a colonization cost (usually food).
Not all tiles are created equal; many have powerful resources and/or buffs associated with them.
There is a special victory condition associated with a tile on each map; there are variations of this tile that are quite unique. For example, one I had to colonize was covered in magma. Once I got there, I needed to build a forge and then craft a special sword. Once I crafted it, I won. It was neat.
Everything felt great, overall. I'll definitely be dumping time into this one. I like the achievements, too.

Pros:
+Very polished and full of content already
+While staying true to the RTS genre, it definitely brings tons of fresh new ideas and mechanics to the table; the tiles are an outstanding addition
+UI is super clean and easy to understand
+Music and artwork are great
+The currently available factions all have cool attributes and lend themselves well to varying strategy

Cons:
-Honestly, I haven't found anything to really nit-pick about yet

This game is on the top of my list for “favorite games”. I appreciate the frequent updates to the game as well. The devs are still engaged with the game and it shows. I’m always looking forward to when the next clan will be released, and to see what new mechanics that clan has.

If you have a buddy or 2, or 3 buddies, the bifrost is all I play now, so it’s worth checking out. That game mode is basically a rougelike. Every play through is new and different based on the upgrades you will get. Coming up with good synergies with clans is really neat and exciting. The bifrost was a great addition to the game. I hope they continue to develop the bifrost game modemore in the future, but it still has a ton of replay value as of now.

I highly recommend Northgard, especially if you got a buddy to play with.

Fun game. Little Glitches like some unit will get stuck in a loop deciding which way to go. Enemy strenght scale insanely with difficulty level. I would say its a good distraction for solo story and couple game vs ai.

Multiplayer community is disgraceful. Hardly get to see a game through with all those rage quits.

Buy on sale. Enjoy then move on the better games.

Time consuming and difficult to micromanage the constant needing food, wood, stone, etc. even on easy. Game isn't fun. There is always one resource that you can't find, or trade for.

This game feels slightly shallow, but I'd say well worth the $5.99 price. There's a lot of different clans which gives early game variety. The overall progression and micro mechanics each match feels the same though. Much of it is growing your base for about 20-25 minutes and then you start taking down mobs/enemy clans. Cool art style, music, and sound fx though!

A Viking Strategy Masterpiece!

Northgard is a fantastic real-time strategy game that blends Norse mythology with engaging mechanics. The asymmetric clan system is a standout feature, offering distinct playstyles and endless strategic depth. I love that there are multiple victory conditions—military, economic, fame, and wisdom.

Northgard offers a rich and rewarding experience for strategy fans.
Highly recommended. 10/10!

Review of Key Aspects of Online Gameplay

Game Issues:

Online Population:

Balance:

Game Modes:

Meta:

Repetitiveness:

Conclusion:

I have about 800 hours in this game, it's my weekend co-op with my wife. We're fairly casual gamers that enjoy a slow paced game. We've both been pretty unhappy with the roadmap of the game over the last year or so. A lot of what makes the clans fun has been removed or nerfed. Every time a clan DLC is released the game is just riddled with glitches in multiplayer.

In this most recent patch, I've noticed the following: towers are basically worthless, raven raiding ships now move at light speed giving you almost no time to react, my most recent game I was at negative (or close to) food for the first half of the game despite half of my squares being food squares while playing the newest clan, which ground expansion to a halt. I've hardly ever had issues with food production in the game in the past. Playing against Raven was intense, they were blitzing me every few months and the AI was set on easy mode. Strangely when I finally managed to muster the army to fend them off, they just quit attacking me.

Over the years there also were a lot of fun mechanics that took a huge hit, like Kraken. I would've much preferred that the devs lift up the other weaker clans instead of nerfing the few fun ones. Only a few clans have scaling in late game play. I was excited for the newest clan because they were advertised as a clan that was ideal for a player like me, but they just wind up taking a beating when facing other clans.

If I had to guess, I'd say the devs are balancing the game for really small maps of extremely skilled players that play Domination only. That's fine for the top 5-10% of players but really sucks out the fun for the casual players. I wish we could go back to a few years ago when the game was a lot more fun.

The idea of the game is decent, the execution frustrates me. I bet it would be more fun multiplayer, but I'm not interested in that. The AI cheats or something, I've sent forces bigger than theres in and been wiped out with close to half of their force still remaining.

Maybe I've missed something, but even with forge upgrades they basically walk through my troops. I don't find this sort of gameplay fun, especially when you then have to wait an eternity to reinforce.

Disappointing, not having much fun with it. It is also very heavily based on micro-transactions that you have to consistently purchase to experience new content. Do not recommend.

It is a no because you can't use any of the cool clans. I'm not going to buy every single clan individually without even trying them out. The price point of the DLC just seems greedy.
They should raise the price of the game a bit and add all the DLC for free so you can get the full experience.

That said the game is well put together and a lot of fun. I want to come back to it but the dlc thing just turns me off.

So, so boring, and I really, honestly tried to enjoy it... but the 3-6 buildings per square is the dumbest limitation, the narrative is boring. I want to build a cohesive village, but slap down a building in a square and then a completely irrelevant building next to it. Nothing about colonization is fun. I'm just gonna go back to Warcraft 3 because they at least had cool designs and I could choose to be on the orcs side.

The game is decent, but the amount of DLC is ridiculous. It's like playing Civ games. I can't recommend a game, especially a pvp one, where the developers have a nonstop flood of DLC, trying to get every last dollar from their players. Get the base game on sale, enjoy a couple dozen hours of content with a fairly relaxed and enjoyable RTS, and then move on.

Good Game !

Story - Good
Characters - Good
Voice Acting - Good
Gameplay - Good
Graphics - Good
Soundtrack - Good
System Performance - Good

Great -> Good -> OK -> Bad -> Do not buy !

I think it's a good game

In terms of story, it was short but acceptable
It has a good strategy

Northgard is still receiving *FREE* large quality, single player, multiplayer co-op and player vs player content, balance adjustments and gameplay updates almost 7 years after release.

Don't be intimidated or off-put by the amount of DLC clans; they're all nice to have and add new, interesting elements and unique styles to the core gameplay, but are by no means necessary to enjoy all the content in the game.

Nice graphics, consistent music.
Gameplay heavily imbalanced. Played on normal. Passive win conditions like trade, wonder construction, and node conquer are too easy. On other hand fighting mecanics in the endgame turns into endless hit-and-run that is too hard.
Overall cannot recommend: spent time learning, ended up with no pleasure due to imbalanced endgame gameplay.

This game has some very big flaws. Some you see initially but get over and other take a long time to see and you don't get over. No hot keys, no shift commands, no drag scroll. These hurt but you get over them. What breaks it to me is the combat. The map is split into zones like civilization, this is really cool at first. Until you get in combat and you can dance between the zone in a way that makes the game clunky.

The game is OK on itself, if you buy the Starter Pack on a significant discount, BUT - and it's a big but - it's basically a PC game with a mobile game's monetization plan. The better clans are hidden behind paywalls (a.k.a. DLC), there's daily missions bullshit and 274 (!) achievements of which I unlocked a whole 22 in only my very first scenario game. It's clearly designed to give you that dopamine rush and feed into an addiction.

I don't really regret buying it on a massive discount, but wouldn't buy it again either. Look around for an RTS that doesn't try this hard to prey on you. There's plenty.

One glance at the DLC list & total pricing and you can probably tell it's not a good idea to support this kind of business practice; on a game with potential pvp no less, where you may be put at a disadvantage because you don't understand the clans you have no access to. Given the balance complaints, and general tendencies of paid DLCs usually being stronger as incentive for purchase, I don't think it's a good idea to play multiplayer anyhow.

If you want to get just the base game on 90% discount however, just play through the story mode for a novel simplified-RTS experience, and then forget about it within a week post-completion - yeah sure, why not, mildly recommend.

I don't think this is a bad game by any real means, but this game does too many things that annoy me to really enjoy it. This game is kinda a mix of Civilization and Banished with a RTS design and a neat viking flavor that I enjoy. Build stuff to grow your clan, colonize squares of the map, build soldiers, and manage everything at the same time. While this all sounds like a typical RTS, I feel like there are too many things that seem to have slipped through the cracks that need to be implemented to really make this game fun for me. First off, there is a pause-time function that is present in almost every one of these kinds of games. This gives the player the ability to see the map and what's happening around them without fear of wasting time, and it allows the player to make sound decisions. Unfortunately, when you pause the game in Northgard, you CAN'T move the screen around. That is terribly annoying to me that if I want to try and plan ahead, I need to be looking directly at what I'm thinking about, then have to un-pause the game to look somewhere else. While that's not a deal breaker, the lack of real diplomacy is. Small factions and major clans alike can randomly decide to attack you for no reason, and the game barely gives you any warning as to when, where, and why this is happening. While buildings like trading posts can help your relations with factions, I find it difficult to dedicate resources to trade when resources are so sparse to begin with, especially early on. Other clans can be neutral with you, and decide that they're going to attack one of your provinces just because with no communication at all. The left side of the screen will show pop-ups that relate to buildings being finished, resource alerts, and when you're being attacked, but it gives very little information as to what is really going on. Also, you can only build certain buildings on certain tiles with corresponding resources. You want to build a farm, better have a tile with fertile soil. Want to mine stone, you better have a stone resource on the tile. Don't have any food resources near you, too bad, scavenging is all you get. At least in Civilization, you can build a number of buildings that provide vital resources on tiles that don't give you bonuses, but Northgard drips resources based on the luck of your map placement. All of this boils down to one issue that really makes the others worse; the pace of play in this game is very fast. From the second the game starts, it feels like a race to build and gobble as much territory as fast as possible since the victory conditions are quite easy to reach. This game is not a sit back and chill strategy game, this game wants you to be on your toes constantly, and the issues i stated above just make it hard for me to enjoy that kind of gameplay. I really enjoy to build slowly over time in these sorts of games, and Northgard very obviously discourages that. I think if the diplomacy gets fleshed out a lot more and more user-friendly features are added (better mini-map, better alerts, be able to move the screen while paused), I think I'd enjoy this game a lot more. Maybe after a year I'll try it again and see if things have gotten better, but for now, it's simply not for me.

I'm sure it's the right game for some people, but mistakes are extremely punishing. And unless you have hours of free time to correct them, you will find yourself tempted to just restart sections of the campaign, forcing you to dedicate even more time to redoing stuff you already did.

I'm in my 30s with a full time job and family. This wasn't the right pickup for me, or anyone in my same boat. I gave it 5 hours, but Steam wouldn't let me return it, which is a shame.

For whatever reason, I could not grasp this game and its strategy (maybe I just don't get it, and I feel like the game doesn't do a good job explaining it). I love its visual design and the mythology on display, but it seems like certain clans are overpowered and others are under-powered. It doesn't seem like there is a good counter system. I bought this 4 years ago, played it for a couple of weeks, and then lost interest and have never felt a desire to come back to it.

Bug detected almost every time I'm trying to play the game, suggesting me to restart game.
Also servers full, can't start multiplayer game

Just can't get into it. The economy mechanics make no sense and really suck the fun out of a potentially good game.

This game is so annoying, it's not even worth the $3 I paid for it. If you're looking for a good builder this is not it.

The base game mechanics and content are very good. PvE is fine but for the love of God PvP is pay to win... no matter what you do, you will always lose to the dlc clans if you use basic game once. Everything needs to be rebalanced, a lot...

(PvE Player) Its okay but only buy on a sale. Its a faster pace Civ-like game with viking aesthetics, lower camera, and more control over tiles. But all the Ai play the same and are pretty janky. The harder Ai basically just get free resources which makes it harder but not particularly fun. What you can do with resources is quite limited as well which makes gameplay feel repetitive quick. Fighting other players might be better but that's not my cup of tea.

amazing game, the only downside, i hate games where i need to buy DLC, i mean a LOT of DLC to be able to experience every part of the game. pay for unlocking clans?... really?

Great game in skirmish and multiplayer modes. Unfortunately, campaigns have to be treated as a tutorial. The downside is the add-on sales policy.

Used to be a very good game, but honestly has just become frustrating at this point to play. With not being able to save the game it leads to these 4 or 5 hour sessions of just torture of one bad thing after another happening. It is sadly quite defeating. The new clans are overpowered and are horrible for OG players like me. No longer recommend. I could see how people might like this and I used to enjoy it, but I just do not enjoy being beat up for hours on end with my friends, sorry.

I love this game. It´s fun to play the Bifrost mode with friends.
There are many clans that have their own strenghts and weaknesses.
Overall a fun game especially if you like vikings and the norse mythology.

overall a fun game, balance issues between clans, and updates causing a mess of problems that get fixed overtime, still enjoyable