Valheim

Fun at first, but the gameplay loop is incredibly stale. It takes hours upon hours to get materials, smelt said materials and eventually craft the bars into gear, only for said loop to repeat itself when you defeat the relevant boss and get to a new continent.

Sailing can be fun, but eventually becomes incredibly boring when it's just that: sailing, with the only danger being sea serpents, which eventually just become nuisances. And because you can't get materials through portals for some reason, you need to also sail for hours, hoping the wind also is in the direction you're going.

Enemies can be pretty cool and unique early game, but after a while they just become damage sponges.

Hope things become a little less grindy, although if that's intended the game just is not for me.

Fun, good game. Don't let character graphics fool you.

Valheim

---{ Graphics }---

☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---

☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---

☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---

☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---

☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---

☑ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---

☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---

☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☑ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---

☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---

☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---

☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---

☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---

☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

I love survival games and have played many but there is just something off about Valheim. It's kind of difficult to put your finger on at first because it seems like an extremely high quality title and I was extremely excited each day to get back on and play. There is just something about the way crafting and building work that are so much more fun and sometimes even down right relaxing than many of the other titles out there. Not to mention the performance is amazing too and easily one of the best running survival games I've ever played. The combat was simple enough but actually quite polished and fun, making the combat a lot more rewarding than pretty much every survival game out there.... but...

Once you really start to see the full scope of the amount of grind there is here it just kind of takes the wind out of it. I don't mind dropping a few hundred hours in an excellent game like this but my GOD. Once you start to really see the full scope of the game you just start thinking what in the world were they thinking with the way this is balanced. I mean you have got to understand that the combat here is EXTREMELY challenging, you will die A LOT. Combine that with the sometimes extreme amount of time and repeat failures it takes to recover from a death, combined with the large amount of time it takes to find collect and especially TRANSPORT resources, and sometimes it just ends up feeling like the developers don't even want you to have fun, because as soon as you are, something happens that completely screws you over and means you get to spend the next 5 or 6 hours recovering from it.

True story, I went in for my first attempt on the second boss, died, respawned at base, and I go okay, let me grab a few supplies and go get my body. NOPE, as soon as I respawned, boom, my base is being raided, so all my best equipment is with my body, and I'm now boxed in by a horde of enemies. So I said screw it let me try to go get my stuff back, let the raid pass, so I go get my stuff back (barely) and I'm like okay let's go see the damage, not only was the base mostly destroyed but all the enemies from the raid were still there perched everywhere around the remnants of my base, killing me again, with no where to respawn but the game start area, my freshly reacquired equipment now guarded by 25 some raid enemies while surrounding the last smoldering ruins of my base. So I was screwed, I had absolutely no equipment now, no base, and I essentially just had to start all over. Might have just been bad luck and bad timing on this one though right?

Except for when I tamed my first boar. Up to that point boars were more of an annoyance then anything else. They are very common and will attack you a lot when you're building, mining, etc etc, they are everywhere. I go through the process of luring and catching a boar and getting it tamed. Then start to look for the second one so I can start a farm. Except... hmm.... another bout of bad luck it seems, all of a sudden boars don't spawn at all. Of course one of the only times I need to find a boar, none of them are spawning, of course, right? except about 5 attempts and three hours later I realize there is no way this is luck, these things were EVERYWHERE until I tamed one, now I haven't seen a single wild boar, looking for HOURS. This wasn't bad luck, I realized this had to actually be a design choice here, that a tamed creature will prevent them from spawning in that area, to this very day not a single boar has ever spawned near my base again, not ONE, but before that they were always everywhere. I ended up having to travel out further away making it a huge pain to keep the thing with you and get it into base. Not including all the time I spent looking/waiting for one to spawn. There are some mechanics in this game that are very grindy in nature, but...WHY, WHY choose to turn off spawning like that in the area a creature is tamed? You can't claim it's because of realism like you can with some of the other mechanics that seem grindy. The ONLY reason you would make a design choice like this is because you want to purposely make everything take as long as possible. It was at this moment i started feeling a bit deflated about Valheim.

You're spending so much time just simply trying to recover from a death, let alone progress any. Combine it with all these B.S. design choices that are only there to waste your time and In 45 hours of gameplay I essentially only progressed through the first major stage of the game (The first two bosses). Once I hit the swamp biomes and moving along through the Iron stage it just really started to sink in that at the current rate I would end up spending 500+ Hours without ever even finishing the main "storyline" of the game, EASILY. Think about how Minecraft would feel if it took you nearly FIFTY HOURS before you could finally get to iron tools. I mean if you thought Ark was grindy or even Minecraft after it's recent updates then you do NOT want to waste your time or money here because this is EASILY 10X worse than those. It just makes no since to have such a punishing combat system in the game but still balance in all these super grindy processes and other game mechanics that take a lot of time to recover. Imagine trying to play through dark souls but each time you die it takes you 5 or 6 hours of game play to recover and try again.

This game is so top tier in so many ways but then you compare how it's built with other games and you just kind of scratch your head on why it's designed this way. I'll leave you with this, if you played Grounded and know what happened there at the end where the devs added the most insanely grindy end game ever created to essentially ruin the game past the main story line, Valheim is like that, except instead of it being a couple weird deign choices that ruin the end game, the devs of Valheim just decided to design the ENTIRE game that way from start to finish. Don't get me wrong, you won't have to beat Valheim 11 times to see everything like in Grounded. but I GUARANTEE you can beat grounded 11 times way before you beat Valheim once, and that is absolutely ridiculous.

I hope the devs work out a better balance here through the early access cycle because if they do, this could finally be the perfect survival game we've all been waiting for. As it stands now... check out Grounded, or even Subnautica if you're new to the survival genre, both those games have tons of content and stuff to see and experience, but at least still respect your time. (With the exception of the grounded end game) I bought this game so maybe one day a year or two from now I'll try it again, because it really is good enough to give it another go and hope some of this has been balanced or removed. But right now no, it's just too tedious and the grind really makes it too much of a slog for me to keep spending my time with it.

Annoying game, empty and grindy.

You never have any stamina. It's pointless that I stuff myself with food and get 350 stamina when the stamina regeneration stays practically the same. I have 350 stamina for about 20 seconds before I burn through it, and then for the next 20 minutes Its basically 50 max.
The terrain is retarded — if you're going uphill, say goodbye to your stamina. If you dare..jump, half of it is gone immediately. Swimming is terrible, the character starts drowning after 3 seconds (like fr, legit, nocap).
During fights, the terrain is never flat, and if there are multiple enemies, you have nowhere to run — it's always uphill or into water.
If you parry an attack, you don't have enough stamina left to attack back.
The game has like 10 enemy types that just keep repeating over and over.
The map is completely empty..like absolutely nothing. like nothing nothing..Exploration Reward is 0
The only things you can find are the same copy-paste houses with maybe 30 gold and 6 arrows inside. Even the loot is always the same.
Every dungeon is the same.
And that's it. Literally that's it.
I found one trader in 30 hours of gameplay.
U even need stamina to build..hit that hammer 3 times and now u have to stand and wait for 30 secs..

Fights are boring cuz they are easy, parry is easy, dodge is easy.
This game is basically fighting against uneven terrain and your own asthma.

Don't be scared off by early access, or players down voting because of endgame biomes.
This game is giving you SO MUCH bang for your buck. The sense of exploration and danger is just amazing. It's minecraft, but with great combat, a great leveling system, etc...

Just my two cents, but I'd recommend you look at these negative reviews complaining about the mistlands or the ashlands as an ENDORSEMENT of the game, even if they're giving it a thumbs down. Most of these people have hundreds of hours in the game, and they're talking about endgame content that's still under development. It's like a lifelong minecraft player saying post-ender dragon content isn't perfectly balanced.
I feel like every single person who beats the ender dragon is an endorsement of how good minecraft is as a game, and anyone who finds Valheim so engrossing that they play long enough to complain about the mistlands or the ashlands is just telling you how amazing Valheim is.
They could cut both of those biomes, and they'd probably get better reviews. The game is beyond good enough. Instead, they're still working on it and giving us update after update to a game that's already fantastic.

Overall this game is decent, the building is truly unmatched and amazing compared to other survival games. The fun you have playing with friends makes it very memorable too. But after playing other survival games recently I've realized how unpolished this game STILL is after 4 years of "EA". The fact that you have to turn on about 5+ different QOL mods to make working in a base somewhat bearable is a joke. Content comes at a 1 year+ pace even though they net millions per year (they don't hire new developers). When content does come out (Ashlands) it ends up being extremely unoptimized and almost unplayable. Bottom line, it's fun up until you get past plains biome, then it's a literal chore trying to finish the game after that. Mod community also carries this game pretty heavily shout out to them!

easily top 5 survival games, difficulty and slow progression may make it hard to enjoy, but play with friends and it won't bother you

Actually terrible now. Recent updates have made the game nearly unplayable with monster spawns being far to aggressive and plenty of other bugs and issues that constantly pop up. This game has fallen quite far and hasn't even released yet. Get any other survival game.

Millions of sales, over 4 years in early access, still the constant reminder this pretty simple game, full of potential, is still unfinished and unpolished. Wake me up when it's finally finished.

It's a brilliantly designed game. I feel like the game is definitely more fun to play with friends rather going solo. It does give minecraft vibes at the start but the game has a variety of mechanics that make it stand out.

The game has very realistic mechanics and most of them aren't nuisance. While balancing the game it's really hard to make realism "fun" and I would say this game while initially did annoy me with the realism, over time I was very impressed with it. Some things I still feel like can be improved but overall I am very happy with this purchase.

I really wanted to love this game because it had so much potential when it first came out. The concept was solid, the art was great, and it felt like the start of something big. But here we are three years later and it’s basically the same game. Hardly any real updates, no meaningful new content, just small tweaks that don’t really add much.

It feels like the devs made their money from the initial hype and just left the project behind. It’s frustrating because this could’ve been a long term favorite, but now it’s just a reminder of what could’ve been.

a lovely atmospheric, difficult survival game, coupled with a less-then stellar development team and performance issues. ive been playing valheim since it released in early access and while i do love it, i kinda feel like iron gate has taken advantage of their initial burst of success. updates are released slowly, and lately are nothing-updates plus some marketing. theyre already way past their first dev roadmap back in 2021 and honestly at this point id be surprised if deep north releases in 2025. i know game dev aint fucking easy, but no game should be in early access for 5 years. think for a second of, Abiotic Factor another game of a similar vein. while a bit less smaller of a scope with a set facility and a linear story, will have released into early access, gone through almost 8 major updates, and fully released into 1.0 with more minor updates later, before valheim. the community manager on the discord seems like an ass too. TLDR, i think there are better survival craft games out there, minecraft, abf, hell even the new runescape game, that respect your time, and have a more proactive development cycle.

At one point in time this was my favourite survivalcraft after Subnautica.

Early on I loved the mix of cozy, chill vibes in the base building, and the dark, spooky exploration and dungeon diving. But a mixture of a glacial development pace and an increasingly unfriendly and time-hogging gameplay loop as you go through each zone just burned me out on it. As much as I adored the base building mechanics that (At the time) felt VERY well tuned and easy to use compared to earlier survivalcrafters, it has become a victim of its scope creep and ever-lengthening development cycle. It's also just not fun having each new zone be exponentially harder than the last one, and with increasingly frustrating wrinkles to deal with. Mistlands and Ashlands are just agony with no real intrinsic reward for participating in them.

It's also being not only overtaken, but lapped by other games in the early access space, and the survivalcrafter genre more specifically which are managing their development pace far better (Valheim's roadmap has long since been abandoned, only 4 months after release), are communicating more clearly and frequently with the playerbase, and are implementing quality of life changes which make this game feel increasingly outdated despite still not having hit 1.0. Finally, it feels disrespectful to have 3-4 marketing posts talking up their various merchandising efforts for every 1 update that actually talks about the development of this 4 year old early access game.

im not sure whether i would play this game without mod. since the building part very frustrating and annoying i think its lowered my satisfaction. otherwise its worth the try

great game like minecraft but with some twists, higher graphics, more to do, and finally very grindy. also lots of stuff to do.

Reminds me of the old 90's games graphics but very aesthetically pleasing and soft. The game creates a unique environment for each biome and each one is progressively harder. Great game and love all the content they've added since I started playing.

Incredibly frustrating. Enemies will chase you to the end of the world, combat feels terrible. Everytime you die you have to run back to where your equipment is while 100 enemies are trying to kill you. Absolutely sucks dick, do not recommend.

very good game. just keep in mind the progression can be ass-grindingly slow so if you don't like slow progression, hard enemies, and so on, you can change your world settings to be basically whatever you want. my only complaint that running everywhere gets pretty old because the map is so huge- and there's not as much to explore as in other games, but still got my money's worth insofar out of it

This is the game that got me into the Survival Craft genre, and PC gaming in general!

Valheim is a beautiful and chill place to be, with gorgeous graphics, fantastic music, wicked atmosphere and very satisfying and easy to pick up building.

There's nothing like a sunny morning in the meadows, the sunlight streaming through the trees and deer calling as they gallop across the hills.

Works beautifully on the steam deck too!

Extremely grindy game, especially single player. The Dev's are very slow with updates. Avoid if you'd like to suck the whole thing before the world ends. I want to suck it but they won't let me.

This game is so close to being really good but it is way too punishing to be fun long term. I love the exploration and the crafting / advancing technology elements. But the enemies are relentless, chasing you for miles, many of them have 1 hit kill moves regardless of if you are teched appropriately, and the map distances are huge so it takes forever to get back to loot your body. And often times the enemy that killed you is body camping you. Enemies don't seem to have stamina and ghost through obstacles that make your character stall out. Also, why would there be an intentionally un-fun "no using portals with minerals" rule when the most boring thing about this game is running 20 miles to find the next ore deposit.

The start of a new world/character in Valheim is always the best feeling to me. The flight in seems so ominous, but then you're immediately greeted with beautiful scenery and sublime music of the Meadows. It's always such an amazing experience!

NOTE: This is about the base game with no mods and no major settings changed.
3 STARS from me. Initially the game is alright (EXCEPT THE STAMINA PART ,(ABOUT WHICH I WILL GET LATER INTO) and then once you reach the iron age,everything goes downhill.When you initially enter the swamp so that ur ahh can get some iron,you're met with newer enemies that can 2 shot you even with a shield. The swamp phase and every phase after that is annoying and hard for no reason. The game has a not so great combat system tbh. Also the game gets kinda repetitive and boring.
Alright,lets get to the stamina part. At the beginning your ahh runs for like 5s and then you just lose all ur stamina and you have to wait for 5s while walking really slow to get it back up. Late game this is much tolerable with access to the rested buff,Eikthyrs buff(WHICH HAS A 20S COOLDOWN FFS) and the access to better food. This game is also insanely grindy for the amount of content it offers, as i still can't plant berries and i need to forage the meadows for it,even in late game. Getting ores is also insanely grindy.
If you disagree please feel free to correct me.

This game made me noever wanna go back to Ark, Conan Exiles or 7 Days to Die. Best building system I've ever encountered in a survival crafter. The game loop revolves around exploration and experimentation, which is very rewarding and keeps you moving around a lot.

Extremely grindy and time consuming with default settings. So if you got the patience to tune the settings to your liking, and maybe get a couple of mods, this game can be a blast. Compared to other survival games, it was fairly easy to setup/customize single player, and dedicated server.

Overall game progression is very well made, with a lot of content to go through. As for the gameplay, you can tell if youd like it in just a couple of mins, just by walking around and feeling how the character moves and how the world feels to you.

An amazing game. I started playing during the pandemic and I'm still playing it. It never gets old. Absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend it.

Great game to play cooperatively with my kids.

Amazing game, great music, great gameplay and ambiance. Building is very satisfying. #1 survival game IMO. I'm 450 hours in and i'm on my 4th playthrough. Highly recommend

I've always enjoyed this game but the latest update for April Fools was the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Already facing such huge content droughts for an Early Access game and instead we're seeing developers sinking time into such a dumb fake update.

If it wasn't for the content drought it may have seemed funny but you also pushed a minuscule patch to 220.5 screwing mod makers and dedicated servers.

TLDR: Had high hopes for this game and what it could be. Instead we are getting barely anything each year.

Kind of mixed. i've played valheim for a long time and love the game. lately the developers are pushing out updates without really testing, and the latest update 0.220.5 is an absolute april fool JOKE of an update. they added a Pet Rock...what a joke and waste of effort. It completely broke the game...literally. and made it so the mod community is scrambling to catch up since they did not release the update for actual testing by the community. the valheim developers have grown rocks for heads, which is why they gave us Pet Rocks in the game.

Well, I played the shit out of this game. This is the perfect game to AFK your mind and listen to whatever podcast or show for hours and hours. Play around with mods, challenge yourself as a vanilla solo champ or just bring your friends. This game strikes a nerve within my soul. It is perfect for creative building, and even if you suck at that the game is solid just as an adventure. I plan to double my playtime the coming years and have no plans or intents to stop. The gameplay loop and the possibilities are just endless. Valheim is not a game, it is a place of contemplation and rest for the soul.

At first it's very fun, but later into the game gets fast boring. Exploring after the plains just getting tedious. The ship is slow and there is just nothing happening during the traveling.

Beside that the Developer had more than enough time to cook and there are still so many QoL flaws. Many of them luckily get fixed by the modding community, but just the Game without Mods can be very annoying. For example, you need to craft A LOT but always need to go to a crafting station for it and also need the ingredients in your inventory. And the chests are so tiny, that you have for 1 resource 1 chest, because the stacks are also very small and you have only 10 slots in the first chest, which you will have for a very long time. So your base has a bit into the game 50 different chests, and each time you want to craft something, you would need to grab the items out of the chest.

Also they still didn't fixed the performance issue with large bases. Big recommendation: build your first base small, and as soon as you are able to, try to find a small sandbank or stone far out on the ocean and build there your real base. This way, you will still be able to always have above 60fps in your base.

I've seen, that they made some progress in development lately with new zones etc. compared to the release, but game mechanic wise, sadly, is also nothing new. Fishing for example is still very dull. The skill system still don't describe, what it's doing. It just feels so raw on so many loose ends, even though it's already been out for so many years.

Overall is Valheim still pretty decent, since the setting and atmosphere are done very well, the boss fights are good, but also rare (only 7 bosses). The combat system overall is also okish. The building part is nice, makes fun to build with your friends your own small viking village. We also didn't encountered any major coop bugs, beside that with a larger base the fps drops strongly on weaker cpu, gets multiplied by players, that build the base. Strong per core performance recommended (above at least 4ghz for late game), since the clock speed determines very strong the fps.

If the developers are able to get the game more interesting mechanic wise, especially the ship sail part with friends and also diminish the QoL flaws, i would probably change my rating.

This game starts out incredible, I loved playing through the first four biomes. They all feel fun to progress through and explore and the upgrades to your equipment feel rewarding. However, the entire second half of this game ranges from boring to borderline unplayable.
The Plains is a boring, wide open field with next to nothing of interest to discover or explore. 99% of the Plains is empty nothingness and the remaining 1% is goblin camps. This biome feels vacant and lifeless. The Mistlands is an absolute chore to play through. It's an endless labyrinth of cliffs with little to no visibility. The combat is very clunky in this biome due to the nature of the terrain and the hitboxes of the enemies. I've lost count of the amount of times that I've been hit by an enemy that I cannot hit because they are either lower or higher up than I am. Finally, the Ashlands abandons all other forms of gameplay and devolves into endless fighting. Want to explore, mine, or build? Too bad, because 99% of your time in this biome will be spent fighting the constantly spawning, endless hordes of enemies. This game does not have the combat or the movement system to be Dark Souls, yet the developers made a biome that's just that. If the sheer volume of enemies isn't bad enough, this biome has some of the most annoying enemies in the game. There are two flying enemies with wonky hitboxes that are difficult to hit with melee weapons, there are skeletons that sit back and throw rocks and shoot arrows at you constantly and run away if you try to attack them, and there are giant lizards that will send you flying with how much knockback they have.
The difficulty of this game is simply due to it being unfair. The combat is wonky, the hitboxes are bad, and the enemy density is ridiculous. This wasn't as much of an issue in the earlier stages of the game because the game focused more on exploration, but when the second half of the game focuses more on combat, the issues become apparent.
I truly wish I could recommend this game, because it has a lot of potential and I very much enjoyed the earlier stages, but when half of the game is a tedious slog, I simply cannot.

I have supported this games development since release as it was a gem among gems. But as of late, it has been shown that the developers and their mods (if they are using any) do not know how to deal with people enquiring or criticising their development timeline, as their only solution towards people concerned with its development and wishing for content is issuing them warnings and bans. Accusing people of Spam, and being off-topic in derailing a discussion....in a dev log, about the development of the game....see where this is going? Here is a copy/paste of my comment that was issued a warning in their latest Dev Log;

"Apparently my comment calling out the devs on stretching out a 1 year roadmap into 5 years development was taken down with me issued a "Warning" for Spam....of which the comment did not follow the definition of Spam in either noun or verb. So now i am going to air out some dirty laundry. Their 2021 Roadmap consisted of;

Update 1:
-Hearth and Home

Update 2:
-Cult of the Wolf

Update 3:
-Ships and the Sea

Update 4:
-Mistlands

If Odin Wills It:
-Multiplayer interactions
-Combat improvements
-Moon Phases
-Tar Pits
-Vender Inventory Expansion
-Svartalfr Brigands
-More Unique Locations
-Sandbox Mode
-Munin

Now they later put a warning at the bottom of this original roadmap stating it was cancelled. Note, that the game released in Feb 2021, and they only released the hearth and home update in Sept of 2021. Mistlands didn't come out until Dec 2022. In Aug 2023 we got Hildir's Request, a new merchant....See where this is going. It practically takes them between 7 to 15 months for content updates initially promised for the first year, and whoever moderates this channel got upset that accused them of stretching out development thanks to their overwhelming success on launch, and with covid.

So to the moderator deleting peoples messages, banning disgruntled consumers etc, if you can't respond to an individual in a thread and disprove anyone's claims, then do not flex your authority and state someones claims go against guidelines just because you are upset by them."

They banned me after i saw another person who questioned their development as did i, whom I simply warned them that their comment might get a warning or banned.....ironic huh? If this is how they treat their community, then i cannot support this game anymore.

Laziest devs ever made, they've been in EA for 5 years, with only a handful of updates, and now they are making a board game and mini-series instead of actually working on the game. The game is okay, but the way the devs have handled EA, I will never buy another of their games until it is complete, if at all.

Going to state that I thoroughly enjoyed this game for a long time, the first 5 biome's are enjoyable and fun to explore, sure they can be difficult but you're not hamstrung getting one shot as soon as you aren't on a flat surface managing stamina for blocking, fighting and keeping your footing.

This is almost impossible in Mistlands, 95% of that biome is steep rocks which you have to climb, good luck if you encounter a seeker because I can guarantee you will not hit them, let alone see them at all because of the mist and your stamina resource will always be drained. Even in the event that you do hit, because you're not on a level surface your strikes, regardless of weapon, will miss constantly to then be two-tapped by a seeker and you die.

I get the game is meant to be viking purgatory, earning your way in to Valhalla, but this is an absolute slog and I gave up when trying to find more Mistland biomes to find those caverns with the one gem to make the next lot of gear refused to spawn, sailing more than 1 hour in a direction to only get killed before a portal could be set up. Sure it might be a skill issue as well as RNG. But when you arrive at the Mistlands, pop your Wisp out and suddenly a Gjall drops its load on your face while several ticks tag team you before I even got off the fucking boat, there's no hope in Hell... Or should I say Valhiem.

I know I am complaining all the way here. If you got this far, congrats. But to the devs, you have a good thing going on here, but Mistlands and what I have been told Ashlands being the same, you need to fix the issue of the terrain gen or fix the stamina usage and weapon mechanics. It is punishing and un-fun, nothing makes me want to go back and killing the Plains boss felt like that was more than enough for me to never play the game again.

I recommend that Mistlands onwards is where people should stop playing. Mod it if needed, but for anyone wanting to play the game: Meadow, Dark Forest, Swamp, Mountain and Plains are decent, fairly balanced and the enemies while super dangerous in some parts, can be fought properly. Beyond that don't bother if you want to experience absolute frustration.

In the first way you understand only that trees the main threat, but in the end you starting deforestation.

Phenomenal blend of a "cozy" management and survival game, especially if you have the patience to just enjoy the process -- the action within the grind (on neither of which is the game light-handed).
There's a great amount of reward to be found as the game progresses, especially if you enjoy being creative within a sandbox.

Also ... this game is fun to play solo, and it is an absolute blast to play with a great group. I've not played on the public servers, so I can't speak to the community, but my friends and I have thoroughly enjoyed camping out to take a deep-dive.

The pinnacle of the survival genre. Do not let the 1.45 GB storage requirement fool you. The game is graphically stunning, and the sheer amount of content and land to explore is completely insane. Would HIGHLY recommend.

Wait for the full release, the early access progress is deadfully slow and the game lacks a massive amount of QoL just for the average gameplay.

This is an absolutely amazing game from what I have experienced.

First the game is very well optimized and applies beautiful shaders to the different environments without adding any heavy effects to run. has a somewhat realistic building system with the support required for your housing/builds as you cant just free stand anything you would life and also brings in elements of weather damage.

Gameplay wise if your buying this game to relax and build sure but surprisingly enough the game does present quite a bit of challenge in battle and progression especially with the absurd overtime damage effects. genuinely fun with challenge has harder modes for those who dont wanna suffer in regular could for sure complain about the scaling but when you ask to play hard I suppose your kind of asking for it to be 'hard'.

My one and only problem: F-a-l-l... D-a-m-a-g-e.. if you measured the size of your foot in this game. took that and made the ground only that much lower beside you and simply jumped to that itty bitty shorter peice of ground bamn 15 fall damage. you walked down a mountain too fast not even steep? bamn 32 damage you forgot to eat food you died on spot forget it. I will never follow the logic of fall damage and if ever find something to reduce or cancel such will break to tears.

Valheim is such a blast with friends!🛡️🔥 We’ve had epic boss fights, explored all kinds of cool biomes, and each area is packed with stuff to do. One of our friends even went full architect mode—built a beautiful base and a huge storage setup to hold literally everything we’ll ever need 😂🏰📦. It’s the perfect mix of adventure and creativity, and playing it together just makes it even better. 🎮

This is one of the best sand box survival rpg out there, even thou its kinda pixelated but environment makes you not even notice that
Gameplay 10/10
Story 8/10
Graphics 9/10
Easy to learn 8/10

Near perfect survival game, requires a couple of tweaks such as nuances in ground leveling etc. but other than that - excellent game with unique artstyle and fantastic atmosphere

its fun

I've had a lot of adventures in this game, as you can tell by my hours spent, but I have never played a game with worse quality of life than this. There are so many incredible things about this game, so I've pushed through it, but the ashlands broke me. I'll never return to this game without heavy modding in the future. So devs, here's a list of things I LOATHE about this game that has changed me from a positive opinion to about as negative as I can get:

The character

- The stamina and health decaying over time. At best you get 30 min of good stamina/health with the feasts. Artifical game lengther forcing me to return to my camp every few minutes.
- Stamina regen is incredibly slow. You basically NEED to have the "well rested" bonus or you're basically playing a viking with crippling asthma. Not fun at all. That stupid rested bonus only gives you like 20 min max of mildy faster stamina regen, so at best you get 10ish minutes to explore before you need to start running home. Yet another artificial game lengthener.
- Also, the stamina meads are pretty useless. Either remove the time limitation between uses, or massively buff the stamina regen meads.
- Why the hell can I only jump like 6 times before I run out of stamina? I've seen 350lb dudes jump more times consecutively than that.
- Your viking's attacks have the tiniest hitbox and 0 verticality. If an enemy is slightly above or below you, you can't hit them AT ALL! Your viking is apparently unable to adjust his swing to be anything other than directly 90 degrees in front. This wouldn't be so bad if the enemys had this limitation as well. They don't...
- I mention this in the point above, but once you've begun your attack animation, you cannot aim it at all. No adjusting. But there are plenty of enemies that can!
- Why does death reduce your skills? Also, skills are basically useless. They give you a mild stat boost at best, but you are severely punished if you die making it impossible to ever get a skill higher than like level 40-50.

The enemies

- Enemies can climb vertical surfaces that you must sprint/skyrim jump up, so there is no escaping.
- Enemies often aggro from quite a large range. This is most noticeable in biomes with little cover like the plains, swamp, and ashlands. To this point, once an enemy aggros to you, you can hardly ever escape them. Either there is no cover to hide behind, or they are too fast to outrun.
- Stealth is useless.

Construction and crafting

- Carts... what's the point of all those inventory slots if it becomes too heavy to move? Why can I carry 3x times more metal on my back with 0 movement penalty. But if I put more than 3 stacks of metal in a cart it becomes an absolute slug.
- You can't build without a workbench. You also can't build anything larger than a pavilion without multiple workbenches. This requires you to build a million workbenches everywhere in order to do anything cool. You also can't deconstruct without a workbench. How does that make any sense?
- If you wanna build with stone, you need a special stone workbench, but first you need a regular workbench in order to even build the stone workbench. There's like 4 different workbenches all with their special associated buildings they allow, so you need a million workbenches of all types everywhere in order to bulid a proper base of operations. They all also have limited effective range...
- The crafting bench upgrades have diabolically large hitboxes so you are forced to space them out rediculously far away from each other. It's annoying to build around and looks terrible.
- you get about 8 million different crafting recipies and buildings, but no way to search these massive lists.
- Why do I need to take every single piece of armor off of an armor stand if I only need 1 piece? Why can't I just replace one?
- Why do we have to take turns opening chests? Many games have accomplished this mechanic.

Biomes

- Some biomes have drops for everything. I cannot move 10 feet without filling my inventory with garbage. The ashlands is the WORST for this, because most of the drops are useless for gameplay. They legit have special drops just for like 1 cosmetic building.
- Traversing the Mistlands and Ashlands is aggrivatingly boring and time consuming. The incredibly dense spikes in the Mistlands means you spend as much time sitting around waiting on stamina as you actually do playing the game. The Ashlands lava corrals you into narrow channels of land, but doesn't restrict enemies. This translates to it taking forever to traverse while hordes of enemies aggro to you from all directions.

Misc.

- The special abilites you get from bosses are incredibly under-powered for how rarely you get to use them. Of all the bosses, I really only use the bonus from bonemass, because there are like 2 enemies aren't entirely centered around physical damage in this game. The bonus from moder and the deer boss are used on occaision.
- Mining ores is incredibly painstaking. It takes a so much stamina and pickaxe durability that it just turns into an incredibly boring time sink. The boss bonus you get towards mining is minimal, and upgrading pickaxes seems to do little if not nothing.
- Stone portals should appear in the game waaaaaay sooner. Not being able to teleport with metal is a stupid artificial game lengthener. Atleast let me teleport metals from areas where I've already defeated the boss.
- The order that you get things (like getting stone portals so late in the game) is disappointing, because all the new items and "conveniences" that you get at the end of the game come way too late to get much use out of them. Fader's bonus? Waaaaaay to late. There's only going to be 1 more biome, and I have stone portals! Why in the world would I need all that carry weight when I only have 1 biome's worth of metals to use it on?? Incredibly disappointing. This is a fallacy that runs rampant in the gaming industry, where some of the most useful and fun items come at the end of the play through, so you only get to experience it briefly before it's over. So must wasted time and potential.

There's so much more that I could fit into this, and I'm sure plenty of other reviewers can fill in the gaps. Such a good concept for a game, and a good artstyle (except for the ashen cape, why the hell does it have a turtle neck???), but it's definitely up there for one of the most grindy, horrendous quality-of-life experiences of any game.

This game is a fantastic game to play with friends to chill out on a saturday night,

It's been 6 days and I'm approaching 100 hours. Be very careful purchasing this game, as it won't leave much time for the rest of your life. It's pretty good though

fun to play alone, fun to play with friends, die to chopping trees, snipe some trolls, all good fun! Build a house, dig holes, mine rocks, run EVERYWHERE...maybe sail? Build up some skills....idk, become a carrot farmer?