Valheim

even though I have play over 1,000 hours, I have to down vote this game
this game deserve a mixed review,
because developer never listen to feedback from community

the primary reason this game is *grindy* is because the inventory space and carry weight limit is too small
other exploration game has decent inventory space enough for exploring in the wild for at least 30mins
but this game, once you reach copper age, you have to carry some basic necessity in your inventory
just explore like 5-10mins have to open portal (carry the 4 materials) to drop your stuffs at nearby base
this is the PRIMARY reason why this game feels grindy
I don't mind making more bases to hoard all my items, but going back to base every 10 mins is such a turn off
I can't really enjoy exploring the landscape properly when I have to travel to base every 5-10 mins
.... there are mods to address this issue but this problem has been asked over and over again but developer refuse to address this

the 2nd problem is the mistland mechanic
the idea to carry wisp to reveal things inside the mist is great, but the mist pushback radius is too little
and when the wisplight and megingjord use same equipment slot,
the basic 300 carry weight capacity is equal to chopping down 5 yggdrasil tree ... WTF ??
.... again there are mods to address this issue

I am not down vote because of the lack of update, I can understand games takes time to make,
but developer refuse to listen feedback deserve a mix review even though this is such a great game on other area

Game starts off fine and pretty fun but quickly turns into searching for dungeons and mining ores. Then after all that time of grinding for new gear you realize that melee is pointless compared to the bow. The game feels like its actively discouraging you to do melee, dodge rolls feel slow, some enemies have a lack of choreographing for some attacks, blocking is pointless because a dragur with a bow can basically stance break you, fighting big enemies isn't fun as their attacks have weird timings to dodge roll or try to parry, plus they get to attack very quickly only letting you get a hit or two in depending on your weapon, and almost all enemies that are on your level do all of your health and can kill you in two to three hits even with high health food items. Also Bonemass and the swamp has some of the worst design I've seen. This has legit all been a problem since the game released. Ignoring all of this the games pretty cool, but the game desperately needs re-balancing.

After the genre boom of open world survival, many developers and games fell victim to a series of pitfalls common to the genre: giant empty worlds, miserable half-baked gameplay mechanics, and style over substance. Now we look back at these failures and wince that we ever spent more than a few hours in them. Valheim, unfortunately, has all these problems and more, despite having a decade of failings in the genre to learn from.

I remember playing Valheim a decent amount when it came out and never remembered why I specifically dropped it after 20-30 hours. Recently I picked it up again with friends and it all comes flooding back. There are many good ideas executed poorly, and many bad ideas that make gameplay a chore.

The survival mechanics are largely tedious and time-consuming. It is a good idea in principle that meals and their variations affect your health and stamina, until you realise most of them are extensively more time consuming for marginal improvements on the meals you first unlock. This is a good example of how the game does not really have meaningful progression: I could spend 10 hours homesteading and still find altogether little difference in my survivability opposed to when I was eating berries out of the dirt.

Progression is nightmarish at certain points. To get some of your first basic tools and resources you must go into a biome that constantly spawns enemies which leaves you unable to use stamina to mine minerals or fight back against the endless unwashed hordes. If you mine the resources, you will quickly notice that you are extremely encumbered by the weight of these resources which must be now ferried back and forth en masse from the biome. Most players come to one of three or so logical responses given the tools given to them by the game at this point:

1 - Make a cart to transport the resources.
2 - Make a ship to transport the resources.
3 - Make a portal to transport the resources.

Guess which one of these is actually the best idea? None of them. The best solution 99% of the time is to manually walk back and forth from your base to the biome with the resources in hand. You are in for a miserable grind if you are doing this solo. The cart is fragile and may as well be plywood for how durable it is. Even just bumping into bushes will reduce its health, you are slow and vulnerable to attack while you pull it, and again, a gust of wind is enough for this thing to explode into a thousand pieces spraying your precious cargo everywhere. A ship can work, but the first one you have access to before you get this material is slow, fragile, and depending on the wind might not even be faster than just walking it. The most obvious answer is a portal, made from materials found in a dungeon.

Except it doesn't allow you to transport precious materials like ores through it.

This is a great example of how the game seems to have absolute contempt for you as the player thinking about the tools the game gives you and by extension also your time. I'm not sure I appreciate the 'realism' of the bronze actually requiring twice the amount of copper to tin when it required me to mine multiple biomes of materials just to make equipment that still had me getting one shot. There are so many great, fantastical and mythological elements, it seems completely arbitrary the mechanics the game decides will be painful at the cost of fun.

Progression, altogether, is a nightmare. When you die, you lose levels in skills and the food in your stomach. This'd be fine if enemy attacks didn't clip through everything, shields were useless, and it seeming that you run out of stamina only from a few seconds of swinging even with a full belly of meat and stew. Prepare to be running back to your body across continents, through jaggy skyrim slip-n-slide terrain, again and again to die. Even with a portal, it’s very easy to fall into a feedback loop of failure where it makes you question why you are playing. Death is simply far too common and too punishing for the little progression to time you are trying to make. Ironically enough it makes you feel like your progression is worthless, because even if you run back, get your gear and succeed in whatever task you were doing, you are still probably going to get one shot anyway in an hour’s time.

A big part of this game is sailing. I hope you like sailing. You'll be doing a lot of it. You need to explore a lot to find new biomes, new materials, traders, and even if you have the wind you feel like you are truly making a year long expedition across the sea, when in reality it’s 30 minutes where you’re doing nothing but watch the environment and fish pop in and out of rendering. Even if you aren’t exploring, you need to sail to transport back the ores you’ve mined because the portals are afraid of metal or something. You can't help your friends row, you just pray that somebody is going to talk about something interesting enough that people don't throw themselves off the ship before you reach the destination. Thankfully, the friends I play with are great and I don't have to do that. I wrote most of this review while sailing.

The game is big, but ultimately it feels empty, and when it isn't empty, it is full of things that are largely not very fun to interact with. It is quite atmospheric and wondrous, clearly has a deep appreciation for Norse myth, and is obviously a project full of passion. Unfortunately, I would not play this game ever by myself, and even playing with people I like a lot, I find the gameplay and its mechanics quite painful. For a survival game it takes the grind to an incredibly painful length.

It's not an easy game to relax in with friends, but it's also a game that punishes you for taking it seriously and trying to be thoughtful about how you play. If I didn't really like the friends I was playing with I don't think I would ever play this game ever again. There are better games for both fun and serious survival experiences and I really can't think of anything it does better than another game in the genre outside of the atmosphere.

I want to like Valheim. Going on a Viking survival adventure through a Norse mythology afterlife sounds like precisely the game I would sink hundreds of hours into with friends.

Sadly, the game doesn't seem capable of delivering on almost anything. “Fun with friends” can be applied to almost anything, and therefore I don’t think it's worth your money or your time.

Such a beautiful game. The visuals are so intriguing, the enemies and NPCs have so much character. So many different routes to take aside from fighting bosses, farming, fishing and my absolute favourite - Building. From the structures and dungeons to the boss fights, Valheim offers a thrilling and visually pleasing experience to take in alone or with your companions. If you like building in games, Valheim will definitely intrigue you. You can build anything you want from houses, to structures and even whole villages if you so pleased. All building pieces in the game can be placed very specifically for a certain affect or you can use the well made snapping system too! The possibilities are endless and the results show! To anyone who plays I hope you have the best experience like me and my gf have, its what brought us together <3

The bits that keeps pulling you along ...... the initial working things out, getting better weapons ...... only last so long before you realise it's just a case of increasing the damage you can give and take. Enemies with the brain capacity of a midges todger and repetition that would make a production line operative beg for a double shift finding wonky biscuits. I tried twice to get into this game but just had to give up for my own sanity. Fair play to those who can put many thousands of hours in without hurling themselves off a roof.

Run 30 minutes away from spawn
Die
Run another 30 minutes with my old gear
Die
Go back a 3rd time and die
10/10 game

Well it was fun until I reached the swamp. Then you just get swarmed by a ton of enemies that are way overpowered compared to the level of progression available to the player. And the corpse runs are frankly no fun.

Valheim is a standout title in the survival genre, delivering a Viking-inspired world filled with beautiful, atmospheric landscapes, creative building systems, and challenging combat. The game, developed by Iron Gate Studio, combines survival mechanics with exploration and Norse mythology to create an experience that’s both engaging and mysterious, keeping players hooked as they explore, build, and battle their way through the afterlife.

World and Visuals
Valheim’s procedurally generated world is vast and filled with diverse biomes that are both dangerous and stunning. You’ll venture through tranquil meadows, dense forests, misty mountains, and eerie swamps, each biome filled with unique creatures and resources. The graphics lean on a low-poly style, but the lighting and atmosphere make up for it with breathtaking vistas that evoke a strong sense of place and beauty. When dawn breaks, casting golden light across your campsite, or when a storm crashes over the waves while you’re sailing, the game captures an ambiance that’s unexpectedly moving.

Gameplay and Exploration
Valheim’s gameplay is satisfying, with an intuitive balance between crafting, combat, and exploration. You’ll start by gathering basic resources to survive and slowly progress to creating complex tools, weapons, and structures. Unlike many survival games that can feel grind-heavy, Valheim keeps progression meaningful and rewarding, encouraging players to keep exploring and pushing deeper into dangerous biomes.

Building in Valheim is another high point, with a system that allows for creativity and customization. You can construct anything from a modest shelter to a grand Viking longhouse, and the structural integrity system makes building feel grounded and realistic. However, some hammer mechanics can be finicky. It’s occasionally difficult to line up pieces exactly where you want them, especially when you’re trying to make elaborate structures. Adjusting or snapping objects can sometimes feel like a hassle, and the building process can be frustrating when parts don’t align as they should, especially in complex projects.

Fishing: A Steep Learning Curve
One of the game’s few disappointments is its fishing mechanic. Fishing can be an enjoyable side activity in many survival games, but in Valheim, it feels overly complex. The fishing process requires a high level of precision and resources—something that feels out of sync with the rest of the gameplay. With high stamina costs, it can be challenging to land a catch without proper preparation, and while fishing does provide useful resources, it often feels more trouble than it’s worth. For players who’d prefer a more straightforward fishing experience, the mechanic can come off as tedious rather than fun.

Combat and Multiplayer
Combat in Valheim is simple yet engaging, with different weapon types offering variety and strategy. Boss fights are a big part of progression, and they provide tough, exhilarating challenges that reward careful preparation. Multiplayer is another highlight, with the game supporting up to 10 players in a shared world. Tackling the environment together—whether it's building a village, hunting down resources, or fighting bosses—brings a unique dynamic to the game, and cooperation adds another layer of enjoyment that single-player can’t quite match.

Final Thoughts
Valheim offers an exceptional survival experience, blending Viking lore with expansive, immersive gameplay that’s filled with mystery and discovery. While the fishing mechanic feels overly complicated, and certain hammer mechanics in building can be frustrating, these are relatively minor complaints in an otherwise well-designed game. With its atmospheric world, meaningful progression, and cooperative multiplayer, Valheim is a standout in the genre, providing hours of adventure and creativity.

Rating: 8.5/10

Bought on sale and already got addicted to it. This is a perfect survival game where grinding wont feel like grinding . Replayability is good and procedural generated map makes it refreshing. Totally worth it.

I think Valheim has what it takes to be a very solid open-world rpg/survival game. You can definitely enjoy it, even make it good with a couple of mods and world modifiers and what not. But vanilla, standard Valheim is plain bad, ridden with questionable design decisions. Some of the mechanics are very interactive and fun, like the skill system that levels you up as you play. The building is fantastic, the parrying is usually fun and engaging, the combat overall is satisfying. But for every nice thing with potential this game has, it is ruined by another random, unnecessary addition. While playing you just keep asking yourself over and over: "what is the point of this addition?", "why did they design it this way?"

You like how the game rewards you when you use your favourite type of weapon, by leveling up its skill, satisfyingly and naturally growing in power? Jokes on you, the next boss that you HAVE to kill is going to have an insanely high defence against your type of weapon, turns out you had to craft another weapon of the specific type of damage that the boss has a weakness against. You just got to a new biome and, oh wow, there is a flying dragon? Guess you have to make a bow now, even though you DID NOT NEED IT ONCE EVER BEFORE. The game gives you an illusion of choice, while in the actuality, the developers already have a strict playstyle in their head while designing the game, severely limiting the player's choice. What is the point of making a skill for each different type of weapon if its necessary to use multiple weapons at all times? Spears are a joke, how are you going to kill the flying dragon with it if you MISS IT ONCE your spear goes down the mountain into the forest (literally a needle in a haystack since there is no special indication for it) and now you don't have a weapon, neat! Guess you have to make another one, hooray! Sometimes it straight up disappears, so that's nice. The performance is absolutely abysmal for how the game looks like, frames drop from the usual 100+ to <40 when fighting a MANDATORY boss. Biome mobs become a cakewalk after some point, giving you a false sense of security, making you think "oh maybe i won't have to farm for another 2 hours for the bestest gear before i fight this boss". Bosses are designed terribly, with the typical "spam 100 goons" strat that is still as fun to go against as it was 50 years ago when D&D released. The decision of restricting the placement of the most basic buildings (like a standing torch) behind a workbench, while still allowing you to place campfires without it is remarkably stupid, since it takes two seconds to build a workbench, and destroy it afterwards, not just making it unnecessarily tedious, but also breaking your suspension of disbelief. I don't see the point of the comfort system if you are supposed to move your base constantly, why make your base all pretty if all the essential resources can't be teleported, guess walking a hundred million miles to your base is an intentional design choice? Dying is needlessly punishing, get one major roadblock in your playthrough, like a difficult boss or a difficult biome with strong enemies and all of your skills are back to nothing. Corpse run mechanic is designed poorly (although the intention behind it is good), essentially, every time you take all of your items back after death, you are tankier and have a greater health regen speed. It’s supposed to assist you in recovering your items, but considering the fact that getting to your items is the hard part, not getting out with them, it fails to help in any major way. What it does succeed in doing, is promoting building a spawnpoint near a boss, and dying->getting your items back->tanking all the hits while the corpse run is active->repeat. Overall, the game is a slog to go through, with the long grind for items not being a main issue, but an issue-multiplier, making you feel each and every one of the game's flaws and problems every time you go mining for ores or raiding the tombs. Valheim severely lacks in Quality of Life updates and many mechanics feel poorly designed. Considering the game is in development for 4+ years at the time of writing this, the developers making new content instead of fixing what they made prior, and its financial success, I can't with a good heart recommend buying it. The "default" experience (not changing any world settings or installing any mods) is 6/10 at best, if you decide to try the game out I recommend installing mods.

This game has been an obsession. It feels like adult Minecraft. There's so much lore and depth to this game I've had nothing but fun. 10/10

I was initially hesitant of Valheim as I didn't originally enjoyed the art style. After some convincing from friends, I ended up purchasing the game and falling in love with the low poly art style. This game came at the perfect time during the pandemic and was the perfect escape into viking adventures with friends. I hadn't felt this way about a multiplayer survival game since Stardew, which is quite different gameplay-wise, but still occupied my thoughts throughout the days. I'm patiently awaiting the v1.0 release so we can start up another world to get sucked into again

It's a good game but also a dishonest one.

Whatever you do, do not believe the Discussion section of Valheim. The forum moderators that the game devs hired are dishonest and censor anything that is bad publicity to their game. I have tried posting some formal and related topics to the game but the dishonest forum moderators flagged it as off-topic/irrelevant. If this is the type of forum mods the game devs hired then I can say for sure that the game devs are giving themselves bad publicity with censorship of anyone they don't happen to like in their forum.

Update: I will update this review once only when I have received any change to the forum moderators abuse of power against my post. But right now, I believe it is only right to give people who will buy this game a heads up that is currently has a dishonest Discussion.

Right now I can't recommend this game.
Is it fun? Yes, to a point, but it becomes more clunky and tedious the longer you play, which doesn't feel good. I really want to love this game again but we've grown a distance.

Issues raised by the community that would alleviate the problems causing this have either been met with stubborn refusal or scorn from the devs who seem to think tedium = difficulty.

I really enjoyed this game to begin with, but the frustrating lack of communication and often downright unintuitive, backwards decisions by the dev team are pushing players away from the game...including me. And the 'fix' should not have to be 'well, go mod the game then!'

It's great they have a vision to stick with. Not everything should be added that gets asked for. But simple, QoL changes and balances that affect the core gameplay shouldn't be overlooked. You shouldn't have to argue so hard for them to add 'chest stacking', change their minds and remove it, then hurriedly add it back when the community explodes. Or have things like ballistae that shoot players because the devs think it's 'funny'. Or refuse to add inventory expansion for late game, when you're forced to carry your armor in your inventory. Or if you play melee and need to fight on sloped terrain? Good luck hitting the enemy while they tear you to bits. How about a filter so you don't auto-loot every piece of junk? No?

Adding more tedium is NOT making the game difficult. It makes it boring, and not fun. The game is in early access still, and has been for half a decade at this point, but these are years-old issues that they refuse to address. Not to speak of problems like how awful the boss powers are, or how levelling skills like jump doesn't reduce fall damage. Or nerfing popular items, instead of buffing others to give people an incentive to use them instead.
You're also expected to move your base around, or make multiple smaller ones, which is great...if they didn't insist on inundating you with 20 different tables/work stations instead of just having a tab on the crafting menu to save on clutter. Aesthetically it's nice, but then you have to find more room to make the base bigger, which comes with poor optimisation and fps stutters.

Maybe when they are done pushing merchandise and board games for the as yet, unfinished game, and we see some balance passes, I'll change my review.
But for now, it feels like the early days with so much heart and soul, has gotten lost behind trying to make the game more 'brutal' but not actually adding anything that meaningfully adds to it.

It used to run good last time i played it years ago. Unfortunately it now it seems to act like a stress test for my gpu at just the main menu. Most information online is just unhelpful works for me or blaming hardware/software defects. Instead of jumping through hoops and possibly risk hardware failure caused by this game I'll just play many of my other games that work just fine.

After the bog witch update I can no longer play with my controller at all. It's constantly auto equipping and unequipping my gear, scrolling uncontrollably in my inventory, sitting me down randomly while I'm doing things, etc. I love this game and I really want to play it but won't until my game stops freaking out. And yes I tested it wasn't my controller with all my others games, absolutely no issues with them with it.

IMO the perfect survival game. fun and addictive. Exploration, and preparation is rewarding, and death is just punishing enough to not be crippling. I play solo, but if I had any friends I'm sure this would be even more fun lol.

Overwhelmingly positive. you say ...
No, it's actually very Positive..
Overwhelmingly positive you say... Awesome. And its early access. I'll take it.

I absolutely adore this game. Very addictive. Sooo fun to play with others! If you like Minecraft but harder, then this is a game for you.

In depth and surprisingly hard. Open world with lots of possibilities for going to areas you shouldn't yet and get your ass kicked. Super fun to go in blind and try to figure out the ropes with no guides.

Fun but tough to survive. I find its better with friends. The theme of vikings is pretty cool.

I loved Valheim when it first became available, but MAN...

There's other negative reviews that you can find that perfectly describe what they've done in detail, so I'm just gonna give my reasons for a negative review, here, as bullet points.

- Iron Gate got hit with a TIDAL WAVE of money and did basically nothing with it. Team barely expanded (besides that expensive horse they bought and showed off.)

- Despite massive success, updates became a dripfeed - we got a mid-sized patch after a two year wait, at one point. Update speed has devolved to the post-1.0 stability and maintenance updates many Early Access games do... except it's still in Early Access, and has been for years.

- Every 'update' for years, now, has been "here's a sneak peek at a cooked fish model and half a table!", things like that.

- Valheim constantly celebrated itself over the years for being so successful, without improving much of anything.

- Iron Gate put out an announcement during that two-year dry spell with nothing but extremely minor hotfixes, asking for players to vote for them in the Labor of Love category. They were mocked for this, and rightly so, and in response, the company SUDDENLY put out a more meaty update at the very, very next patch. Crazy how that works.

- Ever since the Labor of Love misstep, they've cracked down on moderation in their forums to the point of overmoderation. There is actually a discussions post in which someone calmly laid out their issues with the game and said they weren't having fun - they didn't argue, they didn't insult anyone, they just explained what was lacking, for them. The response from one of Iron Gate's moderators? Locking the thread, and choosing a comment that included the phrase "So? Go leave a negative review and GTFO." as the answer to the topic. Someone literally just sharing their grievances with the game in the forums dedicated to discussing the game was encouraged by a staff member to shut up and go away.

- Every new area since the Swamps has just been pain. Just absolute pain, and not in the challenging way. Simply obnoxious to traverse, and unfun to conquer.

- Enemies, in all areas, are just... annoying. Their extremely rudamentary AI means that every single fight, no matter what enemy you're fighting, will devolve to being swarmed by a bunch of brainless goons tripping over one another to spam attacks at you. Even the enemies in the beginning area are designed in a way that's just... Annoying. They'll swipe at you, run a circle around you for fifteen seconds, then do it again. I don't know how they so perfectly balanced the worst of both worlds - hyperaggressive and overtly cowardly AI, all at once. I despise fighting things in Valheim because it's not HARD, it's just irritating.

- The studio let Valheim's overwhelming success get to their heads, and yet even when they were the golden child of the survival genre, they just sat on their laurels and barely did anything whatsoever with it. Updates have been a dripfeed for years, now, and still are. They're STILL doing the "here's a sneak peek at a chair" thing, with only the most recent update as of me writing this post as an exception to this pattern, recently.

- They just don't DO much, and MAN can they not take criticism. Valheim could have been absolutely amazing. I just don't want to play it anymore. They're not going to do anything with it because making it actually enjoyable again is too much effort for this team's taste. Your money is best spent somewhere else - they're resting on their giant pile of Early Access money whether or not you buy the game, so buy a game you'll actually enjoy, that'll actually get substantial updates more than once in a blue moon.

- - - - - - - - - -

Overall, do I recommend Valheim? Absolutely not. It's just simply not a labor of love, not at this point. There are developers you could support who could genuinely use your money AND are consistently putting out updates even after coming out of Early Access. Support developers who actually care enough to deserve your support.

The game is really good but right after the first two bosses my enjoyment dropped to 0 the grind is just way too much and even the low level characters smash you with one hit even if you have all the items to match the stage you're in. Me and my friends were only on the hard difficulty which isn't very high looking at the other difficulties. I really recommend for the first 14 hours but past that don't bother if you're not a basement dweller.

Short disclaimer: For the twenty-nine hours I played of this game at the time of writing this review, I did not play solo but with someone else during all of it. This definitely influenced the way I played, however I believe my experience would have been even worse had I played alone.

I'll start with what I like about the game: it has great base building, and the atmosphere is on point. Building a large and cozy home with a view of the sea and sitting on my bed while looking out the window during a storm was a great experience. Sailing was very fun even when the wind was being unhelpful.
The starting area (the meadows biome) is very beautiful, and running around in its forest hunting deer was great.
It got old though, after I had to do this days and days in a row to get decent armor for raiding tombs. And this was just the start: I wasted hours mining copper and tin and smelting it all (I sure love endlessly chopping trees for charcoal), just so I could get my bronze armor decently upgraded (because the swamp requires it) only to ditch it when I got iron soon after, knowing this process would just repeat for the next metal tier.

The inventory loss is also a huge issue. When you're exploring on a boat for example, getting your grave back might take hours and the alternative is ridiculous, who would even want to make all that gear again?

I understand that the point is to punish death, but then why is it so easy to die? I wish enemies didn't one shot me if my armor tier is a bit too low (or stagger with one hit and kill me in the next), the food I need any time I go out takes much time to cook (I becomes such a chore after a while), there is no lock on (although I suppose with the way stamina works it wouldn't even be useful), many enemies behave obnoxiously (I hate all these poison types) and the most efficient way to fight is to use a bow and arrow and kite endlessly - using any other weapon means hoping I didn't waste all my stamina getting to the enemy so that I'm able to get more than two swings in (or, golly, perhaps even use my shield to block).

Pretty much the only way to responsibly explore is to build portals whenever I take risks (and those require barricades as protection or random enemies will destroy them).

Finally, boss fights are a mess, with other enemies still spawning around during the fight. Killing the elder was half avoiding its ranged attacks (since its stomps hit from a mile away, rendering melee obsolete) and half running away from trolls that got curious at all the racket.

I really enjoy a lot about this game but it's also too painful an experience for me to recommend buying it. If it's on a good sale it might be worth it depending on your tastes.

Unfortunately, this game suffers from what a lot of open world survival games suffer from; it's good for the initial phase of the game while you're getting your feet under you. There are some elements that work really well and get you interested in trying to survive and improve your equipment and learn about cooking and crafting. Let me say that the structure building is excellent, and the art style is immersive and there's many beautiful scenes that show just how good artwork than having the best quality graphics engine (this game was made in Unity).

Eventually the cracks start to show and the game begins to fall apart. The huge intimidating ogre is confused by a couple of logs that (he himself knocked down) forming a particular arrangement that he can't work out how to walk around - when he's tall enough to simply step over it. Regular enemies have the same issue - ponderously stopping and turning on the spot to navigate around a simple log on the ground, when they could easily jump over it. But the ogre not being able to step over them is the most egregious.

Then it becomes clear that they just increase the damage output and hitpoints of later enemies to make them "harder" because they can't design difficulty (or program good soluitions to things, as evidenced with the path finding issues above.) I can't deny that it's terrifying to have the deathsquitoes one-shot you and have to build up to being able to defeat them, but why a little green goblin thing (Fuling) presents a bigger threat than a larger swamp orc thing (Draugr) requires a suspension of disbelif that breaks you out of the world and has you thinking "Ok, I guess I just have to level up to withstand the hitpoints on this thing".

And finally, once the stakes are really high, the real failings start to show. Anything with a large attack radius (like an ogre swinging its log) will clip through any defensive walls you put up, clip through the actual walls of your home, and damage and destroy all the precious contents inside with out first destroying the outer walls. The damage just takes hitpoints off anything within range, making walls pointless, so you resort to using the games's cheap programming against it - just put up smaller stone walls to "distract" the ogres away from your base because they will target those first even though they could just walk right around them. With the final dominant strategy bing to elevate the terrain to make an impassible slope that the enemies can neither destroy, or walk up, just ending the conflict right there.

Another cheap thing is the way "raids" just kind of "happen" at your base out of nowhere, spawning whatever the most difficult enemy you've encountered is. It would make sense to build a heavily defended base in the snowy area where the flying creatures could fire their ice shots at it, but it makes no sense for the same cold-based creatures to spawn around your cosy little Meadows base and just obliterate it. This doesn't make sense and just isn't fun.

And ultimately, there's no strong story reason to push ahead and defeat the bosses. You start getting the feeling "what is the point of all this?" since the only motivation to go visit the next boss and kill it is because it's next on the list. They kind of seem to be minding their own business until you summon them and start bothering them. And there's no story besides a bit of cryptic text that pops up in the morning sometimes after sleeping, saying things like "You recall drinking and laughing with your friends around a table" or something like that.

With no reason to push forwards, there's no reason to accrue all these mighty powers, once you can one-shot an ogre (which we managed to be able to do only a few bosses in) there's no push to complete the rest of the game because the only motivation was survival. Obviously the "raids" were a cheap answer to this, and it shows - it's just frustrating, because it just "happens" at any base, with no course of action to mitigate it, so it's just frustrating and annoying.

I'll change my review when they put more budget into designing the rest of the game instead of spending it on flashy anime trailers. I used to love this game in the beginning but I feel like it was all a facade. There's no game there after you get a handle on surviving.

I really enjoy playing this game. I'm not the best gamer in the world, and I definitely do better at this particular game when my husband plays co-op with me, but I can still do it on my own and it's super fun. I had hit a low point in my gaming, where I was playing the same few games over and over and getting depressed with them. I couldn't apply myself to anything new. I would play for maybe 10 minutes and get bored, longing for the days when I was younger and I could lose myself in a game for hours without realizing time had past. Valheim brought that spark back! It's a fantastic stress reliever after working all day and I look forward to continued play. 10/10 would recommend. It's like Minecraft but with a linear plot and more complex...and Norse!

Play with friends!
Very easy to mod, fantastic in depth base building, amazing huge world with a great sense of exploration.
Maybe turn the resource gain on 3x if you value your time.

Ashlands and Mistland updates just not fun. Too many toxic mechanics. Devs should have used a little bit imagination here, you could make the game hard but not annoying to play. Mistlands the fog is too much and not working properly 90% of the time. Ashlands the performance is shit and NPC spawning is just way too much. Base upkeep is full time job because the skeletons just keep spawning even if you destroy all the spawners. If you manage to leave the base and try to advance somewhere, you spent next 25 minutes fighting NPC on the way to the flametal deposits, oh now you are out of rested buff, suddenly you dont have stamina to mine the ores in time.. Lets say you managed to mine some metal and had stamina to jump back to solid ground, now theres 8 skeletons warriors waiting for you and you have 0 stamina regen. Now you are dead. Eat, rest, corspe run naked. Well, you died, try again. Now you get your stuff back but equipping gear takes forever, you dead again. Skeleton warriors attack animations are fucked. You cant outrun Asksvin without stamina regen. Maybe ashland would be more enjoyable if the spawn rates were lowered about 500%...

Play it through one time then wait 3 years for them to add a new biome, but don't worry you can play the board game while you wait just have to spend more money!! SMH

50% of this game is something I truly enjoy.
The other 50% is absolutely awful.

It feels like the devs thought "We need to fill this game with nonsensical time-wasting filler so people take too long to consume the main content, giving us time to work on new stuff". There's a good reason it's so easy to change the server settings, which is because the default settings are SO BAD that it makes you wonder if the people in charge are really capable of executing this project until the game reaches its "release version". It's a huge redflag when the default settings are this bad.

Holy shit the need to waste SO MANY resources creating/upgrading weapons (which you can lose somewhere) and the complete lack of proper planning for the singleplayer experience really ruin the fun a lot of times. The combat system feels okay at first, but the more you progress the more its flaws become apparent. I'm not even complaining about the difficulty... I just finished the Elden Ring DLC this year and I loved fighting the final boss solo, but in this game here the combat is just a mix of a bad combat system with a challenge that becomes less interesting the more you play, to the point it feels like some amateurish boring game design later on.

There are some good ideas that sound nice on paper but they're implemented so poorly that they become bad in practice, like the whole raid system and other mechanics. The game is meant to be played with a group of people, but even that has so many flaws that its better to just play anything else instead.

Yes, it's "early access" and some people have thousands of hours in it but in this genre it's easy to find people who have played 9000 hours on any assetflip game like that palworld, so that isn't really a statement about the game's quality and it's more a thing about this genre of game.

I might come back later to play it again after some major updates but for now my expectations about this game's future aren't great...

It used to be a highly fun game, but with the devs nerfing the game to make it less fun (feather cape) and the rush get new content and patches out, the grind has become like a pay-to-win mobile game.

Everything up to the Mistlands are awesome, the Mistlands self are cool, but everything else after that went to down the loo.

The devs should rather not make any updates if they are going to make half-arse ones.

This game is by far the best survival game ever, simply put Valheim has the best durability system that i've ever used, my favourite combat system as it always gives you a challenge and humbles you when you get too cocky. Valheim is certainly worth a shot.

Valheim is one of the greatest survival/crafting games ever made.

...or at least it was, until the most recent update. Ashlands is tedious, dull and unnecessarily punishing. Everything up until Mistlands in this game is fantastic and from Mistlands onwards, less so. The Mistlands and especially Ashlands prioritizes combat and frequent enemy spawns that bombard the player if they make even the slightest noise (noticeably apparent when you are trying to mine or cut trees which you know... is like half your time spent in this game).

I am not adverse to difficult games, but only when the game itself actually warrants it. Monster Hunter and Sekiro are two titles off the top of my head with fantastic and gruelling combat that I happily spent numerous hours mastering. Those games are designed around tight controls, satisfying swordplay and unique enemy variety/patterns to keep the player engaged. I don't come to Valheim for its combat and spell fights, I come here to build bases with my mates, admire the scenery and take long boat voyages with no destination just to explore and see what's out there.

Basically what I'm trying to say, is Valheim's combat is not intricate or sophisticated enough to warrant this uptick in difficulty and it only serves to make the game worse (at least to me).

Despite all this though, I think the game is still at least worth trying. There's a lot good about this game and it's not until near the end where you start to see its cracks. I would advise picking it up on sale if you're interested.

Also doesn't help that this game barely gets any updates. I'm actually ok with a slow development timeline but if you've been 'cooking' for a year or even two to make the next big update it better be flawless (and judging by the dip in Steam ratings and player consensus, it wasn't). See you all in 2 years when Iron Gate releases an even crappier biome.

Just go play Abiotic Factor instead.

Also for fuck's sakes can you guys do something about the taming already? It's utterly baffling that we have to sit next to an animal for at least 30 minutes real time just to tame it. And since you need two to breed, that's an hour at minimum and that's assuming there are no interruptions (and I'm not even including any time it may take to funnel the two animals into a pen once finished. Wolves are excluded since they can follow players). A common suggestion is that players should be using that time to level up their sneak skill. My response to that is, if you genuinely think crouch walking around a box for half an hour per animal is acceptable game design, I don't know what to tell you.

The combat in this game is a joke. Enemies have zero commitment and can rotate on their heel to hit you regardless of how you move. You're incentivized to go ranged or stick to staggering the monster repeatedly. And if you lose due to enemy rotation hacks, you lose a significant chunk of all your skill points.

Inventory management is also rather bothersome, I must say. The building system is fun and progression is fun with friends... but it does suck that most of the jank has stayed the same in the years this has been in Early Access. I was looking forward to where things would go at the start, but it's not changed much.

Most of the game was great. Got deep into eitr usage after enjoying all of the biomes...until Ashlands came along. Not a single fortress in sight, lava fireballs knocking me off basalt platforms, and worst of all, I'm constantly under attack in the Ashlands. Try to kill a Morgen? A Charred Twitcher comes out of nowhere. Get halfway done with it, and look. 2 Charred Warriors spawned. Kite them around, getting small shots in, and-Oh, joy. 2 Charred Archers spawn. And then a Fallen Valkyrie with an Askvin or two spawn.

These spawn rates are out of control. Coupled with the insanely high perception range of Ashland enemies, it's really taking away from the exploration aspect. I can't explore if I'm constantly getting piled without end.

I've put a fair bit of time into this game now and still love it. Nothing beats that first time you see a troll while sailing near the shore... and then speeding away as fast as I could! One of my all time favourite games, if not the best.

I've never played multiplayer, so can't comment on that aspect but it would appear lots of peeps love it. SIngle player is just wonderful, I get lost in just "living" in the game world. The graphics are stunningly beautiful and it's so relaxing just pottering about. Take the game at your own pace, explore, forage, hunt and build. And when you want a challenge, sail away and it's there.

I will add I have about nine QOL mods and they really make the game that much more enjoyable for me.

And the absolute best thing about this game for me? Building! I started with a basic wooden hut and now I'm constructing yet another castle, this time in the Ashlands. Happy hunting :)

Pros:
+ Overall a great game.
+ A great escape from soulless AAA games.
+ Worth and fun of the game triples if played with friends.
+ Took our time and enjoyed every second of it; 150 hours in game and still haven't finished it.
+ Potato PCs can run this game.

Cons:
- Infuriating fighting mechanics. If you're not on level ground consider yourself dead.
- No starving, but your stamina is tied to your food. You have to constantly cook and eat.
- Grind-y. If you don't play with easier game modifiers, you will gather & mine A LOT.
- A little repetitive gameplay. Prepare -> Dungeon -> Defeat boss -> Repeat.
- Dying with your best gear may spiral you in to depression.
- Deathsquito. ifykyk.

Summary:
+ If you like open world survival games, you'll like this game.
+ Still in early access, updates will only bring more content.
+ The game is as easy or as punishing as you want it to be.
- You may not like PSP-level graphics. (I do, it can still be atmospheric.)
- Oftentimes grindy and infuriating gameplay mechanics.
- You will have to sink in a lot of time in to this game.

Playing this game for almost 50 hours straight, this game is so fucking good that it makes me want to rip my skin off, I think I might've actually contracted cancer with the hours of grinding I've put into this game in only two week. I work 80 hours at my job a week, and still by some twisted turn of literal addiction do I have this many hours in this game. Funny thing is, I'm not even halfway done. If you want Minecraft 2, this is it, play with friends to prevent you from losing your sanity. Jokes aside, love this game and may've been one of the best 20 bucks I've spent

I first started playing this game with 0 knowledge about ANYTHING in valheim. Playing a game and being a noob all over again, clueless as hell, it's been nice. I'm currently in the mistlands as of yesterday and have no complaints yet. One of the cleanest games I've been able to play in a long time. Very unique graphics, but in a good way. It's barebones and very simple in terms of game mechanics and everything else inbetween. This is a game you can relax and play, unlike a lot of games now a days where it's very stress-induced gameplay. I never do reviews, so you know it's a good game when I write one..Just saying! 10/10

It can be pretty challenging at times, although that's what the difficulty settings are for. Ultimately it's up to the player how hard they want to push things. If you're looking for a comfy type of experience that's an option, as the building and crafting systems are quite relaxing. For those times you want to test yourself, it has that too. Maybe a little dated in comparison to modern triple A games, but ultimately good value for money. The world is huge without being repetitive or boring, unlike some things out there. Long story short, I liked it.

Loved this game up even through the Mistlands update. It was tough, sometimes really tough, but doable and rewarding.

I played Ashlands content for one hour and I'm probably never picking the game up again. I can't fathom who thought "let's make the new biome one long tedious fight that requires steering a small island half-way across the world through an obstacle course to get to" was a good idea, but even cheating to warp back led to an endless chain of battles with no exploration. I have zero interest in playing this game any further if this is the direction they're taking it, and I can't recommend it to anyone who liked what the game was up to this point.

And to those of you saying "you only played an hour? keep trying!" Yeah, I have a life, I'm not going to dump a dozen hours into something I loathe just to make it modestly less loathsome. Ashlands just isn't fun.

The game simply does not respect your time at all. Do not under any circumstance play this game solo if your want to conserve your sanity.

With friends it's quite fun.

I really wanted to give this game a recommendation. I however can't do that after beating Ashlands. I have over 200 hours in this game on a single play through, but it's really only about 90 hours of actual content. I played this game with one friend, which will be relevant in my review. This is in early access and I do think this can all be fixed to make the game good on release.

There may be some spoilers for the game in my review.

The game had a strong opening, with the biomes being fun and engaging, this quickly dropped off after the swamp. The early game was fun and engaging and taught you well how to play the game. The addition of Huginn and Muginn was a great way to teach the player the things they needed to play the game. Despite this, the developers stopped using them, and you just had to figure out things in the game as you went along, numerous things in the game we could barely figure out without dying tons of times because we didn't google. I think it's a very irresponsible thing to force your players to have to use google to play your game.

We ended up randomly wandering into the wrong biomes several times in the game, from Swamp, we went to plains because the first mountain was so small we assumed it was like the ocean in that it wasn't really a biome. We instantly got smoked by the goblins. Every time we died, it was such a chore to get back to your body, even with portals near by.

The amount of resources you need to get the proper gear in the game is stupid, we had to make 4 trips to 3 different swamps just to get the scrap iron needed to gear up one player, I was running an arrow build and my friend was running a tank build. This was artificially inflated by the developers by forcing us to carry metals through the game and not be able to use portals. But to further slap us in the face they added a portal that can carry metal in the Ashlands, which is way too little too late. By that time we were carrying an entire foundry on our boat. But I'll get back to Ashlands in this review.

Every boss had different specific vulnerabilities which basically made one item set useless. If you didn't have the item set you would die, go back and farm the gear and come back to the boss still spawned in and die like 100 more times to finally kill the boss. The bosses clearly are scaled for groups of 6+ people, each person with specific item sets. Which mind you would take about 50-100 hours of farming per player. It's insane how much farming you had to do. If you had an arrow build, well surprise, one boss is immune to arrows. Same for melee, or shields etc .

Finally we get to the Mistlands, which our first time there we were supposed to be in the plains (surprise the game let us wander into the wrong biome yet again); now there are flying creatures that insta-kill you and we lost all our gear and boat (this happened like 5 times in the game). Not once was this ever indicated that creatures could do this.

We finally build up our gear again, do the plains and then get to Mistlands, only to have to farm 4 times as much stuff as before to gear up. Almost at the end of the game and they introduce magic into the game. Way too late to do so. Magic was fun however, but needing to eat food that can't be farmed at all is really dumb. Previously there were always ways to farm stuff that gave you health or stamina. We had to ration our mage food like crazy and numerous times they FORCED us to backwards progress just to gear mage food.

The top it off, the mist was so dumb, you couldn't even see 6 feet ahead of you even with the wisplight. After farming for way to long in Mistlands we finally killed the boss, which was arguably a fun boss. Ending up the Ashlands we had already deduced that the boat likely prevented fire damage, we knew the name of the next biome from the update. We wandered into the deep north, so we deduced Ashlands was south. It took us about 9 hours of just boating to just get there. Also dying once due to dumb mechanics again. we had placed a portal right outside of the Ashlands because we knew we'd die again. Big surprise we died and got swarmed by everything there, lost the boat and had to come back.

Finally we did our Ashlands expedition, which was so dumb. They took the concept of "not seeing anything" from Mistlands and just made the Ashlands not visible. Took the amount of bad guys and multiplied it by 100, we possibly died over 1000 times and had to have 3 sets of gear each just to get our bodies back each time. We were constantly being swarmed by so many bad guys it was insane. This all being "post-nerf" mind you, We had to set up 4 portal chains just to get back to our body and I really am not joking.

The game was the buggiest, laggiest mess inside of the Ashlands that we just kept dying to things not even rendering. We don't have bad computers but Valheim just isn't optimized.

Finally we get to the boss and you guessed it, we needed all mage gear, had to go back and farm more stuff to just get more mage gear for both of us and actually kill the boss.

Do I think this game has potential? Yes, but right now it is trying WAY too hard to be Minecraft mixed with Elden Ring, mixed with Baldur's Gate. This game needs to figure out what it is and stop forcing players to grind out boring mechanics.

Easily one of the greatest survival games made and possibly one of my favorite games ever. Only biggest gripe I have is the gap in content release. I understand the detail they put into creating new biomes and mobs, but some simplified life updates would be nice. Likely, if that is what you want. There is a fantastic mod community and are very easy to use and run with the ones you like the most.

The Game is very nice. the only slightly annoying thing is building is sometimes difficult.
10/10

i really want to recommend Valheim, but i simply cant due to the annoying save issue. after spending hours grinding away to get resources, i save and log off. when i return, it loads in a save from january, when i first started this game and abandoned it. all my progress gone. well, not gone, just stuck as a save file i cannot access. reading online it says its something to do with the cloud saves. so i have tried moving the saves from the cloud to the local server. this doesnt work. it will only load the cloud saves. if i do vice versa, it doesnt show up apart from to say its deleted. i was enjoying the gameplay so far but i cannot be playing hours each day to get me back to square one. id refund if i was within the timescale

TL:DR at the bottom

Valheim has the potential to be a very good game, However Iron Gate has dropped the ball big time on this viking themed game. The perfect release time made this game a huge hit and saw lot of sales as an internet sensation because of the rare style of game and the sought of being a really cool viking sailing the seas and fighting tons of enemies and bosses. Do not get me wrong the enemies and bosses are fun and I like it to play however I have two main issues with Valheim, the ocean and mistlands. Starting with the mistlands, as Asmond Gold said its terrible, no one wants to deal with fog in videos games most people turn off fog in other games just because its awful. Forcing a heavily dense fog onto a player just doesnt make me want to progress because its just taxing and you ruin any view in a game other than that mistlands are fine. The worst part of valheim is the ocean simple because its dead content. The first time i set out of a boat i was absolutely thrilled loved the idea and even because quite the captain skills wise, passing through small streams and gaps occasionally getting stuck but all in good fun. After that fun passes you enter the sailing simulator, long distances that have no excitement to them because the ocean is a joke of content. You have 3 things in the entire ocean of valheim, fish, leviathan and the serpent. The first time you encounter the serpent its pretty cool but its not really a threat unless youre on a raft, not to mention it wont chase you for a long distance, they kind of have a spawn area and stay there. The leviathan gives you access to mineable material that gives you two items a dagger and harpoon. The harpoon is useful for fun and serpent dragging but other than that you have to be creative if you want it to be useful or player launching (very fun) but after you obtain that seeing a leviathan isnt anything to you. Same with the serpent, you can get some good food and a tower shield but otherwise there isnt really a point to drag a serpent to the shore because imo a shield without parry is useless to me. Dont get me starting on fishing its kinda something no one really wants to do but if you fish in the ocean you have to sit still you cant keep sailing along while someone is fishing, never got that to work. The abysmal amount of content from the ocean makes playing the game a chore and there fix to ocean travel? portals. Portals is such a shit idea, they're very handy dont get me wrong but why play a viking game since once you have portals and depending on your settings youll use those and your boats become trophies, especially since they added a portal that can teleport ore/bars. I think portals were just a scapegoat to making the ocean a part of enjoyable content, there could have been different kinds of ships the specialize into different content but all be generally useful at everything. A faster kind of boat to escape danger by being faster but make it less able to transport or fight with. A hauling boat carries a boat load :) of items maybe even let it have an ability to get rested bonus or small builds. Harder ocean enemies? boat with a turret of some kinda giant arrows etc, Want to drag a serpent to shore without a friend? turret with a harpoon ammo shoot the fucker run it into land pull it up further get your scales. Of course they would need to make the scales useful (armor set, arrows, weapons, upgrade to future weapons, building material for idk walls against harder raids?!) Considering this game doesnt revolve around ocean content really just kills the drive for me wanting to play because i have walked away from my keyboard just to travel because the wind has been unfavorable for 10 minutes. Why not make it the more friends you have the faster a boat goes with them on it? more row power or bonus to sail power. There are countless ideas that could be employed but instead they put a pin in an ocean update because mistlands and ashlands.

TL:DR Valheim added portals to fix dead ocean content and made a shit biome of fog, a mechanic tons of games turn off.

I was on the fence about this game due to the slow updates and now seeing them focusing on a getting funding for a board game I cannot recommend this game. I may change this review if there is a massive improvement to the game.

This game is terrible patch by patch....
t's clear that the developers don't actually play with their own games and have no idea what should be introduced and how content should be produced in the game....

An open world grindfest where exploration is somehow boring and unfun. Don't bother if you're employed or playing alone. Any progression past the first boss takes several hours to do, the game is just grinding. The stamina system is terrible, no stamina means you can't run or fight so if you're swarmed good luck doing anything about it. Oh you died? Well unless you had a portal close to your grave have fun spending 20 minutes running back just to get a shot at getting all of your stuff back because the same mobs that killed you just sit there and guard it.