Valheim

Valheim is like if IKEA made Dark Souls.

You spend 3 hours chopping trees to build a house, only to have a troll yeet it into orbit.

The game teaches you that gravity is a suggestion and that your Viking is allergic to comfort. Also, you can't teleport ore, because Odin said, "Thou shalt suffer."

Its a great open world-survival game for either solo or coop. Just watch out for the little flying monsters in the plains and you'll be fine.

Archaic combat, outdated mining, excessive farming, rudimentary fishing, excessive mob spawning, horrible building.

This isn't early access; it's a bunch of ideas from different games glued together and sold for €20.

If it's been in early access for four years, I can't imagine how long it'll take to release the full version.

See you in 2050, hopefully.

I genuinely despise 99.9% of the survival games out there.

This is the rare exception for me. The aesthetics, systems, and even the base building all just clicked for me. The hours I put in were essentially concurrent. If you're thinking about getting it, don't. Just do.

I love this Game and I really want to recommend it, but there are a few Things that horribly break the Fun.

Fix your damn Combat System!

Is there an Enemy two Pixels below you? Can it hit you? Of course!
Can you hit it? NO! Why should you? You can only attack horizontal — not up, not down.
The Map Generator loves Hills, Mountains, and dead Players, because your Character is a stupid Stick.

There is no Fun in this. After so many Years, it still feels like the Developer is unable to code a Combat System where you hit where you look.

Getting a Raid? Doesn’t matter how well-equipped or skilled you are — if the Landscape isn’t flat enough, you’re dead.

Accidentally pressed Attack? You’re dead. Because you can’t cancel an Attack with a Block like in every other Game.

Got your Feet in Water? Better put away your Frostner Hammer — it’s Time to punch that Giant Ant trying to rip you apart.
ALL your Weapons and Tools are apparently hydrophobic — and so are you.

Are you a Master of Timing? The Game doesn’t care.
Even with my Server connected via LAN at 1000 Gbit/s, there’s no perfect Timing due to Microlags and poor Network Implementation.
Client-Server Verification is bad. Skills often don’t matter when many Entities are active.

FPS Drops

Want high FPS?
Build small.
Don’t use too many Glitches (though you basically have to, if you want your Base to look beautiful).
Better not terraform anything, or you’ll be piloting the craziest UFO at 20 FPS whenever you’re near a larger Base.

We have the Ability to build amazing Structures and Landscapes — but at what Cost?
What’s the Point of a Present if you have to cut Yourself just to open it?

Listen to your Player Base!

More than in other Games, there are countless Videos where Streamers make Lists of Mods that should be implemented officially.

You’re forced to install Mods just to have Fun with this Game.

Why can’t we have a user-friendly UI with the Features we really want to see and configure?

Why is the Inventory punishing you for playing and gathering?
This is one of the few Games where your Equipment takes up regular Inventory Space.
It feels like you’re wearing your Breastplate hanging out of your Pockets. Space for Food, Arrows, or Potions — okay.
But Armor? Who thought that was a good Idea?

At least give us a Backpack or a Bag we can access from the Inventory and wear.
No — instead, you NEED to grab that clumsy Cart and drag it into every little Bush or Rock you can’t even see.

Want to get rid of an Item? Good Luck.
There’s no Trash Can — just the Sea. And even the Sea is picky. Floating Items remain on the Map forever.

This could be such a perfect Game — so lovely.
Even with these "low" Graphics, it looks amazing. It’s Fun to build and fight with Friends, and I truly enjoy it.

Until we have to fight an unfair Fight.

Please fix this and don’t let your Game die because of missing Basics and stubborn Design Choices.

Major catch-22 on upgrading gear: need to farm stuff in the Black Forest, but you get swarmed if you try to go there, so you die because you don't have upgraded gear. (E.g., in starter area, you get attacked by one Greyling at a time. In the Black Forest, you get swarmed by 3+ Greydwarves.) Need to kill skeletons to get bones to upgrade armor, but one skeleton can almost one-shot a player with level 1 armor. Stuff missing from the tutorial, such as how to use a workbench once you build it, how to use a bow, how to build a shelter on uneven ground (all the ground is uneven). Getting swarmed because Hugin spawned deep in the Black Forest, thus luring you deeper into the forest.

I would really like the developers to see this review!

I have completed this great game twice already and I want to thank the developers from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful adventure, it was unforgettable.

I can't wait for the Far North.

I want to immediately write what the game lacks, or what could be improved:

1. Combat:
1.1 It is really necessary to make a roll on 1 button, it is a real pain.

1.2 Parrying should not depend on the shield level, this mechanic is based on reaction, skill and studying the timing of enemy attacks, the shield can add frames of successful parrying or some additional mechanics. Parrying should not break due to the difficulty level, the enemy level, the number of friends in the group.

1.3 Fighting on uneven ground: here you probably know that you can stand close to the enemy and not hit him or, for example, you can't hit the seekers' eggs with a halberd until they hatch themselves...

1.4 It would be possible to introduce magic a little earlier, at the level of buffs or healing, in a balanced way, so that there would not be such a sharp change in gameplay when moving to Mistlands. Perhaps before that, you can make balanced staves or runes with spells. I would like lightning magic that hits from above.

2. Meta
2.1 I would really like some kind of pumping, in addition to the standard growth of skills, talents, additional mechanics with which you can customize your character. The ability to develop your role in the group or to become fond of some skills. Not necessarily combat ones.

2.2 I would really like to be able to switch the powers of the fallen, without visiting the stone circle, to make the application more flexible and adapt to the situation.

2.3 Quests, they are sorely lacking. Both in terms of additional interest and narrative development, history, narration.

2.4 Motivation to explore the map, the world is huge, but there are not many points of interest on it. It would be great to make Artifacts for each biome that could be found by studying maps or tablets, for example, in the Dark Forest, make a brass sword with an enchantment for lightning or poison, which would be unique, but not so much as to be better than an iron one. In this way, exploring the world would be much more interesting.

2.5 Well, I really want additional dungeons or some additional locations in the first biome, in the 5th biome and in the Ashlands, the plains are generally very empty in this sense, all the resources there are mined very quickly and, as a rule, this biome is skipped.

3. Optimization for modern devices. I don't understand why the game lags on good hardware, especially the ash lands....

Otherwise, this is one of the best games of the last few years.

Sea travel and wave physics - this is a huge respect.

trash game, skelletons and other mobs walk straight through the water. no swim animation, no swimming, just walking underwater while shooting through the water to hit you. literally 0 interest to play this game anymore, buggy as hell after 3 years of release...

Days are way too short to have much fun. I would think it would be easy to add a simple config option to make the folks who what shorter days, longer days or leave it the same. But no, you have to get a mod and hope it works, but I would not get my hopes up as it seems that the developers do not really want to support mods. I have found that most of the mods are generally out of date, do not work on all platforms and as soon as an update occurs is likely to corrupt your game. So, I highly recommended to not use them on hosted server platforms that automatically install game updates.

Super small character storage, where your food, tools and weapons all share the same space. Apparently your character is smart enough to figure out how to make all kinds of weapons and armor but is also too stupid to figure out how to make a bigger backpack. Their genius idea to solve this is the cart. That gets stuck on everything and is a pain to pull around. However at least you can exploit them to break the dverger wards.

Building is okay, but it can be annoying as you have to apparently have a masters degree in engineering to make anything stable. Also, be aware that buildings cannot go very tall even if its stone it's going to need a lot of support as stone is heavy so it cannot be off the ground unless it has vertical supports right below it causing multi level buildings to be a pain and it cannot go much taller than wood. If you want to build your base and have it flat. good luck... While, they give you a hoe to flatten your build site, it's very difficult to use, consumes tons of stamina and you need a lot of stones to try to flatten it out. Be aware, when flattening your terrain that most of the time you don't get your stone back.. if you place it incorrectly and need to hit it with a pick to remove some. Further, you can only raise or lower the terrain 8 blocks from the default so.. hope you like small bases or don't want to raise or lower your base much.

The comfort system is interesting. However, early game you will find out that you run somewhere and by the time you get there not only is it night but your comfort buff is about to fall off as well as it starts out at like 8 minutes long. If it does, well you are going to be out of stamina until you get it back and if you are wet, its raining and your cold. Ha like no stamina so keep your food buff's up at all times.

Skills are interesting but seem to do very little. There is almost no difference in stamina usage for someone with a level 1 running and swimming than someone with a 100. If you can get it up that high without cheating as it takes forever and you seem to lose quite a bit if you die. A better way would also add adjustments to the config for this or make them scale with the map difficulty?

There are some fun elements to the game, but there are so many detractors it makes it difficult to find the fun. It feels more like a grind fest with lots of running to and from where you want to go. Until you get to late early to middle game. But you will always struggle with the annoying short days, small storage and stamina issues.

Most of these issues have been around a long time, and is apparently, intended because frustration is evidently fun.

As such, I would not recommend purchasing this game until some of these issues are resolved.

Optimization is still awful. Updates once a year adding minimum content, but still dares to rise a price for this. Mistland and Ashland are still worst regions yet. Progression is slow and uninteresting.

A Viking Adventure Worth Every Minute

Valheim is an incredible game in every way - challenging, creative, and absolutely rewarding.

Starting out can feel a bit tough at first, especially if you're new to survival games. But the beauty of Valheim is that it doesn't take long to "click." After just a few hours, the learning curve flattens and you're fully immersed in the world.

Boss Fights and Progression

The boss fights are a real highlight - each one feels epic and offers just the right level of challenge. Every victory feels earned, and progressing through biomes gives a strong sense of purpose and excitement.

Build, Create, Conquer

One of the best parts of Valheim is building your own base. Seeing your own creation come to life is incredibly satisfying, and the building system is flexible enough to let you create anything from a simple hut to a sprawling fortress.

Stunning in Its Own Way

The graphics may not be high-end, but Valheim still looks beautiful in its own style. The atmosphere, lighting, and world design more than make up for the low-poly look. And once you're in the game, you barely even think about it - you're too busy surviving, exploring, and building.

Final Thoughts

If you enjoy survival, crafting, and exploration with a strong sense of progression and creativity, Valheim is a must-play. It’s a game where your time and effort feel truly meaningful.

Highly recommended.

The most relaxing survival game out there, but don't get that twisted. It can get difficult, especially with bosses and adjusting the server settings.
Very immersive, with a visually satisfying art style, this game is beautiful all around.
You can definitely make a great argument about why this is the greatest survival game ever made, and it's still in early access.

10/10

Extremely fun especially with friends. A bit of a learning curve to start but easily learnable.

Beautiful game that I've played many hours with solo and together with friends (the later being the better). Enjoy the progress and challenge throughout the game. Music, colour palette were and still are great choices. Take your time with this one and just enjoy it.

I love this game, even though I feel like I might get bored if I played it too long by myself.
For me, it's perfect to play with someone else. Also, I 100% recommend installing a few QoL mods – they make the whole experience way smoother. There's a lot of stuff that could be in the base game but just isn’t (like seasons, for example :D).

Also, please get a better archery mod... 'cause shooting a bow in this game is nearly impossible XD.

I’m a huge fan of the whole nordic vibe and atmosphere. If you buy it, it’ll definitely give you tons of hours of gameplay.
It takes time to gather the next set of resources just to be stronger, and you really gotta prepare properly before fighting the next boss – no way you’re beating them with just a stick (trust me, it won’t work).

Definitely recommend – and I’ll for sure be putting many more hours into it.

Valheim Is like a viking Elden Ring... well Sorta.... Its grindy and rewarding and I'm a VIKING!!!
If you like to work for the next big upgrade, this game ROCKS. I played this with a buddy and even at 93 Hours I have not even completed half the bosses. I went in blind and this game continues to expand and have content. Again its grindy, If you enjoyed Ark. I would say its similar in its slow progression
10/10 Overwhelming and packed full of content!

They royally fucked this game with the Ashlands.
Don't give me the "move slowly, stay high".
It's a cluster-fuck out of this world; you can go full-kitted into it and still just get fucked up by random, rapidly spawning mobs.

They still can't get the multiplayer sync to perform properly, we have lost count of how many ships we have lost due to disconnects (where we have confirmed in server logs that the server doesn't actually go down, it's the code that can't keep up), and this occurs of COURSE in Ashlands, where you are fucking dead in the water if it happens.

In summary, the game seems to be coded around the premise of making every little thing you want to do a frustrating hell; busy with something and don't need mobs? Mobs will come. Need mobs for something? They will either not appear or keep running away from you after engaging you, which is just so fucking stupid. Really? A fiery skeleton suddenly had a change of heart, did he get scared?

This entire shit soup has been a grind from start to end, and I regret ever putting time into this in the hopes of getting a properly finished game within a reasonable time-frame.

Nevermind the insanely slow development, virtue-signalling and lackluster combat-dynamics.

Sincerely Coffee Stain, fuck you.

Valheim is a masterpiece, don't listen to those negative reviews mentioning updates.

Yes, the developers aren't releasing updates very frequently, but once they do, it's a big update that brings a lot of new content. There are only 15 people working on this, so it's quite understandable.

The game itself is a gem. Gorgeous graphics, fantastic soundtrack, gameplay is hard, but once you learn the basics, it gets easier. I have around 350 hours (on my second account) and I enjoyed every single moment (expect for deaths). I think you will never get bored, because there is always something to do. If you are still hesitant whether to purchase this game or not, I would wait for version 1.0, since it will be marked as a complete game. Valheim already has a lot content, but there are still some things that need to be perfected. And the developers want this game as best as possible, so you don't have to be worried about its future.

10/10

I have played a few hundred hours of this game. I really want to like it, but there are just too many things that I don't like to recommend it.

Pros: - The building is very good.
- Weapon selection
- Music
- Graphics
Cons: - This game is a slog. It takes so many hours to accomplish something. It feels like it is a short game
that has added time by just adding fluff.
- The leveling system is terrible. It takes way to long to level up anything.
- Food is the only thing that will increase your stats. Of course finding and cooking the food is a slog.
- The map is large. Get ready to spend a loooooong time on a boat doing nothing.
- The difficulty is superficial and something else to add length to the game. More annoying than
difficult.
With so many survival crafting games available, this one is just not worth it. Maybe things will change since it is early access. Right now as of 05/11/2025 it is not a good game.

this game is fun, very beautiful and often challenging plus the viking theme is just awesome. <3

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Thats Fkg Good
☑ Good
☐ Normal
☐ Meh
☐ Bad
☐ Get The Money Back

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You Forget What Reality is
☐ Work of Art
☑ Beautiful
☐ Normal
☐ Bad
☐ Pixels

---{ Audio }---
☐ Beethoven
☑ Very Good
☐ Good
☐ Its Ok
☐ Bad
☐ I'm Now Deaf

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Dark Souls
☑ Hard
☐ Significant Brain Usage
☐ Normal
☐ Easy
☐ Just Press 'W'

---{ World }---
☐ You Never Get Tired
☑ Full of Things to do
☐ There Could Be More Things
☐ Repetitive
☐ Empty Like a Desert
☐ Linear Game

---{ Story }---
☐ It'll Replace Your Life
☐ Lovely
☐ Good
☐ Basic
☑ Some Lore
☐ No Story

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long Enough For a Cup of Tea
☐ 5h-10h
☐ 10h-20h
☐ 20h-50h
☑ 50h-100h
☑ 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
☐ Just Go Play Poker

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never Heard Of
☐ You Won't Even Notice
☐ Minor Bugs
☐ Can Get Annoying
☐ Cyberpunk 2077
☐ These Bugs Have a Game

---{ DLC }---
☐ Its a Second Game
☐ Good
☐ Its Ok
☐ Bad
☐ Skins
☑ Don't Have

---{ Final Decision }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☑ 5
☐ Game of The Year

I wish I could recommend this game. I've played over 1k hours. I've had an absolute blast for most of them. But it's like recommending a book series where the first one is fire, but they nosedive from there, and the author refuses to finish the series. Each biome update is less fun than the last. I didn't even finish ashlands, because it's such a miserable experience.

Each biome is supposed to be more difficult than the last, but the way this is accomplished is by making them more annoying and tedious. Weapons upgrades don't feel powerful or good anymore - the ramping stamina cost makes them actually feel more punishing to use, especially the bows.

Lastly, the game is still in early access 4 years after release, with precious little content released each year. It feels like the devs took the money and ran. Even their "april fools" update this year was a recycled repost from last year. They just dgaf anymore.

It genuinely makes me sad, because I LOVED this game on release, and couldn't wait for update patches. At this point I'll probably never even finish it.

So I have put in over 130+ hours into Valheim as of 5/7/2025. You might think that that means that I must really enjoy the game. And while that would make sense for any other game, when you actually understand how long it takes to do literally anything in Valheim you will understand that in truth I've probably played the equivalent to 30 hours in a normal game. And mind you this was while playing the game with mods that sped up things and or settings (that were added way too late) to make the crappiest aspects of this game bearable.

Valheim was released into early access on February 2nd, 2021. It is now May 7th, 2025 and the game is still not complete. While I have patience and grace for smaller indie companies the fact this game, which has probably made way more than enough money where they would be able to pay for more devs easily, is still not complete is not something you can ignore.

To put it simply Valheim is a massively watered down mix of Minecraft and Terraria. Large randomly generated open worlds that you can build pretty much anything in (within the confines of the frustrating construction system), a very defined progression that takes you from one biome to the next with it ending in you beating the biome's boss and restarting in the next biome. This progression on it's surface is not bad, but the steps you have to take in order to progress through the progression is genuinely awful. WAITING. Valheim should be called "Stallheim" with the amount of things you have to wait to complete. If you play the game the intended way (no joke) a good 70% of what you are doing is either waiting or carrying resources gathered to and from your base real time with specific roadblocks like not being able to teleport with ores which are A) the heaviest materials B) therefore take up the most space and time ferrying them on your back, wagon, or on a ship. There was a long period of time where you either submitted to this overwhelmingly frustrating game design or did the reasonable thing and downloaded mods that made things quicker. Mind you that I said "quicker" and not "easier" let's talk about game play.

Valheim's combat is pretty good, good enough to enjoy. But enemies are no joke. You bump up that difficulty and you're going to be running back to get your stuff from your corpse constantly, which coincidentally takes up another 15% of the game play. Enemy variety is moderately good when you look at the game as a whole but several enemies are more rare than others to come across so you are usually fighting the same two or three basic enemies each biome offers. I have a love hate relationship with Valheim's balancing, on the one hand enemies can be so stupidly powerful on higher difficulties that you barely have a chance to defend yourself before you are hunted down by wolves or deathsquitoes. But on the other hand with the difficulty as it is, there is an aspect that makes it more emotionally rewarding as well as truly nail biting. The only other things you will be doing is gathering resources (ores take way too long to mine and carry), processing those resources, and looking for the small and repetitive "dungeons" in each biome.

Visually the game is beautiful (Incredibly repetitive for sure). It's a simple looking game but as per usual, if you add great lighting, it suddenly becomes incredibly gorgeous, spooky, and/or peaceful.

There is one form of progression that needs to be talked about however and that is the merchants. Because the world is randomly generated, the merchants in game can spawn anywhere within their specific biomes. Which means some play-throughs, unless you are spending hours navigating the relatively empty, repetitive, and monster inhabited world, you may not find them. And this isn't good. A large part of progression is involved with these traders and your only hope is that you randomly find them in the massive world somewhere close to your base. If you don't find them your screwed out of extra inventory carry weight (the most important thing in the game) and certain weapons and armors that make the game more accessible.

Let's talk about the last thing I want to cover which is building. Building sucks. There's no more merciful way to say it. Crafting benches, a staple of survival games, have been made inconvenient just like everything else in this world. In order to build anything you need a crafting bench. However it also needs to be under a roof for repairs and tool crafting, why do you need a roof to use a crafting bench? Because simply placing down a crafting bench is too quick for Stallheim. Fortunately you can build structures without putting a roof over a crafting bench, however crafting benches have a fairly small circle that you can build structures in around them. So of course you're going to build a bunch of benches all over the place. But then you actually have to build things which not only takes more resources some being incredibly frustrating and dangerous to obtain easily but also you have to deal with a janky building system that has it's own rules and takes weight into account but sometimes doesn't care if you build supports but sometimes does and there's often zero correlation between why it does sometimes and why it doesn't other times.

There are so many more things that are absurdly annoying about this game, the biggest one that effects everything is world generation that sometimes screws up entire biomes and if you are unfamiliar with those biomes you may think that the generation screw ups are normal but in fact they aren't and you just wasted ten hours looking for a "dungeon" like structure that never even spawned. But how would you know unless you spoiled it for yourself and looked it up online. Or the fact that since the game is still being developed you can screw over a playthrough by exploring barren lands that haven't received their in game biome yet therefore not generating them on previously explored ground meaning you would need to restart your world if you wanted to progress more through the ever updating game because somehow after four years this game STILL ISN'T FINISHED.

I can't tell you what to do, buy the game if it looks interesting, or if you enjoy playing a game that actually respects your time don't buy this game.

such a good game. it looks and runs really good. i could play for hours because of the amazing progression in the game and the constant goal to get new gear and defeat the next boss. Highly reccomend.

(this game will make you mad as heck tho)

Not enough reviews mention that the developer wants this game to be a brutal slog. You have to very, very slowly drag a cart across the continent to move a little bit of basic resources to your home. Repeatedly. Slowly. Very slowly. You don't upgrade to a faster method of transport. Suffering is the goal. It is meant to be a grueling grind fest, but the "grinding" is just walking for a painfully long time. It reminds me of the Desert Bus mini-game in "Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors."

The whole game is like that. I don't hate myself enough to play this.

In fairness, it is a nice world. I have well over 100 hours played. If the developer didn't make tedium a priority, I would probably love this game. I tried really hard, but the devs won. I quit the game because the monotony is overwhelming.

Its a great game - 4 years ago. The game had only a few biomes left to finish off the game, everyone was happy and pumping lots of hours into the game. It was exciting to explore the world, base-building is complex enough to allow for interesting buildings, etc.

Then the devs went into hibernation - super slow updates with minimal content: "Hey, look a new hut".
It has been 5 years by now and this little gem is still not finished. They are developing board games, plush toys, etc - finish the game? Not so much..

What a pity..

/edited for spelling..

Buckle up for a 2000 era graphics and no guide as what the objective is. So grab a party and figure it out, its a grind game........well worth it

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.

Valheim has a beautiful world, charming art, great sound design, and fun base building, but as a solo player, the deeper you go, the more the design starts to fall apart. For context, in 25.6 hours I have progressed to the third boss. Here's why I can't recommend it right now:

Poor solo balance: Everything feels tuned for multiplayer. Mob density and resource demands overwhelm solo play. There are modifiers, but I don't think these are enough. As an example, once you begin mining for ores, your weight capacity/inventory is just not good enough and obtaining these in a less-than-favorable seed quickly becomes very tedious and grindy. Speaking of:

Tedious progression: Mining, smelting, hauling ore (even when adjusting portal settings), and crafting all take way too much time with too little reward.

Empty world: The map is massive, but points of interest are few, repetitive, and uninspired. Exploration doesn't really pay off when compared to games like Subnautica.

Clunky combat: Parrying feels good when it works, but stamina regeneration is painfully slow and makes solo fights a chore. Also, the game could really use a proper lock-on system.

Stamina regeneration: In general, stamina regeneration is a big issue for the pacing of the game when traversing, gathering resources, building, etc., even when you eat to maximize it.

Bosses: Bosses have very repetitive and predictable move sets. I wouldn't call their "AI" acceptable. They don't really pose much of a threat, even if they do hit hard. Also, the game has amazing overworld music, yet the boss fight music is tonally off with the rest of the game.

The developers have also continued focus on new biomes/zones, but instead I think the game needs additional content throughout the existing biomes/zones, as well as much needed QoL changes.

QoL mods help, but you shouldn't need a mod just to make the game feel playable/enjoyable. Valheim starts strong, but ends up fighting you at every turn.

One of my fave games. Absolutly amazing! From Boars to Wolves, Necks to pet rocks, Every thing in this game is epic! I'm coming for you, deep north!

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.