Valheim Early Access Preview - Page 2
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Valheim’s combat system is quite similar to Dark Souls with light and heavy attacks, dodge rolls, blocks and parries, and a stamina bar that presides over all of that. Now, this being an indie game by a tiny team, don’t expect the animations to be very smooth and precise, but they get the job done. And underneath a layer of clunkiness, there’s quite a bit of complexity there.
For example, the damage you do is determined by both the weapon and your proficiency with said weapon, but also, certain monsters can be weak or resistant to certain damage types. You’ll also be able to find a variety of elemental weapons and arrows. And if you want to parry anything but the weakest attacks, you’ll need to keep upgrading your shields, as for a parry to work, a shield’s block power has to exceed the incoming damage.
In a similar vein, there’s a surprising amount of depth to many of the game’s systems. Like how monsters from different biomes will frequently fight each other, allowing you to use their battles to your advantage.
Bees are another good example. At a certain point, my base turned into a small village. And either I didn’t understand how something worked, or it was some early access hiccup, but I had a problem where monsters would spawn within my palisade and mess with my stuff. So, I put a bunch of beehives around the monster hot spots. The critters would spawn and attack the hives, forcing their residents to retaliate and keep my village free from enemies, on top of their primary function of providing me with honey.
So, the game has some progression systems and a fair bit of depth. However, there’s a decent chunk of RPG players who want their games to first and foremost have a lot of story and lore. Does Valheim have any of that? Well, not really, unless you count the entirety of Norse mythology as lore. At this point, Valheim is a purely sandbox experience. However, there are some bits and pieces there that can easily be expanded into a loose but intriguing narrative.
You see, there are these stones scattered throughout the world that are presented as messages from those who came before you. These messages act as the game’s codex entries, but they also follow the journeys of at least two distinct characters. With a bit of work, these can be expanded into neat little tales you get to follow. Also, when you go to sleep, you get these flashes of your mortal life. Right now, they’re just flavor text, but it wouldn’t take too much work to make them guide you towards some secret. And every once in a while, you’ll spot a mysterious cloaked figure that disappears as you try to approach it. All these little touches are just a few turns of the narrative wrench away from becoming something bigger than they currently are.
And since we’re now talking about divisive features, the game’s pacing should also be mentioned. The developers want you to go out into the world and mount these time and effort-consuming expeditions to get new and stronger resources. So, even though the game has some nice quality-of-life features like free item repair and easy-to-use portals, those portals won’t work if you have any ore on you.
As a result, if what you're trying to gather is relatively close, you can use a cart to haul a whole lot of it, but if it's far away, you'll need to use a boat. And sailing especially takes quite a bit of time. You add in the time it takes to produce coal and smelt the ores, the time it takes for the crops to grow or your mead to ferment, and you get a good deal of downtime and a rather slow overall pace.
I personally didn’t mind it, especially playing in multiplayer. That way, you can split the menial tasks, have a chat while stuck in the middle of the ocean, or have someone come pick you up if you fall overboard. Still, I can definitely see someone who likes to constantly be doing something not appreciate such downtime, so do keep that in mind.
Overall, though, Valheim currently has enough content to last you a few dozen hours, but its later areas can feel lacking in variety, and overall, the game still has a ways to go before becoming truly satisfying. Especially considering that at this point, it just ends, without even acknowledging the fact you’ve exhausted the available content.
At the same time, the developers seem to have plans to expand a lot of the systems and introduce things like set bonuses, less linear gear progression, new biomes and bosses, and perhaps even the ability to tame wolves. And even though we can only guess how all of that is going to turn out, at the moment the future is looking pretty rosy for Valheim.
