Northgard
After years of tireless explorations, brave Vikings have discovered a new land filled with mystery, danger and riches: Northgard. The boldest Northmen have set sail to explore and conquer these new shores, bring fame to their Clan and write history through conquest, trading, or devotion to the Gods. That is, if they can survive the dire Wolves and Undead Warriors roaming the land, befriend or defeat the giants, and survive the harshest winters ever witnessed in the North. Build your settlement on the newly discovered continent of Northgard Assign your vikings to various jobs (Farmer, Warrior, Sailor, Loremaster…) Manage your resources carefully and survive harsh winters and vicious foes Expand and discover new territory with unique strategic opportunities Achieve different victory conditions (Conquest, Fame, Lore, Trading…) Play against your friends or against an AI with different difficulty levels and personalities
Steam User 119
Ok. This is no fancy review or funny review just a almost 40 year old guy saying that this is a good game.
Do you like settlers, age of empires, RTS games? Are you up for some nostalgio RTS gaming dressed in a nowadays sauce?
if so, do not hesitate and go for this one.
It has a lot of instant gratification which is a good thing. A mission or game last for about 45 minutes, sometimes longer and after that you often see a big screen with VICTORIOUS. And then you can go to your much needed sleep. As with all things in life I do not have the time for it, time is the most precious rerource there is. SO no open world 300 hrs games, i want (almost) instant gratification and some nostalgia with a good old school style of RTS. Good night.
Steam User 71
Hello,
I will be short here, if you are looking for small RTS easy to learn hard to master, don't search anymore and buy this game.
I've been playing this game for 6 years and never get bored.
Just look at my hours and belive me, give it a try, this game deserve for bigger community.
Cheers!
Steam User 43
A fantastic game with fantastic developers.
An indie RTS game made with a massive amount of love and care, and while the game has lots of dlc, every single one is worth it and provides a new way to play the game and strategize. There are plenty of non-dlc clans, and they still provide a lot of variety and way to play nor are they weak either.
Northgard is like a hybrid of RTS and normal strategy games, no turns and constant things to do like RTS, but strategy-like territories and the requirement to capture (or uncapture) zones to progress your own clan or destroy an enemy clan.
Every clan has it's own unique spin and none truly play the same way. An example would be the Clan of the Goat, who uses the sheep that lay about the map to produce food using their special building exclusive to them, and their own unique "lore" (which is what you'd call research trees in other games) allows them to eventually sell them for money, or allow them to upgrade their populations tools for free.
There are also multiple ways to win in Northgard, all you can disable or enable at your choosing. This includes the standard "destroy all enemies" objective where you must uncapture an enemies town hall (main building you start with) which will eliminate them from the game. However their are a lot of other ways to win, such as the "Fame" victory which requires you to have a certain amount of territory under your control, a special building, and enough "fame" which is a passive counter that increases when you do things like capturing territory, eliminating enemy clans, destroying neutral clans, etc. Every clan also gains special bonuses the more fame they have, unlocking new unique capabilities specific for that clan.
Maps are also completely randomly generated, meaning every match feels different and also has potential to have a "special" win condition, like a massive tree that if you control for long enough will grant you an immediate victory. Maps will also spawn "neutral clans" which are exclusively AI controlled and all do certain things. Kobolds for example will attempt to spread and capture nearby territories, while Dwarves simply desire to be left alone and will only retaliate if you capture a zone near them. However, every clan can build a "trading post" and is able to trade resources among ally clans, these neutral clans, and even enemy clans. The longer you trade, the more favor you gain from them. In neutral clans cases, every single one will provide unique benefits or negatives depending on what they are and what they think of you. If you ally the Dwarves for example, they will start giving you gifts, and eventually will give you two of their own dwarves to mine and forge upgrades/relics with.
I cannot express enough how much love and care was put into this game, and is still being put into it. Just fairly recently we got a new story campaign and clans that completely flip the game on it's head with it's mechanics.
As for any downsides, I'd say the game lacks polish in certain areas, such as the "expedition" menu still bugging out since release, aswell as occasional bugs where the mouse will not click on buildings if it's placed in very specific spots. These bugs are rare though, and majority of the time the game is a fun and very smooth experience. Recent updates that add new clans have also had some rocky starts, and while major things are usually fixed fairly quickly, I would hold off on purchasing any new DLC clans until a week or so has passed to iron out the kinks there may be. I wouldn't treat this latter issue as lazy developers, as the more recent clans have been absolute game changers and the bugs are most likely a result of trying many new things. However, I think the developers should very much test their updates more before releasing them. They have always fixed these major issues ASAP, but I feel as though giving the updates more time to be polished up would be a good step in the right direction.
I heavily recommend this game to anyone who enjoys RTS games, aswell as anyone looking to get into them.
Steam User 39
Pros: Great game to get immersed into, can lose track of time. Unique playstyle.
Cons: Bad replay-ability. AI does the same thing, online games are limited.
Steam User 38
Ahoy! Northgard is a chilled-out Viking RTS with beautiful landscapes and soundtracks. The usual 4x elements are there, but with less of an emphasis on rush and perhaps more weight to pragmatic choices and balancing your economy. A standard match has you found your Clan, explore & tame the land, then aspire to either fame, riches, lore mastery or military conquest.
There are several game modes to play: Story, Conquest, Solo, Multiplayer - along with a second, optional DLC Story campaign, Cross of Vidar. To be honest, I never see any reason to play Solo or Multiplayer, although apparently the multiplayer scene is quite lively. The Story campaigns are "ok" but offer little replay value, since they are static scenarios you have to overcome. The real gem behind Northgard is the Conquest mode, something added several years after release and even surprised the Developers with how popular it was.
Conquest mode sees you take control of a clan and play a gauntlet of increasingly difficult, yet randomised, missions with randomised power-up rewards that you have to choose between. Each Conquest run feels unique thanks to the different clan mechanics and the way the power-ups interact with them. This may explain why Northgard decided to double-down on releasing Clan DLC, as it enriched both multiplayer and Conquest players.
Speaking of Clan DLC, there really is a LOT of them, with more on the way. Whilst completely optional, they are reasonably priced (around $5 each) and better yet frequently on sale. To take each Clan through a Conquest will take 5-10 hours, longer if you are on a higher difficulty or learning a complicated clan such as Snake or Dragon. They all have unique mechanics and Hero units and (mostly) feel equally powerful.
Northgard also has various cosmetic unlockables, such as Hero & building skins, all of which are earned in-game via story completion or spending achievement granted currency. It's a refreshing throwback to an era before publisher greed.
Thanks to it's Paradox-like DLC release schedule, Northgard still gets frequent free base-game updates six years after launch. The most recent one (at time of writing) has just revamped two biomes with gorgeous new textures and revamped diplomacy. I appreciate the care and time put into these updates.
I rarely play RTS but Northgard has enough charm and ambience to keep me coming back. Skål!
Steam User 24
tl;dr: I found this game to be a fine fusion of 4x and RTS game play elements. It's challenging and interesting without requiring incredible micro APM/precision like starcraft would. But it's not like learning endless space or something lol.
Once you realize most everything happens sort of 4x style except the combat, building, repairing type aspects it all clicks and at that point, as a semi older stoner that wants something chill, this was perfect.
My initial brain dump:
So I played this game for 30 mins and thought I was going to hate it. Seemed slow and clunky to what I was expecting. However I was pleasantly to my surprise extremely wrong with this face value judgement in the first few tutorial missions. I found the campaign interesting and fun to get through including replaying missions for bonus objectives. I played through on hard or normal I can't recall now, but I found it to be a nice challenge and just a new style of game that was refreshing to enjoy. I got my moneys worth in that alone and then came back months later and realized I had like 3% of the achievements or something and decided to look at the conquest mode (I've mainly been interested in single player or co-op as of late) and decided to check that out. Well it's super fun so far solo, that I am playing on hard and finding it perfect, I just love it and it gave me that umph to have a buddy come play with me and we are doing a conquest together now and that's super fun too.
I come from a background of warcraft 2 / starcraft all the way up their respective chains, I have dabbled in some 4x games like endless space, enjoyed turn strategy things like total war, and I really enjoyed games like a game of dwarves and rise to ruins for that colony / city sim type feel. This game just really brought all of those together for me in one fun place. So I think it's well worth the money especially if you're looking for something new with an experienced or inexperienced gamer.
Steam User 32
It makes me irrationally angry