Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I'm positively surprised.
PROS:
GRAPHICS: Stylish, set the mood.
MUSIC: Fitting norse-like action soundtrack, drives the combat forwards.
STORY: So far enjoying it. Very norse.
MAIN CHARACTER: Male / female. The shieldmaiden has a very empowering personality.
COMBAT: Feels dynamic and has oomph. You keep jumping around the battlefield.
SKILL SYSTEM: Simple and works. 5 gods offer different skills, each skill has 3 tiers, mostly passive skills, 5 actives.
EQUIPMENT: 99 slots + shared stash. You won't run out of inventory. Varied yet not a crap item spam. Selling extras after a mission takes two minutes at most.
CONS:
SAVE SYSTEM: Checkpoint-based. All progression since last checkpoint is lost if you die. Can lead to backtracking to another checkpoint to save your progress.
SOCKETS: You can't remove and retain engraved runes from items. Socketing is permanent. As a result, I don't use most runes at all. Some people may like this kind of system, I don't.
RESPEC: Only possible by manually editing the save file.
VERDICT:
All in all, the pros outweigh the cons. Healthily recommend this.

Good (long) story, but classes and loot need entirely rebalanced. Being a dual-wield Loki follower is clearly superior to everything else (closely followed by Thor) while the rest are novelties at best (Odin) and actually slow down your gameplay at worst (looking at you, Tyr and Skaldi). Followers of Loki and Tyr have the potential of 6 rune slots just on their weapons (weapon and shield for Tyr followers), let alone the rest found on armor, while Thor, Skaldi, and Odin only get up to the three found on their weapon + the rest on armor. It's ok for this on Thor followers because two-handed weapons have very high damage (2nd only to dual-wield), while the damage is approximately 100 points less for Staff and Bow for Odin and Skaldi followers on the equivalent tier. This being said, Tyr followers get two artifacts instead of one like the rest get.
Bottom line is you will be hilariously OP as a Loki or Thor follower compared to the others.
The only major bug I've encountered while playing is that when combining artifact pieces while inside of a raid, the game hangs and you need to ALT+F4. Game does not hang if you combine inside of the village.
Minor bug/issue: Rolling does pretty much nothing for damage avoidance unlike how the ability is described unless you practically roll out of the entire combat area/room. Hilariously, you can move faster by rolling if you wear the appropriate gear than you can using regular movement + movement speed gear/runes whenever it is available. This issue tends to work against ranged classes more than the melee dps/tank classes who are far less squishy and do far more damage.
Personal nitpick with the overall design: At the end of missions it will pop any story dialog and end of mission rewards screens instead of giving any time to examine loot on the ground, then instantly punt you back into town. Would be far better with a manual exit.
What I like about the design: Making the ability to heal not bound to any single class, and also tweaking the usual formula by tying it to refillable items with varying amounts of charges and healing amounts. Making your ability to craft more powerful gear actually tied into the story itself rather than being something entirely unconnected to everything else and you can just grind on the treadmill for is another nice touch.
All in all, a pretty good effort and I recommend it for anyone who likes stories in their ARPGs, but could it certainly could use a bit more polish.

Honestly it's one of the most satisfying ARPG "Diablo clone" out there. Combat is responsive and requires movement a lot. Areas have Exposure which causes dmg if you stay in the snow too long. The only way to remove it is getting to a bonfire which are dispersed all over the map. I constantly check my map and see if I can get to next fire without dying, which is made harder when enemies are after me. Best example I can give for how good this game is compared to loot fesr Hack n Slash is by encountering ravens. Birds will fly above you in circles. Their shadows leave an idea where they are along with their caws. Eventually they will swoop down for a strike before going airborne once more. I fcking hate the birds, but they force me to be patient. If im swinging my wreapon wildly they will always avoid me. Only way to get them is wait as they turn to dive down for an attack and then swing sword in place by holding Shift ley. Much more rewarding then mindless hordes of enemies.
I passed on this game for so long because reviews weren't that good. I am so happy i chose to ignore them.

It's like Diablo III but set in a Viking world. You need to find campfires to warm up or you die. If you are on a windy bridge, you freeze/die much quicker. You loose health pretty easily to foes so you must find healing alters to replenish your health quite often or you die. Sometimes the closest healing alters and campfires are through your foes so you die fighting your way to them. However, you can always backtrack to the healing alters and campfires. I haven't progressed very far into the game as of yet but I have died often. It is a checkpoint based game so you always go back to the last saved checkpoint when you die. Does this game do it better than Diablo III, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, etc? No, there's nothing revolutionary here, but if you have played all the others and want to play another, give this one a shot.

A recommendation with a lot of negatives.
+ Weighty combat.
+ Soundtrack.
+ Setting.
- Level structure with checkpoints, if you leave to upgrade something in town or you loose all your progress.
- Not fun to repeat levels (required if you missed something the first time you beat it you have to clear it again)
- Levels take too long, in combination with the previous negatives, is very tiring.
- Repetitive, keep in mind that I have also played every dynasty warriors, and I find wolves of midgard repetitive in comparison.
- Art direction and render results are very meh, an uninteresting visual style and personality.
= Performance strutters when loot drops.
Is ok in short bursts and if you are out of ARPG to play. The studio has potential, looking forward to play shadows to see how they improved

I loved this game as a short term Diablo clone fix. It doesn't have insane lengthy content like path of exile but is something you finish in 100 hours and move onto something else. It was a really satisfying 100 hours.

What a great game, surprised me positively, and made me put all other games aside until I finished it! Took me ca. 30h, was quite challenging on Normal, but just perfectly right... what I really liked was the dark athmosphere, the cool music, and the bloody, rewarding combat! There are many chapters, there is a loot and resources based system, and the graphics and the narrator were also gorgeous.
I really dont understand what people complain about... yes, the Shieldmaiden char, which I picked could get on your nerves with her complaining about the exposure (cold, heat...), which is actually quite a novel game mechanic, but the same amount of times I could laugh about them, and she also said some bad-ass oneliners...
9/10, highly recommended to ARPG lovers and people who enjoy a gritty fantasy story.